Annette Insdorf

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Born in Paris, Annette Insdorf grew up in New York, where she received her B.A. from Queens College in 1972. She earned her Ph.D. from Yale University as a Danforth Fellow in 1975. She is a Professor in the Graduate Film Program of Columbia’s School of the Arts, and served as Director of Undergraduate Film Studies for 27 years. She received the 2008 Award for Excellence in Teaching from Columbia’s School of General Studies. From 1990-1995, she was Chair of the Graduate Film Division. She taught film history and criticism at Yale University from 1975-1988. Since 1983, Dr. Insdorf has hosted Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y “Reel Pieces” film series; her guests have included Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis, Francis Coppola, Helen Mirren, Pedro Almodovar, Hugh Jackman, and Al Pacino. A popular panel moderator, she is responsible for the panels at the annual Telluride Film Festival (where she is also the main translator).

After her book François Truffaut appeared in 1978, she served as Truffaut’s translator. Considered an authority on the French New Wave, she provided voice-over commentary for the DVDs of Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, and The Last Metro, and was interviewed in the 1993 French documentary, François Truffaut: Stolen Portraits. Her other books are Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust, a landmark study which appeared in a revised edition with a preface by Elie Wiesel and received the National Board of Review’s William K. Everson Award in Film History for its updated third edition; Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieślowski; Philip Kaufman published as part of the “Contemporary Film Directors” series, the first book about the director of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Right Stuff; Intimations: The Cinema of Wojciech Has; and Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes.


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