The Film Society of Lincoln Center ' NYFF 54 has always been the Grand Dame of US Film Festivals and seen internationally as on the A+ List of festivals that matter. This year now that the dust of change has settled Kent Jones and his programing team led by Dennis Lim, Any Taubin, Florence Almaozini, Gavin Smith  has stepped into the fire of the actual world we live as see through the story telling skills of directors of narrative and documentary film. NYFF remains an essential  survey of best of world festivals/ But this year a bold choice for the opening night is  the selection of Ave Duvernay's bold, painful and essential documentary 13th. A look at the history of racism in the US and how pre and post the passage of the 13th Advmendment  slavery still exists in the US lubiricated by the economic drive of forced labor, mass incarceration and the new Jim Crown,  Essential viewing in for all Americans,  And how it archs with the quite brilliant James Baldwin stained I AM NOT YOUR NERGRO and the perhaps most beautiful  film I have seen this year MOONLIGHT a love story that would have been impossible to show when Baldwin was alive and finally TWO TRAINS RUNNIN" in 1964 the Freedom Riders were going South to register voters and break the strangle hold of the KKK, At the  same time young blues musicians including John Fahey  went South to find to find black blues legends .Skip James and Son House. Both groups wound up in Mississippi..which was ground zero of racial hatred and where James Chaney Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwemer were murdered.. each film is essential viewing to understnd how black people in America survived with diguinty the horrows of vilionce, physical brutality, dehiumaixizing treatmeat that has brought us to this BLACK LIVES MATTER Moment. It also shows that while not wbecasue of tecknology the killings og mstly black unarned men by police officers across the country it is not new , thishas been going on ever since slaves were bought and stolen in Africa and delivered to the North America .