The Museum of Modern Art’s film collection now comprises nearly 30,000 film titles. Since the Department of Film’s founding in 1935, acquisitions have been international in scope; even in that first year, along with Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903), then-curator Iris Barry promoted an early global perspective by also acquiring Ballet mécanique (1924), by the French artist Fernand Léger.
The 20 recent acquisitions featured in this series illustrate MoMA’s ongoing commitment to celebrating the worldwide diversity of cinema. These films—all acquired in the past three years and produced since 2000—are drawn from a diverse range of past film exhibitions, including Global Lens, Premiere Brazil!, and Lourdes Portillo: La Cineasta Inquisitiva, that resulted in key contemporary acquisitions to the collection.
Recent Film Acquisitions is dedicated to the memory of Department of Film Curator Jytte Jensen (1950–2015), who enthusiastically discovered, championed, and exhibited the majority of films and filmmakers in this exhibition.
Organized by Anne Morra, Associate Curator, Department of Film.
