The Sag Harbor Cinema and its board of directors have appointed Mark Lubell, a Sag Harbor resident, as the cinema's new executive director.
The announcement came last Thursday. Lubell will start on Friday, May 1, just weeks before the five-year anniversary of the cinema's Memorial Day weekend grand reopening, following a catastrophic fire in December 2016.
Lubell served as executive director of the International Center of Photography from 2013 to 2022, during which he raised more than $90 million to support institutional expansion and long-term sustainability, according to a release. He led the acquisition and development of the center's permanent home at 84 Ludlow Street in Manhattan, realizing a 20-year objective. Under his leadership, its programs were repositioned around new media and contemporary visual culture.
Prior to that, Lubell served as the director of Magnum Photos from 2003 to 2011, where he led a digital transformation and organizational restructuring of the international photography cooperative. His approach resulted in 51 percent of revenue coming from new sources within three years. He also orchestrated one of the largest transactions in photographic history with the sale of the Magnum New York press print archive to Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Technologies.
Lubell was named Innovator of the Year by American Photo magazine for his work in multimedia and digital community building.
"The Sag Harbor Cinema has meant so much to me my whole life," the native New Yorker told The Star. Spending summers with his family in Noyac, the cinema "was a staple of the center of Sag Harbor and to the center of your summer," he remembered. "When it burned, it was devastating. I remember seeing it on the news, and then coming back and seeing how the whole town felt different. So the board that formed and raised the funds and built this building should be applauded. They just did an incredible job bringing this anchor back to Sag Harbor."
At a time when Netflix is considered the most powerful entertainment company in Hollywood and more people stream movies at home than watch them in cinemas, we are now in "the second chapter of this moment for the cinema," Lubell said, "in that they built the building, it's been performing well, serving the community, but the value of going to the cinema now has changed. What I believe strongly is that we need to have these places in our towns and society in which people of different socioeconomics and political views come to spaces and have shared moments."
"In a cinema, you're laughing, or crying, or screaming, with strangers. That's a good thing for the fabric of our communities. We need more of these kinds of places so that we're not just given an algorithm and told what we want to see, fulfilling a narrative we already believe in. We need other inputs, and I think that's one of the roles the Sag Harbor Cinema can give."
"I'm a realist," he said. "I don't think we're going to change the tide of streaming, but I think this is still quite a valuable experience."
The immersive nature of the cinema is also important in an era of endless distraction. "There's something about a live experience that changes the way you see something," he said, rather than "in your own home with lights on, you're stopping it, you're getting food. You're distracted, the phone is going off. You're not 100-percent there. When you're in the theater, it's dark, you're with strangers, you're totally committed. We're not anymore, because we're constantly being knocked off it — the phone, the phone, the phone. When you see a good movie, you leave and think about it for two or three days."
He bought a house in Sag Harbor 14 years ago. The family relocated during the Covid-19 pandemic, and "really have enjoyed living out here," Lubell said. His children are in the local school system.
Earlier in his career, he served as the chief operations officer of Here Is New York: A Democracy of Photographs, a nonprofit created following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He is co-founder of Vagrant Ventures, where he advises organizations on visual literacy strategy and audience engagement.
While he does not officially begin until next week, he emphasized an educational component to his new position. "I think one of the things we need to do is amplify the programmatic offerings," he said, "because I don't think people realize the level that is being offered in Sag Harbor. Since my kids are in school here, I really want to do more education, reach out to the schools and see how we can work with them in a different way."
Taking pictures with a smartphone does not make one a photographer, he said. Rather, photographers are "storytellers at the highest level, trying to refine that story and get you to understand what they're seeing." Along with smartphones, myriad digital tools for video and audio production are available to people of all ages. "My kids have all these different tools in which they can put together clips," he said. "That is terrific. For them to go see a film by a [Steven] Spielberg, [Martin] Scorsese, legendary filmmakers, you start to understand some of the skill sets involved in really great storytelling. We should embrace that."
