After Alamo Drafthouse’s widely criticized decision to re-hire an accused sexual harasser, a lead programmer at the cinema chain’s Fantastic Fest film festival has stepped down.
Late Tuesday night, the festival’s director of international programming, Todd Brown, announced on Facebook that he would be leaving Fantastic Fest over the cinema chain’s announcement that it was again working with Devin Faraci. Faraci, the former editor-in-chief of the Drafthouse-affiliated website Birth.Movies.Death., was accused last October by a Twitter user of touching her inappropriately without her consent. The story prompted other women to write in on Twitter with their own allegations of sexual misconduct, and, a few days later, Faraci later stepped down from his position, saying he would “use the coming weeks and months to work on becoming a better person.”
But on Tuesday, Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League announced on Facebook that, following some time off, he had offered Faraci copywriting work and now is allowing him to write stories for the site because he is “very much an advocate for granting people second chances.”
In his statement, Brown said that he had no idea that Faraci had been writing copy for Fantastic Fest before Tuesday. “I am still processing my feelings both about this decision and the fact that I—among others—was not consulted in the making of it,” he said. Brown worked at the festival for “over a decade” before he stepped own.
The decision comes after a rash of other sexual harassment allegations have rocked the film industry. On Sunday, the Los Angeles-based theater Cinefamily suspended its programming schedule following widely publicized sexual-harassment accusations against members of the organization. Late last month, a producer on the Amazon series Man in the High Castle accused Amazon Studios head Roy Price of making inappropriate sexual remarks at Comic-Con in 2015.
