KundunThe Museum of the Moving Images in New York is screening Martin Scorsese’s Kundun, based on the life of the present Dalai Lama, on January 21 and 22, 2006 (at 1:30 pm) as part of its seventh New York Film Critics Circle series. This year the theme of the series is Foreign Affairs.

Every year, the Museum of the Moving Image presents a series of films selected, written about, and introduced by members of the New York Film Critics Circle. This year the screenings are taking place from January 7 to February 12, 2006. Kundun was selected for this series by Nathan Lee, a film critic, who will also introduce it on January 21. Nathan Lee is the former chief film critic of The New York Sun.

Writing about Kundun, Lee said, “Directed by Martin Scorsese. With Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong. Arguably the most empathic meditation on Eastern spirituality ever made by an American director, Kundun is an exquisite act of imaginative sympathy. Scorsese?s hushed, gentle, quietly radical biopic of the fourteenth Dalai Lama reflects the light and music of consciousness itself. Narrative becomes a medium for the evocation of mental states, the camera floating though space like an exhalation of smoke: mobile, delicate, sensitive to objects and architecture, reactive to the most attenuated psychological drafts.”

Film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who also edited Kundun, will be doing the introduction before the January 22 screening.

“In these times of xenophobia, extreme nationalism, and international turmoil, the seventh annual Critics series, Foreign Affairs, offers a wide range of films from the United States and abroad that explore the idea of being “foreign,” of literally or metaphorically visiting another country,” said a Museum announcement.

The Museum is located at 35 Avenue at 36 Street, Astoria, NY 11106.