Born and raised in France, Bérénice Reynaud studied philosophy at Paris I-Sorbonne, cinema studies at NYU, and was a Helena Rubenstein fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Studies Program. She was the author of New Chinas/New Cinemas (1999) and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness (2002). A regular contributor to Senses of Cinema, she also published in Cahiers du cinéma, Sight & Sound, Film Comment, Afterimage, Le Monde diplomatique, and Cinemaya the Asian Film Quarterly, among many other journals, scholarly publications, encyclopedias, and catalog articles. 

As a correspondent for the San Sebastian International Film Festival and the Viennale, and board member of Filmforum LA, Bérénice was a central figure in the Los Angeles and international independent film communities, watching everything with an omnivorous curiosity, always finding joy in discovering new artists and championing their work. In the 1980s, she developed a deep interest in Chinese cinema, was a pioneer of the introduction of Chinese video art and documentary in the United States and France, and for many years served as Curatorial Adviser and member of the Programming Committee for the China Onscreen Biennial. In 2017, she curated a major retrospective of contemporary Chinese cinema for the Cinémathèque française. 

Bérénice was the founding co-curator, with Steve Anker, of the Film at REDCAT series from its inception in 2003. Together, Bérénice and Steve curated several hundred programs of work by international, documentary, narrative, and experimental media artists. Bérénice was especially dedicated to including underrepresented filmmakers, showing work by dozens of queer artists and artists of color, expanding the breadth and reach of Film at REDCAT. 

As a curator, Bérénice also created exhibitions for Artists Space, The Collective for Living Cinema, MOMA, Museum of the Moving Image, UCLA Film & Television Archives, Cinémathèque française, and Festival d’Automne and the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume. She was one of the main organizers of Against Oblivion, the Chantal Akerman retrospective that took place in several Los Angeles venues and at New York’s BAM in 2016, and edited the Senses of Cinema dossier devoted to Akerman. 

Berenice’s teaching and mentoring was always timely and thoughtful. She played a key role in bringing students in direct conversation with such esteemed filmmakers as Agnes Varda, Isaac Julien, Chantal Akerman, Julie Dash, and many, many more. In response to the COVID quarantine, she quickly designed The Room, a seminar on confinement that was both a provocation and an invitation to students to think deeply about the moment. This summer, she was planning Fourteen Questions for Jean-Luc Godard, a deep dive into the filmmaker’s work following his death last year.