Chuck Kleinhans (October 2, 1942–December 14, 2017) was an associate professor of film studies at Northwestern University for 32 years and co-founded Jump Cut with Julia Lesage and John Hess.

[5] In fall of that year, he started a tenure-track line at Northwestern as an assistant professor and taught "introductory courses in microcomputer graphics, photography, film and video making, media literacy, popular culture; [and] advanced courses in production in aesthetics, film/tv theory, mass culture theory, experimental film and video, Latin America media.

[4] Aside from his long tenure at Northwestern, Kleinhans is best known for his part in the founding and editing of Jump Cut, a media-studies journal.

He, Julia Lesage, and John Hess conceived Jump Cut as their time at Indiana University was coming to an end.

As stated in an editorial in the first issue, Jump Cut's principal goal was: ...we want to develop a political film criticism; that is, a film criticism which does not accept as binding the bourgeois idea that art is somehow separate and detached from the social life of women and men.