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FSLC and MoMA Announce Complete Lineup for New Directors/New Films
By: Julie Musbach Feb. 22, 2018
The Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art announce the complete lineup for the 47th annual New Directors/New Films (ND/NF), March 28-April 8. Throughout its rich, nearly half-century history, the festival celebrates filmmakers who represent the present and anticipate the future of cinema, daring artists whose work pushes the envelope in UNEXPECTED ways. This year's festival will introduce 25 features and 10 short films to New York audiences.
"The purpose of New Directors/New Films is to seek out emerging filmmakers who are working at the vanguard of cinema," said Film Society Director of Programming Dennis Lim. "This is as diverse and wide-ranging a lineup as we've assembled in years: full of pleasures and provocations and, above all, surprises-proof that film remains a medium ripe for reinvention in ways big and small."Josh Siegel, Curator of the Department of Film at The Museum of Modern Art said: "The filmmakers in this year's New Directors are as imaginative, daring and RESTLESS as any we've seen, whether observing a world-famous rapper fighting injustices in Sri Lanka or prostitutes and holy men in Jamaica, a coal peddler in the Congo or a credit-card scammer in Switzerland."FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS
All films are digitally projected unless otherwise noted
OPENING NIGHT
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.
Stephen Loveridge, Sri Lanka/United Kingdom/USA, 2018, 95m
In English and Tamil with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Before rapper M.I.A. became a global sensation, known for her musical daring and tireless political activism for the Tamil people in her native Sri Lanka, she was an aspiring filmmaker, having made countless video diaries chronicling her youth and private life. First-time documentarian Stephen Loveridge, who attended art school in London with M.I.A. in the nineties, uses this first-hand material to craft a nuanced and intimate portrait of a woman finding her roots, voice, and stardom, and a deeply personal statement from a pop star yearning to express herself.
Wednesday, March 28, 7:00 & 7:30pm [MoMA]
Thursday, March 29, 6:30pm [FSLC]
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
RaMell Ross, USA, 2018, 76m
New York Premiere
"The American stranger knows Blackness as a fact-even though it is fiction," says writer-director RaMell Ross. For his visionary and political debut feature, which premiered to great acclaim at Sundance in 2018, Ross spent five years intimately observing African American families living in Hale County, Alabama. It's a region made unforgettable by Walker Evans and James Agee's landmark 1941 photographic essay Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which documented the impoverished lives of white sharecropper families in Alabama's Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. Ross's poetic return to this place shows changed demographics, and depicts people resilient in the face of adversity and invisibility. Hale County This Morning, This Evening introduces a distinct and powerful new voice in American filmmaking.
Saturday, April 7, 8:30pm [FSLC]
Sunday, April 8, 2:00pm [MoMA] 3/4
Ilian Metev, Bulgaria, 2017, 82m
Bulgarian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
3/4 evokes the intimacies, joys, and tensions of a contemporary Bulgarian family facing an uncertain future; the father is an astrophysicist with his head in the clouds, his son a waywardly antic teenager, his daughter a gifted but anxious pianist. Illian Metev (whose previous film was the gripping documentary Sofia's Last Ambulance) won the Filmmakers of the Present prize at the 2017 Locarno Festival for this fiction feature debut, a gracefully shot, uncommonly tender character study that plays like an exquisite piece of chamber music.
Thursday, March 29, 6:00pm [MoMA]
Saturday, March 31, 1:00pm [FSLC] Ava
Sadaf Foroughi, Iran/Canada/Qatar, 2017, 103m
Farsi with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Adolescence creates intense pressure for any girl, but it's particularly strong for 17-year-old Ava, buffeted by the harsh strictures of home and school in contemporary Tehran. Iranian writer-director Sadaf Foroughi won the jury prize at the Toronto International Film Festival for her intimate and intensely dramatic portrait of a young woman whose private longings drive her to rebellion and lead to public shaming. A Grasshopper Film release.
Thursday, March 29, 8:30pm [MoMA]
Sunday, April 1, 7:30pm [FSLC] Azougue Nazaré
Tiago Melo, Brazil, 2017, 80m
Portuguese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
No measure of hellfire preaching can quell the boisterous and bawdy passions of Maracatu, an Afro-Brazilian burlesque carnival tradition with roots in slavery that takes place in the northeast state of Pernambuco. As the Falstaffian character Tiao, Valmir do Coco leads a nonprofessional cast of authentic Maracatu practitioners in a tale told through dance, music, and the supernatural, set in the sugarcane fields outside Recife. The fabulous-and fabulist-Azougue Nazaré is the first film by Tiago Melo, who worked on such recent celebrated Brazilian films as Kleber Mendonça Filho's AQUARIUS (NYFF 2016) and Gabriel Mascaro's Neon BULL (ND/NF 2016), and who was awarded the Bright Future prize at this year's Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Friday, March 30, 6:30pm [FSLC]
Saturday, March 31, 7:30pm [MoMA] Black Mother
Khalik Allah, USA, 2018, 75m
New York Premiere
The second feature by filmmaker and photographer Khalik Allah is a kind of documentary tone poem, a polyphonic work rich in atmosphere and intimate portraiture. Allah immerses us in Jamaica's neighboring worlds of charismatic holy men and equally charismatic prostitutes, the sacred and the profane alike. Allah captures them and their environments with A HAUNTING visual style and absorbing sense of rhythm entirely his own, their testimonies flooding the soundtrack with reflections on everyday survival and hopes for the future. Seamlessly switching from Super-8mm to HD video, Black Mother affirms its maker as one of the great stylists in documentary cinema today.
Wednesday, April 4, 6:00pm [MoMA]
Saturday, April 7, 6:00pm [FSLC] Closeness / Tesnota
Kantemir Balagov, Russia, 2017, 118m
Russian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A young woman is trapped in a tight-knit Jewish community in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, located in Russia's North Caucasus, that demands her total dedication but provides her with little protection from the perpetual violence encompassing all aspects of life. Shot mostly in interior spaces, Closeness conjures a world of DARKNESS and claustrophobia as the heroine quietly revolts yet succumbs to her bleak existence. This debut feature by Kantemir Balagov feels more beholden to the social realism of the Dardenne brothers than to the transcendental flair of his mentor, Russian auteur Alexander Sokurov (a producer on this film). Warning: this film contains a scene featuring images of documented violence that viewers may find upsetting.
Saturday, March 31, 4:30pm [MoMA]
Sunday, April 1, 4:30pm [FSLC] Cocote
Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, Dominican Republic/Brazil/Argentina, 2017, 107m
Spanish with English subtitles
New York Premiere
This format-mixing, formally eclectic opus is at once a profound film about religion and a unique tale of revenge. Upon learning that his father has been murdered by a powerful local figure, Dominican private gardener Alberto travels from Santo Domingo back to his hometown to participate in his funeral rites-a mixture of Catholicism and West African mysticism that flies in the face of Alberto's own evangelicalism. But Alberto's family has vengeance in mind, and he finds himself at a spiritual and existential crossroads. Boldly synthesizing ethnographic documentary and scripted drama, Cocote is a visually resplendent and stylistically audacious work that evokes the films of Glauber Rocha and the fiction of Roberto Bolaño. A Grasshopper Film release.
Tuesday, April 3, 6:15pm [FSLC]
Wednesday, April 4, 8:15pm [MoMA] Djon África
João Miller Guerra and Filipa Reis, Portugal/Brazil/Cape Verde, 2018, 95m
In Portuguese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Documentarians João Miller Guerra and Filipa Reis turn the subject of their previous film into the central character of their debut fiction work. A Cape Verdean in Portugal, Miguel Moreira, also known as Djon África, travels back home to look for his birth father. This hopefully soul-searching journey quickly gets derailed as he comes across beautiful women, colorful parties, and the local liquor known as grogue. Written by Pedro Pinho, director of The Nothing Factory, also playing in this festival, this woozily intoxicating road movie is as youthful, charming, and adventurous as its title character.
Wednesday, April 4, 9:15pm [FSLC]
Friday, April 6, 6:00pm [MoMA] Drift
Helena Wittmann, Germany, 2017, 96m
German with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Filmmaker-artist Helena Wittmann's subtly audacious first feature follows friends Theresa, a German, and Josefina, an Argentinian, as they spend a weekend together on the North Sea, taking long walks on the beach and stopping at snack stands. Eventually they separate- Josefina eventually returns to her family in Argentina and Theresa crosses the Atlantic for the Caribbean-and the film gives way to a transfixing and delicate meditation on the poetics of space. Self-consciously evoking the work of Michael Snow and masterfully lensed by Wittmann herself, Drift is by turns cosmic and intimate.
Thursday, April 5, 6:30pm [FSLC]
Saturday, April 7, 4:00pm [MoMA] An Elephant Sitting Still
Hu Bo, China, 2018, 234m
Mandarin with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Sure to be remembered as a landmark in Chinese cinema, this intensely felt epic marks a career cut tragically short: its debut director Hu Bo took his own life last October, at the age of 29. The protagonist of this modern reworking of the tale of Jason and the Argonauts is teenage Wei Bu, who critically injures a school bully by accident. Over a single, eventful day, he crosses paths with a classmate, an elderly neighbor, and the bully's older brother, all of them bearing their own individual burdens, and all drawn as if by gravity to the city of Manzhouli, where a mythical elephant is said to sit, indifferent to a cruel world. Full of moody close-ups and virtuosic tracking shots, An Elephant Sitting Still is nothing short of a masterpiece.
Sunday, April 1, 6:30pm [MoMA]
Sunday, April 8, 6:00pm [FSLC] Good Manners / As Boas Maneiras
Marco Dutra & Juliana Rojas, Brazil/France, 2017, 135m
Portuguese with English subtitles
New York Premiere
An immaculately stylized twist on the monster movie, Dutra and Rojas's second collaboration (following the acclaimed Hard Labor) inventively engages matters of race, class, and desire. Set in São Paulo, the narrative initially concerns the curious relationship between rich, white, pregnant socialite Ana (Marjorie Estiano) and her new housemaid Clara (Isabél Zuaa). As the two women grow closer, their rapport turns first sexual then shockingly macabre. Good Manners evolves into a werewolf movie unlike any other, a delirious and compulsively watchable cross between Disney and Jacques Tourneur.
Thursday, April 5, 8:30pm [MoMA]
Friday, April 6, 8:45pm [FSLC] The Great Buddha +
Huang Hsin-yao, Taiwan, 2017, 104m
Taiwanese and Mandarin with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Provincial friends Pickle and Belly Button idle away their nights in the security booth of a Buddha statue factory, where Pickle works as a guard. One evening, when the TV is on the fritz, they put on video from the boss's dashcam-only to discover illicit trysts and a mysterious act of violence. Expanded from a short, Huang Hsin-yao's fiction feature debut The Great Buddha + (the plus sign cheekily nodding to the smartphone model) is a stylish, rip-roaring satire on class and corruption in contemporary Taiwanese society.
Tuesday, April 3, 8:45pm [MoMA]
Wednesday, April 4, 6:30pm [FSLC] The Guilty
Gustav Möller, Denmark, 2017, 85m
Danish with English subtitles
New York Premiere
In this pulsating crime thriller set entirely inside a claustrophobic emergency call center, police officer Asger is assigned to dispatcher duty following a fatal incident. An initially slow evening takes a sharp turn when he receives a mysterious call for help, and Asger must spring into action, embarking on a hair-raising journey-on the phone-to bring the caller to safety. Debut feature filmmaker Gustav Möller keeps the tension and the viewer's imagination alive in this chamber piece that won audience awards at the Rotterdam and Sundance film festivals.
Friday, March 30, 6:00pm [MoMA]
Saturday, March 31, 6:30pm [FSLC] Makala
Emmanuel Gras, France, 2017, 96m
French and Swahili with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Gras's transfixing road movie and Cannes Film Festival prizewinner follows a young Congolese man named Kabwita through the making, transporting, and selling of charcoal-from the felling of a tree to pushing a teetering bicycle weighed down with bulging sacks along treacherous dirt roads to contending with motorists, extortionists, and potential customers. As Gras observes Kabwita's perilous trade, he derives beauty from the monumental efforts that go into his day-to-day existence. Makala is a documentary that resembles a neorealist parable, locating an epic dimension in the humblest of existences. A Kino Lorber release.
Sunday, April 1, 2:00pm [FSLC]
Monday, April 2, 8:45pm [MoMA] Milla
Valérie Massadian, France/Portugal, 2017, 128m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Following up her acclaimed 2011 debut Nana, Valérie Massadian has made a moving, visually striking meditation on young motherhood and the vagaries of growing up. Severine Jonckeere turns in a remarkably subtle performance as the titular 17-year-old; just as her youthful romance with Leo (Luc Chessel) seems ready to cross the threshold into teenage parenthood, Massadian performs a radical formal gesture that both complicates Milla's predicament and evokes the beauty and cruelty of time's passage. A prizewinner at the 2017 Locarno Film Festival, Milla audaciously eschews conventional melodrama, searching instead for a complex, truthful reflection of life itself. A Grasshopper Film release.
Sunday, April 1, 3:30pm [MoMA]
Monday, April 2, 9:00pm [FSLC] Nervous Translation
Shireen Seno, Philippines, 2018, 90m
Filipino with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Informed by filmmaker Shireen Seno's childhood in the Filipino diaspora and her dual training in film and architecture, this sophomore work is a stylized evocation of a child's fanciful interpretation of the world around her. Eight-year-old Yael, left to her own devices after school, secretly plays and replays audio cassettes her father sends home to her mother while working overseas; pursues happiness as communicated to her via a TV advertisement; and, in fanciful scenes that evoke the work of American artist Laurie Simmons, enters the meditative, immersive world of her dollhouse's kitchen. Seno offers fleeting clues from the late-eighties outside world, hinting at societal turmoil following Ferdinand Marcos's ouster and complicated adult relations, but these never overshadow her film's touching depiction of childhood imagination.
Saturday, April 7, 8:45pm [MoMA]
Sunday, April 8, 1:00pm [FSLC] Notes on an Appearance
Ricky D'Ambrose, USA, 2018, 60m
North American Premiere
Ricky D'Ambrose's debut feature follows a quiet young man (Bingham Bryant) who mysteriously disappears soon after starting a new life in Brooklyn's artistic circles. Distraught friends (including Keith Poulson and Tallie Medel) search for him with the help of notebooks, letters, postcards, and other tiny clues; meanwhile, a parallel story about an elusive and controversial philosopher provides a rather sinister backdrop to their pursuit. This dark, minimalist pseudo-detective tale offers plenty of humor and displays a distinctive aesthetic. Following a series of remarkable shorts, D'Ambrose has clearly defined himself as a talent to watch. Preceded by:
Young Girls Vanish / Des jeunes filles disparaissent
Clément Pinteaux, France, 2017, 16m
French with English subtitles
North American premiere
Clément Pinteaux explores the echoes of violence in Essonne, France, where dozens of girls were killed by wolves in the 1600s. Centuries later, young women begin disappearing again.
Friday, April 6, 6:30pm [FSLC]
Saturday, April 7, 6:30pm [MoMA] The Nothing Factory / A Fábrica de Nada
Pedro Pinho, Portugal, 2017, 177m
Portuguese and French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A rich and formally surprising film of ideas, beautifully shot on 16mm, and featuring one of recent cinema's most memorable musical numbers, Portuguese director Pedro Pinho's nearly three-hour epic concerns the occupation of an elevator plant by its workers. They are stirred to action when the factory's machinery is removed in the middle of the night by the owners; they rapidly organize, kick out the brass who have arrived offering buyouts, and discuss the feasibility of managing the facility themselves-all the while a Marxist theorist exerts ideological influence from the sidelines. The Nothing Factory is a serious and singular look at the meaning of work today, further developing Pinho's interest in the status of labor amid his country's financial crisis.
Saturday, April 7, 2:00pm [FSLC]
Sunday, April 8, 4:30pm [MoMA] Our House / Watashitachi no ie
Yui Kiyohara, Japan, 2017, 80m
Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
This feature debut is an evocative and surprising exploration of female friendship, parallel realities, and the mysteries of everyday life. An adolescent girl named Seri lives with her mother in an old house in a coastal town. Seemingly in the very same house, amnesiac Sana is taken in by Toko, a young woman who harbors SECRETS of her own. As the parallel stories unfold, the boundaries between these two worlds grow increasingly porous... Inspired by the fugues of Bach and recalling the films of Jacques Rivette, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and David Lynch, Our House announces Yui Kiyohara as an exciting new voice in Japanese cinema.
Friday, April 6, 8:30pm [MoMA]
Sunday, April 8, 3:30pm [FSLC] Scary Mother / Sashishi Deda
Ana Urushadze, Georgia/Estonia, 2018, 107m
Georgian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
In Georgian filmmaker Ana Urushadze's gripping and bleakly comic feature debut, Manana, a 50-year-old Tbilisi mother abandons her duties as a wife and mother to pursue an obsessive and hermetic life of writing poetry. In a performance of coiled fear and rage that recalls the best of Isabelle Huppert, Nato Murvanidze plunges into Manana's feverish imagination. Scary Mother, which won awards at film festivals around the world, is a haunting, singular new vision.
Saturday, March 31, 9:00pm [FSLC]
Monday, April 2, 6:00pm [MoMA] Those Who Are Fine / Dene wos guet geit
Cyril Schäublin, Switzerland, 2017, 71m
German with English subtitles
North American Premiere
This dark comic study of an alienated contemporary Zurich begins by following an impassive twenty-something, a call center worker by day who initiates phone scams targeting elderly workers after hours. The film then spirals out to incorporate into its narrative city residents-police, bank tellers, reporters-obliquely linked to this swindle. Swiss filmmaker Cyril Schäublin's feature debut (following a half-dozen short films to his name, including Stampede, ND/NF 2013) is a razor-sharp, formalist satire, using the city's grey concrete architecture; clipped, digit-dominated exchanges between urbanites (phone numbers, Wi-Fi passwords, credit cards); and even a dash of sci-fi-esque atmospherics to portray a fractured, contemporary dystopia.
Thursday, April 5, 9:00pm [FSLC]
Saturday, April 7, 1:45pm [MoMA] Until the Birds Return / En attendant les hirondelles
Karim Moussaoui, Algeria/France/Germany, 2017, 113m
Arabic and French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A property developer is witness to random street violence. A pair of secret lovers make their way across the desert. A doctor is accused of having a criminal past. In these three interconnected tales, exciting newcomer Karim Moussaoui-whom critics at Cannes compared to Abbas Kiarostami and Leos Carax-takes the pulse of modern-day Algiers, a country once riven by colonial occupation and sectarian warfare yet still abundant in beauty and promise.
Friday, March 30, 8:30pm [MoMA]
Saturday, March 31, 3:30pm [FSLC] A Violent Life / Une Vie Violente
Thierry de Peretti, France, 2017, 107m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Stéphane returns to Corsica for the funeral of a childhood friend and gang member, despite having a target on his back. Through flashbacks, this sophomore feature by Corsican filmmaker Thierry de Peretti tensely unspools as a coming-of-age tale dashed with crime, political radicalism, and youthful idealism born of the island's separatist movement. Loosely based on actual events and cast with local actors, A Violent Life resonates with regional folklore and crafts a poignant portrait of a marginalized generation. A Distrib Films release.
Monday, April 2, 6:15pm [FSLC]
Tuesday, April 3, 6:00pm [MoMA] Winter Brothers / Vinterbrødre
Hlynur Pálmason, Denmark/Iceland, 2017, 100m
English and Danish with English subtitles
New York Premiere
This debut feature from Hlynur Pálmason, an Icelandic visual artist/filmmaker based in Denmark, is an immersive sensory experience set in a desolate Danish limestone mining community. A landscape covered in indistinguishable white ash and snow masks the DARKNESS enveloping Emil, a lonely and eccentric young man who works in the mine with his much more sociable brother. Few notice Emil until he is suspected of causing a co-worker's grave illness, which leads to his ostracization. A RELENTLESS industrial soundscape accompanies this portrait of a man trapped in unforgiving isolation. A KimStim release.
Thursday, March 29, 9:00pm [FSLC]
Saturday, March 31, 2:00pm [MoMA] Shorts Program 1 (TRT: 98m)
From an atmospheric thriller set in Iran, uncanny and moving sketches of displaced people, to a musical documentary and an atypical dance film, these five bold shorts evoke the struggles and joys of communities from around the world. City of Tales
Arash Nassiri, France/USA, 2018, 20m
Farsi with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Los Angeles plays Tehran in Arash Nassiri's uncanny, nocturnal meditation on memory and place, which follows a group of people during Nowruz, the 13-night celebration of the Iranian New Year. Rupture
Yassmina Karajah, Jordan/Canada, 2017, 18m
Arabic with English subtitles
New York premiere
Unable to communicate with the world around them, young Arab teenagers attempt to navigate their new town on a sticky summer day, in search of comfort and a public swimming pool. Palenque
Sebastián Pinzón Silva, Colombia/USA, 2017, 25m
Spanish/Palenquero with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Sebastián Pinzón Silva's ambulant, melodic documentary is set in San Basilio de Palenque, evoking the rich musical history and collective memory of the first freed slave settlement in the Americas. Gaze / Negah
Farnoosh Samadi, Iran/Italy, 2017, 14m
Persian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A woman witnesses a crime and must decide whether to speak up in Farnoosh Samadi's taut and tense film. Home Exercises
Sarah Friedland, USA, 2017, 21m
New York Premiere
Sarah Friedland's nonfiction dance portrait of the gestural habits of elderly people in their homes is a sweet, droll, and precisely observed study of the subtle movements and choreographies of domesticity.
Friday, March 30, 9:00pm [FSLC]
Sunday, April 1, 1:00pm [MoMA] Shorts Program 2 (TRT: 80m)
The irreverent, melancholic, and transgressive impulses of youth collide in this program of four films, each set within their own fully realized hermetic world. Copa-Loca
Christos Massalas, Greece, 2017, 14m
Greek with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Teeming with sensational images and absurd dialogue, Christos Massalas's irreverent coming-of-age story follows a young woman eluding adulthood at an abandoned Greek resort. After School Knife Fight
Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel, France, 2017, 21m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Four bandmates prepare for the departure of their lead singer in this melancholy 16mm snapshot of youthful longing. Möbius
Sam Kuhn, USA, 2017, 15m
New York Premiere
Following the death of her boyfriend, a teenage girl drifts through her days in a haze of memory in this eerie and atmospheric high school tale. Bad Bunny / Coelho Mau
Carlos Conceição, Portugal/France, 2017, 30m
Portuguese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
This impeccably crafted, fabulist work-a beguiling cross between bestiary and family drama-concerns a voyeuristic young man's plot to punish his mother's lover and satisfy a FORBIDDEN urge.
Tuesday, April 3, 9:00pm [FSLC]
Thursday, April 5, 6:00pm [MoMA] ABOUT NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS
Dedicated to the discovery and support of emerging artists, New Directors/New Films has earned an international reputation as the premier festival for works that break or re-cast the cinematic mold. The New Directors/New Films selection committee is made up of members from both presenting organizations: from The Museum of Modern Art, Rajendra Roy, La Frances Hui, Sophie Cavoulacos, and Izzy Lee, and from the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Dennis Lim, Florence Almozini, Dan Sullivan, and Tyler Wilson. For more information about the festival, visit newdirectors.org and follow the festival on Facebook (facebook.com/newdirectors) and Twitter (@NDNF, #NDNF). FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
The Film Society of Lincoln Center is devoted to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema. The only branch of the world-renowned arts complex Lincoln Center to shine a light on the everlasting yet evolving importance of the moving image, this nonprofit organization was founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international film. Via year-round programming and discussions; its annual New York Film Festival; and its publications, including Film Comment, the U.S.'s premier magazine about films and film culture, the Film Society endeavors to make the discussion and appreciation of cinema accessible to a broader audience, as well as to ensure that it will remain an essential art form for years to come. The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Shutterstock, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. American Airlines is the Official Airline of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. For more information, visit filmlinc.org and follow @filmlinc on Twitter. THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
The Museum of Modern Art's Department of Film marked its 80th anniversary in 2015. Originally founded in 1935 as the Film Library, the Department of Film is a dedicated champion of cinema past, present, and future. With one of the strongest international collections of motion pictures in the world-totaling more than 30,000 films between the permanent and study collections-the Department of Film is a leader in film preservation and a discoverer of emerging talent. Through The Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center, a state-of-the-art storage facility in Hamlin, Pennsylvania, MoMA restores and preserves films that are shown across the world and in many of the Museum's diverse programs, most notably in To Save and Project: The Annual MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation. The Department of Film engages with current cinema by honoring films and filmmakers that will have a lasting historical significance through its annual Film Benefit, which raises funds for the continued maintenance and growth of the collection, and The Contenders series, an annual series of the year's best movies, as selected by MoMA Film curators from major studio releases and top film festivals. Always looking to the future, the Department of Film is constantly unearthing emerging talent and providing a venue for young filmmakers through programs such as New Directors/New Films and Documentary Fortnight. Playing an essential role in MoMA's mission to collect, preserve, and exhibit modern and contemporary art, the department was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 1978 "for the contribution it has made to the public's perception of movies as an art form."
Photo: Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.
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