For Rajendra Roy, it’s all about the passion. Beginning his fifth year as the Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of the legendary Department Of Film at New York’s Museum Of Modern Art (MoMA), Raj (as he is affectionately known by friends and colleagues) can look back at significant accomplishments during his tenure and substantial challenges ahead. “The film world has changed so much since I started this job”, Roy shared with me in an interview in his intimate, no-frills office. “...

  New Directors/New Films, the program of film discoveries co-presented by New York's  Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, has been a strong launching pad for debut directors over the past four decades. In its 40 years, the event has introduced such leading international cinema auteurs as Chantal Akerman, Pedro Almodóvar, Guillermo Del Toro, Agnieszka Holland, Wong Kar Wai, George Miller and Christopher Nolan, as well as such important American film talen...

  In New York culture, all roads eventually lead to Andy Warhol. The pop prince, whose doodles now sell for millions at art auctions around the world, was prescient in so many ways about 21st century culture. He was a man of his times but also a prophet of sorts for the democratization and obsessive nature of celebrity (forget 15 minutes of fame......a spotlight can last a mere 15 seconds and still be a license to print money....paging Bristol Palin). The celebrity of those famous...

(A LETTER TO UNCLE BONMEE, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)    September is only 9 days old, and already the pace of the worldwide film scene is in high gear. As the Venice International Film Festival goes into its final weekend, the excitement is just starting today at the Toronto International Film Festival. Add to that an excellent regional event on the lux island of Martha's Vineyard in Cape Cod, the Martha's Vineyard International Film Festival (www.mvfilmsociety.org), a...

    In what has to be a first, the prestigious Museum of Modern Art in New York is  devoting considerable museum space to a working Hollywood filmmaker. Just opening this weekend is Tim Burton, a major retrospective exploring the full scale of Tim Burton’s career, both as a director and concept artist for live-action and animated films, and as an artist, illustrator, photographer, and writer. On view through April 26, 2010, the exhibition brings together over 700 examples ...

 Thursday, April 3-------New Directors/New Films,  one of New York’s film world rites of Spring, is now mid-way through its program. Dedicated to the discovery and support of emerging artists, New Directors/New Films has earned an international reputation for its cutting-edge programming and commitment to more artistically ambitious filmmaking. This year, a total of 26 features and 6 short films made the cut, spotlighting first and second-time directors who are beginning to make their mark ...

 Wednesday, August 15------The title of the latest film series at the Museum of Modern Art strikes one as somehow.....wrong. THE OTHER CLAUDE CHABROL? Could there be such a thing? Chabrol is one of the most prolific and consistent French directors of the past half-century. Well into his 70s, he continues to come out with at least one film per year, and his notoreity and influence continue unabated, long after his Nouvelle Vague contemporaries have either bitten the dust or become obscured in th...

Monday, July 23-------You may think you know the film that many major film critics chose as the best of last year. But in reality, with little fanfare or certainly Oscar buzz, the film that garnered the most uniform praise from top film scribes was a French thriller, shot in 1959 and set in occupied France during World War II by a director who has been six feet under for more than three decades. That film, ARMY OF SHADOWS, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, was an astonishingly gritty and involvi...

Monday, June 18---------He still rides tall in the saddle. John Wayne, known to his friends as Duke, would have turned 100 years old this month. In celebration of the iconic actor's 100th anniversary, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is presenting the John Wayne Centenary, a six-film retrospective of selections from the Museum's film archive. The series begins on Thursday, June 20 and runs through June 30. Films will be screened in the Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters at the Museum.The serie...