MoMA Announces Film Exhibitions for January-April 2011

The Museum of Modern Art announces film exhibitions from January through April, 2011, including career retrospectives of important filmmakers, the 40th anniversary of New Directors/New Films, annual exhibitions such as Global Lens, Documentary Fortnight, and Canadian Front, and select screenings.

A major retrospective of director Charles Burnett (April 6-25), a MacArthur Award-winning independent filmmaker, will showcase 20 of his films, including shorts. Born in Mississippi and having lived in Los Angeles most of his life, Burnett has tapped into his own roots to create a body of poignant work that includes such critically acclaimed films as To Sleep With Anger (1990). He first received note when his film Killer of Sheep (1977) won a prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 1981 and was later selected for the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

A retrospective of the work of master Soviet director Dziga Vertov (April 15-June 24) will trace Vertov's radical experiments in image and sound as they evolved from silent films in 1918 to sound films in the 1940s. The exhibition opens with the U.S. premiere of Celovek s kinoapparatom (Man with a Movie Camera) (1929) in a newly restored full-frame print, with live musical accompaniment. Also presented are 13 programs of Vertov's silent films, including the U.S. premieres of 14 Kino-Nedelia (Kino-Week) films from 1918-19.

The Museum presents its annual exhibitions, including the 40th anniversary of New Directors/New Films (March 23-April 3), the collaborative program between The Museum of Modern Art and The Film Society of Lincoln Center dedicated to the discovery of new work by emerging filmmakers. Documentary Fortnight 2011: MoMA's International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media (February 16-28) showcases recent nonfiction film and media. Other annual exhibitions includeOscar's Docs (February 4-6), which each year looks at documentaries that have won the Academy Awards, Canadian Front (March 16-21), and Kino! New Films from Germany (April 27-May 2).
MoMA will offer a variety of weeklong presentations, including Richard Kaplan: Wayfarer and Truth-Teller, "All the Wrong Art:" Juxtapoz Magazine on Film, and BigPond Adelaide Film Festival, with film selections from the biannual Australian festival.