This Week >> 11/13/2008
Join Susi and Richard Pena, Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center as they tour the world through film. We'll then hear from Clint Eastwood about his new film, Changeling, based on an extraordinary true-crime story from Los Angeles in 1928 of a mother's fight to find her missing boy, and Matteo Garrone, director of Gomorrah, a film which explores the international influence of the Italian crime empire, the Camorra, based in Naples.
Guests
Lincoln Center Film Society
Richard Peña, Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Chairman of the Selection Committee of the New York Film Festival, is a film curator and scholar whose wide-ranging knowledge of the medium includes a special expertise and interest in Latin American, Asian, and Arab cinemas.
Since 1988, Mr. Peña has brought a visionary zeal and enthusiasm and a remarkable variety of programs to both the festival and the Walter Reade Theater, the Film Society's acclaimed year-round movie house. These have ranged from surveys of international cinemas and retrospectives of both renowned and neglected film artists to a focus on new American independent films. Throughout his career, Mr. Peña has made a substantial contribution to world cinema, promoting film exchanges and exploring cross-cultural influences through exciting and adventurous programming.
Among the film series Mr. Peña has brought to New York audiences are several annual series devoted to contemporary national cinemas and current issues, including the popular Latinbeat and Spanish Cinema Now series; Rendez-Vous with French Cinema; the New York African Film Festival; the Jewish Film Festival; and the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. He has spearheaded groundbreaking individual series such as a Michelangelo Antonioni retrospective, China's New Wave: The Fifth Generation Filmmakers, a complete Yasujiro Ozu retrospective, a retrospective of Abbas Kiarostami as well as several series on new Iranian cinema, landmark surveys of Polish and Hungarian cinemas, major retrospectives of films from Cuba and Argentina, and Independents Night, a bi-monthly series devoted to new American independent films.
Before coming to the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Mr. Peña was director of the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where his responsibilities included programming, writing, editing, and general administration. At the Film Center he organized, among many other things, Images in the Shadows, an influential 50-film survey of Spanish cinema shown in 18 cities around the world.
Born in New York of Spanish and Puerto Rican parents, Mr. Peña attended St. John's Prep in Danvers, Massachusetts, and Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1976 with an A.B. Magna Cum Laude in Latin American history and literature. From 1976 to 1978, he was a Teaching Fellow in General Education at Harvard, teaching the History of Film and Latin American Cinema. In 1978, he received his M.S. in architecture from M.I.T.
Mr. Peña's interest in film was already apparent when as a 12-year-old cineaste he began attending the New York Film Festival on a regular basis, never imagining that he would one day be its driving force. After spending a year in Brazil, between his junior and senior year of college, where he worked part-time at the cinèmatheque in Rio de Janeiro, he began to consider film as a serious pursuit and career goal. After graduating from M.I.T., he taught courses in Film Noir and Latin American cinema at the University of California-Berkeley.
In 1979, he returned to New York to be Adjunct Professor in Cinema Studies at City University of New York, College of Staten Island. From 1980 to 1988, he was at the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, first as assistant director, then as director. From 1985 to 1986, he was a visiting lecturer in film history at Harvard and acting curator at the Harvard Film Archive. His numerous writings include essays on film directors Raul Ruiz and Nelson Pereira dos Santos.
In 1989, for the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal, he organized an extensive touring program on American independent cinema. He has lectured both nationally and internationally on film related topics, and has served on juries at film festivals in Buenos Aires, Locarno, Jerusalem, and Berlin.
Currently, Mr. Peña is a Professor of Film Studies at Columbia University's School of the Arts, where he specializes in courses on film theory and international cinema, and in Spring 2006 was a Visiting Professor at Princeton.
The Walter Reade Theater, which opened in 1991, reflects his strong international, comparative view of cinema. In addition to programming the Walter Reade Theater, and helping to select films for the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films, presented in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art. From 2001 to 2003, he was the host of a nationally broadcast monthly half-hour television series that the Film Society produced with Sundance Channel, Conversations in World Cinema from the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Beginning in 2008, Mr. Peña co-hosted Channel 13/WNET New York's Friday night film program, Reel 13.
Mr. Peña is married to Karen Soren, a physician. They have a son, Ari, born in March 1988, and daughters Maya, born September 1990, and Lita, born August 1997.
The 2008 New York Film Festival
(Click on pictures to enlarge and see descriptions)
Rated: R
Starring: Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Donovan, Colm Feore
Director: Clint Eastwood
Runtime: 2 hours, 20 minutes
Q & A session with Clint Eastwood
Rated: Pending
Starring: Salvatore Abruzzese, Gianfelice Imparato, Maria Nazionale, Toni Servillo
Director: Matteo Garrone
Runtime: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Q & A session with Matteo Garrone
