Through his leadership roles in film exhibition over the last twenty years, Bernardo Rondeau has strived to advance the understanding, celebration, and preservation of cinema.

Since 2023, Rondeau has overseen the film programming for the forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art’s two state-of-the-art theaters. In the lead up to the museum’s opening he has collaborated with institutions such as the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the American Cinematheque on a first-ever comprehensive survey of Armenian/Georgian/Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov, with the Philosophical Research Society on a centennial tribute to “the first underground movie star” Taylor Mead and with USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and the Fisher Museum of Art in conjunction with the exhibit Sci-Fi, Magick, Queer L.A.: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation, presented as part of PST Art.

Prior to this, Rondeau led the film department at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures from 2017 until 2023, where he oversaw programming, management, vision, and the overall performance of its two cinemas, which collectively accommodate 1,275 people. These cinemas became a central hub for both film enthusiasts and filmmakers, launching with a screening of The Wizard of Oz accompanied by a 50-piece orchestra. Rondeau’s innovative programming at the Academy Museum included creating the Branch Selects series, which has since traveled to New York’s Paris Theater, an annual celebration of Mexican cinema, and the film preservation festival Present Past, which celebrated its second edition in 2024.

Before that, Rondeau managed the programming for the longest-running museum film program in Southern California at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he presented the first local retrospectives of emerging filmmakers such as Arnaud Desplechin, Bong Joon-ho, and Lee Chang-dong.

Rondeau has moderated discussions with filmmakers such as Malcolm McDowell, Bela Tarr, Guillermo del Toro, Park Chan-wook, Dante Ferretti, Derek Cianfrance, Yang Ik-joon, Doug Jones, Gabriel Figueroa Jr., Guillermo Navarro, and many more. He has also been interviewed in print in publications ranging from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Film Comment, Variety, Indiewire MovieMaker Magazine, as well as on-camera for various local and international media outlets, including in Portuguese and Spanish.

Rondeau teaches a graduate-level seminar at UCLA’s School of Film, Theater and Television on the history and practice of film programming.

bernardorondeau AT gmail DOT com