Doug Jones died at the age of 53. He was an experienced film programmer, curator, and exhibitor at various film festivals in the United States.

Jones most recently worked as a consultant programmer for the Vidiots Foundation, a renovated Los Angeles nonprofit video store and theater, and as a programmer for the South by Southwest Film and TV Festival.

In an Instagram post, the Vidiots Foundation said, “It breaks our hearts to share that we have lost the great and wonderful Doug Jones, a beloved and indispensable member of the Vidiots family and a cornerstone of the global film programming community.”

He began working at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1995 after moving to the city the previous year, and he gradually advanced from print traffic coordinator to assistant programmer.

In addition to programming for the San Francisco Film Society, he curated films for the Mill Valley Film Festival, Noise Pop Film Festival, and Red Vic Movie House in San Francisco.

Jones graduated from Metropolitan State University with a degree in cinema studies after being born in Boulder, Colorado and growing up in South Dakota and Minnesota. He worked in movie theaters in the Midwest before embarking on a career in film programming.

Jones’s mother Judy, sister Kathy, son William, extended family-in-law, friends, and coworkers survive him. His wife, Paula Buxbaum, died before him.