MOMA Film Festival Chases Away Rainy Gloom

The weather is either playing a really good April Fool's joke or it really is 40 degrees and pouring freezing rain outside. Across the city New Yorkers are praying for spring, as we slowly lose any itsy bitsy ounce of hope that this winter of eternal gloom might be over.

But over at MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, there's a glimpse of good things to come. It's the 40th anniversary of New Directors New Films, and it seems that, perhaps if only in the film industry, that feeling of spring is on the way.

Unlike all of its other films, the festival at MoMA isn't free for students. Rush tickets, sold on a first-come, first-serve basis, starting an hour before the show are $7.50. Otherwise they're $11, which is painful, but the films generally play back-to-bacK.  If you're dying to get the most out of your money, try
hiding behind the red theatre seats until the next viewing starts.

In the past, the festival has served as the crucial moment of recognition for directors like from around the world such as Pedro Almodovar and Spike Lee. There is a vibrant energy in the theatre at MoMA that feels like there is surely something, or someone, to look forward to.

Films are showing all day until April 3, at MoMA and Lincoln Center. Be sure to check out the shorts, perfect for the modern attention span and budgets of up-and-coming directors.

The short "Mila Caos" by Simon Jaikiriuma Paetau, A German-Columbian director still in film school in Germany, explores the concept of home for a young transsexual in Cuba.   

Director Natalia Almada spent more than a year in a Mexican graveyard TO film "El Velador." Almad's documentary is shot like a series of photographs, to show-- slowly and beautifully--the growth of the graveyard as Mexico's drug war rages unabated, taking thousands in its wake.

"Circumstance" by Maryam Keshavarz is part of the closing-night selections, and according to the description on the festival's website, portrays the lives of two  women who rebell against the standards of love in Iran.  For more information, be sure to check out the festival's website.