Beginning in 2009, The Museum of Modern Art offered a weekly series of film screenings titled An Auteurist History of Film. Inspired by Andrew Sarris' seminal work The American Cinema, which developed on the idea of 'auteur theory' first discussed by the critics of Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s, the series presented cinematic works from MoMA's expansive collection with particular focus on the role of the director as artistic author. For the five years that the series was presented, film curator Charles Silver wrote a concise post to accompany each screening. These texts described the place of each film in the oeuvre of its director as well as its significance to wilder film history.
