She re-organized its editorial board and re-launched its website with several new features, including the "Quorum" column and video recordings of FQ webinars.

Rich asserted that these independent films, made by and for queer-identified people, used radical aesthetics to combat homophobia, grapple with the trauma of the AIDS epidemic, and address complicated queer subjectivities while importing much needed discussions of race.

Rich argued that, although films dealing with these issues can be found in the previous decade, New Queer Cinema broke with the gay liberation ethos that self-representation should remain positive and desirable.

[2] Rich's presence at film festivals (such as Sundance, where she was an early member of the selection committee; TIFF, where she served as an international programmer in 2002; Telluride, where she was Guest Director in 1996; and Provincetown, where she appears every spring) has been significant.

Her book includes critical analyses of Sally Potter's Thriller, the films of Yvonne Rainer, and Leontine Sagan's Mädchen in Uniform.

Rich was a regular contributor to The Village Voice, the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound.

Rich received the 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the 2007 Brudner Memorial Prize at Yale University.