Karen Jaehne was passionate about the art of film. At home, in screening rooms, at festivals in Europe and the United States, in film theaters anywhere, she scribbled in the dark about the light they shone on the world. She was on the staff of the New York Post, wrote for Film Comment, Daily Variety, Interview Magazine, The Village Voice, British Film Institute, The Washington Post, among others, and was a longtime contributing editor to the scholarly magazines Cineaste and Film Quarterly. Jaehne contributed 18 entries to The Encyclopedia of Film edited by James Monaco (1990), compiled and edited the screenplays of Paddy Chayefsky for publication (Applause Books, 2000), and served as resident critic and editor at FilmScouts (1995-1999).
Jaehne also worked in film production and supported various film series. As director of development at SpectraFilm (1986-89), she developed films including Tokyo Pop, Sticky Fingers and Too Outrageous. She produced three movies: Jack & His Friends (1992), Walls & Bridges (1992) and documentary The Chelsea (1993), about the famous hotel for which she also wrote a narrative history based on numerous interviews. Jaehne programmed the “Women Make Movies” film series at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. (1981-86) and curated several foreign films series for the Smithsonian Institute (1982-86). She served as a script evaluator for the National Endowment for the Arts (1990).
Her play “Beauty Is the Beast” was produced at Playwright’s Horizons in New York in March 1997. At the time of her death, Jaehne was writing “As Others See Us,” a book about how Americans have been seen through the lens of European filmmakers. She was a founding member of Feminists for Free Expression.
For questions about Karen Jaehne or republishing her work (sometimes also published as Karen Jaehne Latham), inquiries welcomed by her daughter and literary executor, Charlotte Kent at scriptandtype at gmail dot com.
Her work has been republished in:
Ken Russell: Interviews, edited by Barry Keith Grant, “Ken Russell’s Best Laid Planaria: Wormomania,” pp. 102-106 (Conversations with Filmmakers Series, University Press of Mississippi, 2024). Originally published in Film Comment, December, 1988.
Epigraphs throughout Tracy E. W. Laird’s Dolly Parton: 100 Remarkable Moments in an Extraordinary Life (2023).
Margarethe von Trotta: Interviews, edited by Monika Raesch, “A Great Woman Theory of History: An Interview with Margarethe von Trotta” with Lenny Rubinstein, pp. 26-34 (Conversations with Filmmakers Series, University Press of Mississippi, 2018). Originally published in Cineaste, vol. 15, no. 4, 1987.
The Coen Brothers: Interviews, edited by William Rodney Allen, “Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, and The Big Lebowski,” pp. 109-112 (Conversations with Filmmakers Series, University Press of Mississippi, 2006). Originally published for FilmScouts, 1998.
Peter Greenaway: Interviews, edited by Vernon Gras & Marguerite Gras, “The Draughtsman’s Contract: An Interview with Peter Greenaway,” pp. 21-27 (University Press of Mississippi, 2000). Originally published in Cineaste, vol. 13, no. 2, 1984.
Karen is remembered with great fondness by family and friends. We are always happy to hear from ones with whom we have lost touch or those whom she has compelled through her writing.