Twenty-six years ago, for the 35th New York Film Festival, curators Gavin Smith and Mark McElhatten introduced the festival's experimental sidebar, Views from the Avant-Garde. While their inaugural program featured names like Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, and Nathaniel Dorsky, it also opened a space where voices experimenting with cinema's language might meet new audiences. In the festival's intervening years, the vocabulary around this type of cinema evolved and Views from the Avant-Garde has since transformed, first into Projections and then into its most recent incarnation, Currents. When Currents was first announced in 2020, it was also the first year of Docs in Orbit, and every year since, it’s been where we have encountered gems of the festival to bring into conversation, such as My Mexican Bretzel by Nuria Giménez (NYFF58), A Night of Knowing Nothing by Payal Kapadia (NYFF59), and Rewind & Play by Alain Gomis (NYFF60). So, for this year’s edition, we decided to focus more intently on their programming to get a behind-the-scenes look at their curatorial approach. In today's episode, I sit down with the curators of Currents at the 61st New York Film Festival. Our guests are Aily Nash, Rachael Rakes, and Tyler Wilson. They put together an exciting collection of films, which we'll explore, and what sets Currents apart from other programs in New York and abroad. Moderated by Emile Klein SHOW NOTES / FILMS AND BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Man in Black by Wang Bing, Last Things by Deborah Stratman, The Human Surge 3 by Eduardo Williams , Slow Shift by Shambhavi Kaul, A Prince by Pierre Creton, The Night Visitors by Michael Gitlin, The Fist by Ayo Akingbade, Nowhere Near by Miko Revereza, Live from the Clouds by Mackie Mallison, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell by Thien An Pham, Mangosteen by Tulapop Saenjaroen, Bold Eagle by Whammy Alcazaren , Coral by Sonia Oleniak, ALLENSWORTH by James Benning, Ungentle by Huw Lemmey and Onyeka Igwe, and Film as a Subversive Art by Amos Vogel (revised edition with new forward by Herb Shellenberger) FOR GUEST BIOS AND MORE https://www.docsinorbit.com/nyff Image: Film at Lincoln Center NYFF61 poster by Jim Jarmusch For show notes, visit docsinorbit.com and be sure to follow us on social media @docsinorbit