The career of Professor Richard Peña spans a thirty-plus-year period of enormous transformation in global film culture. In this event, Peña will discuss his career as a film programmer and educator in conversation with MoMA curator Josh Siegel. What does a programmer do? And what is their responsibility in curating films and film history for an audience?
About Richard Peña
Richard Peña is a Professor of Film and Media Studies at Columbia University, where he specializes in film theory and international cinema. From 1988 to 2012, he was the Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival. At the Film Society, Richard Peña organized retrospectives of many film artists, including Michelangelo Antonioni, Sacha Guitry, Abbas Kiarostami, King Hu, Robert Aldrich, Roberto Gavaldon, Ritwik Ghatak, Kira Muratova, Fei Mu, Valerio Zurlini, Youssef Chahine, Yasujiro Ozu, Carlos Saura, Nagisa Oshima and Amitabh Bachchan, as well as major film series devoted to African, Israeli, Cuban, Polish, Hungarian, Spanish, Chinese, Arab, Korean, Swedish, Turkish, German, Italian and Argentine cinema. In 1995, together with Unifrance, he created “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema,” the leading American showcase for new French cinema. A frequent lecturer on film internationally, in 2014-2015, he was a Visiting Professor in Brazilian Studies at Princeton; in 2015-2016 a Visiting Professor in Film Studies at Harvard; and in 2022 a Visiting Professor at La Sorbonne. He has also taught courses at Beijing University, Gedai Art Institute (Tokyo), la Universidad de Cine (Buenos Aires), the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the Universidad Catolica de Chile, and the University of São Paulo. He will be a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing in Spring, 2024. In May, 2016, he was the recipient of the “Cathedra Bergman” award at the UNAM in Mexico City, where he offered a three-part lecture series “On the Margins of American Cinema.” He also hosts WNET/Channel 13’s weekly Reel 13.
About Josh Siegel
Josh Siegel, Curator in MoMA’s Department of Film, has organized more than 150 film, media, and gallery exhibitions, many of which have appeared on Best of the Year lists in the New York Times, Artforum, and the New Yorker. He serves on the selection committees of the annual festivals New Directors/New Films and Doc Fortnight, and is the founding director of To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation. Siegel is the co-editor of Frederick Wiseman and author of the monographs Baby, It’s Cold Outside: A History of Finnish Cinema and The Łodź Film School of Poland: 50 Years. He serves on the executive boards of MacDowell, Light Industry, Cinema Tropical, and the Maurice Sendak Foundation. He has acquired over a thousand films and media installations for MoMA’s collection, including major collections of Robert Frank, Jack Smith, Errol Morris, Ingmar Bergman, Kelly Reichardt, and, most recently, Ken Jacobs.
About Richard Peña Selects
On the eve of his retirement, Professor Richard Peña has selected six films of particular importance to him and his career, ranging from classic Hollywood noir (Kiss Me Deadly) to one of the last Chinese films made before the Cultural Revolution (Two Stage Sisters) to screen in this three day festival.
