Wherein the Museum of Modern Art's Adrienne Mancia reminisces to Mark Langer about her past efforts in animation programming and her thoughts about the state of the craft today.

When I was asked to interview Adrienne Mancia, veteran Curator--Film Exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I was delighted. This was not only because of Adrienne's prominence in the field, but also, like many others involved in film programming, I regard Adrienne as a mentor. Indeed, my first experience of an animation festival was in company with Adrienne and Ian Birnie (now programming films for the Los Angeles County Museum) at the old casino at Annecy in the mid-70s.

Adrienne Mancia began at the Museum of Modern Art in 1964 as a secretary and assistant to Richard Griffith, Director of the Department of Film. For over 30 years, she has been an innovator in film programming in the United States, and a fixture on juries and at film festivals internationally. In light of Adrienne's particularly strong commitment to the short live-action film and animation, I asked her to discuss the history of animation programming at the Museum of Modern Art and elsewhere, as well as her views on the state of animation programming today.

Left to right: Adrienne Mancia, Louise Beaudet, Jacques Drouin, and Helene Tanguay at Ottawa 96. Photo by Candy Kugel.

My film career really began at Contemporary Films, which was headed by Leo Dratfield. He was one of the pioneers, along with people like Tom Brandon of Audio-Brandon, of non-theatrical film distribution in the U.S. Dratfield's company, Contemporary Films, was a self-styled "film library" which distributed, among other works, National Film Board films, the first films of the French Nouvelle Vague directors (like Truffaut, Resnais, Marker, Varda and Godard) and British Free Cinema, which included shorts by Lindsay Anderson. Leo Dratfield loved animation and introduced me to venues like Zagreb, Tours and Oberhausen, where I first was able to see animated films. Leo was a man who made things happen and he was one of my mentors.

Of course, in those days, there were controversial and challenging organizations for film exhibition in New York. Amos Vogel ran Cinema 16, an independent art society that showed animated films, among other artistic movies. Jonas Mekas was the leader of "underground films"--films which championed the avant-garde. There was a small but active community that supported alternate cinema.