Criterion Taps Lena Dunham As Creative Director, Reveals Joe Swanberg Box Set

If one thing has been true about Criterion throughout the years, it is that they sure as hell love young auteurs.

Monday, the company revealed that they have tapped none other than Tiny Furniture director Lena Dunham as the company’s new creative director. And what’s her first move? Well, it’s a doozy.

Dunham’s first move as part of the Criterion family’s leadership is to bring in the entire filmography of mumblecore lightning rod Joe Swanberg. That’s right. Just days after it is revealed that Criterion now owns the rights to nearly all of director Satyajit Ray’s canon, Joe Swanberg is the next director the company sees worthy of its career-spanning stamp of approval.

Previously available primarily through his own website or in brilliantly put together box sets from Factory 25, Criterion has long been attached to some of Swanberg’s recent work, particularly the Sundance Selects release Uncle Kent, but it looks like they have waited for much more than one film. Putting him on the same level as names like Bergman, Vigo and Godard, you can’t get much bigger than this.

“It’s an absolute joy to be able to not only announce my involvement with the behind the scenes of Criterion, but that we will be offering up definitive versions of some of this generation’s most pertinent pieces of work. Films like Autoerotic, Kissing On The Mouth and Silver Bullets prove Joe as one of today’s most important voices.”

As a fan of Swanberg, this is deeply exciting news. I personally find him to be an extremely intimate filmmaker, and one that is as important a director as there is today. More on this set as it comes.

April Fools guys!