Professor of Film at Columbia University's School of the Arts, and Moderator of the "Reel Pieces" series at Manhattan's 92Y, where she has interviewed over 200 film celebrities. She is the author of Intimations: The Cinema of Wojciech Has; Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski; Francois Truffaut, a study of the French director's work; Philip Kaufman, and the landmark study, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (with a foreword by Elie Wiesel). Her latest book is Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes, and she received the Mel Novikoff Award from the 2018 San Francisco Film Festival.
I owe a lot to my mother Cecile Insdorf (who taught French literature and film at Hunter College for 33 years): she taught me to be disciplined, with a work ethic that respects deadlines.