r.i.p. Jytte

Jytte Jensen, who worked for more than thirty years as a film curator at the Museum of Modern Art and most recently served as chair of the “New Directors/New Films” series, died Monday night, reports Indiewire’s Eric Kohn. As the “New Directors/New Films” chair for two years, she worked alongside the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Dennis Lim up until this January, when her illness kept her from continuing—at which point MoMA’s chief curator of the department of film, Rajendra Roy, took over responsibilities.

After joining the staff at the Museum of Modern Art in 1984, Jensen rose to become curator in the department of film and media in 2003, and was responsible for hundreds of cinema exhibitions, like “Prix Jean Vigo,” a yearlong celebration of first films by French directors, as well as retrospectives of filmmakers including Bella Tarr, Alexander Sokurov, Abbas Kiarostami, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Her publications included Benjamin Christensen: An International Dane (1999) and “Four Decades of Brazilian Cinema” in Cinema Novo and Beyond (1998).

                                                 

“There was this fearlessness in her drive to tackle the unknown,” said Roy. “She would go places most people would consider far-flung. Which curators are going to former Soviet Republics? She would go there when they were still part of the Soviet Republic. She would go to the Middle East. It was a pretty rarefied world that she felt comfortable in. She really integrated herself. That’s what I’m going to miss the most.” 

bye Jytte :((