ARTS FIRST at the Harvard Art Museums: Harvard College Film Festival

As part of ARTS FIRST, organized by the Office for the Arts at Harvard, the Harvard Art Museums will screen the winning films in this year’s student-run Harvard College Film Festival, which provides undergraduates across the world with an opportunity to create and submit films to be screened, judged, and awarded for creative excellence and powerful perspective. Entertainment executive Susanne Daniels will deliver the keynote address.

12–2pm: Screenings of award-winning student films

2–4pm: Keynote address by Susanne Daniels

Susanne Daniels is a successful TV executive, producer, author, and advocate. When a student at Harvard College, she produced the Hasty Pudding Theatricals and was a member of the improv group On Thin Ice. After graduating in 1987, she interned at the Public Theater in New York for Joseph Papp before becoming Lorne Michaels’s assistant and a development executive at Saturday Night Live and at Michaels’s company Broadway Video. In Los Angeles, Daniels was a manager in the Specials and Reality departments at ABC, where she worked on such projects as America’s Funniest People and the Academy Awards, among others. Later, as a comedy executive at Fox, she developed several comedies, including Living Single. Daniels was soon tapped to head development at The WB, where as president she was responsible the network’s primetime hits, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawson’s Creek, Seventh Heaven, and Charmed. The network would go on to become a huge part of ’90s culture, providing career breaks to Joss Whedon, J. J. Abrams, Kevin Williamson, Jamie Foxx, Steve Harvey, and many other talented people that Daniels promoted. Since then, Daniels has served as an independent producer and president of both Lifetime and MTV networks. She is currently head of original programming at YouTube Red. In 2016, she received the Brandon Tartikoff Award at the National Association of Television Program Executives meeting for achieving excellence in her career. Aside from her work in the entertainment industry, Daniels is an author and an advocate for social change, specifically for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

This program will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level.

Free admission

ARTS FIRST (April 27–30, 2017) is an annual festival organized by the Office for the Arts at Harvard that showcases student and faculty creativity on campus.

Please note that the Harvard Art Museums are offering free admission on Saturday, April 29, to support ARTS FIRST programming.

Support for this program is provided by the Richard L. Menschel Endowment Fund.