Documentarian Allan King will be celebrated with a retrospective of his major works next month at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which this week unveiled plans to present 22 films — including Warrendale (1967), A Married Couple (1969), Dying at Grace (2003) and Empz 4 Life (2006) — to honor his 50 years of filmmaking.

The 76-year-old director tells Playback Daily the tribute is important to him because of the exposure to New York audiences. ‘I’ve been relatively unknown in the U.S. since Warrendale,’ he adds. Banned by the CBC and BBC, the controversial film about mentally disturbed children won the Prix d’art et essai at Cannes.

‘The pioneering accomplishments of this Canadian filmmaker… deserve to be better known in the U.S.,’ said MoMA senior curator Laurence Kardish in a release.

The busy director is currently working on a book about his life and work, to be completed within the year, and is also rereleasing his films on DVD.

‘There will be 15 DVDs in all with 22 films in them, which mirrors the program [at MoMA],’ says King. The DVDs, of which nine are complete, are distributed through his Toronto-based company Allan King Films.

For his next documentary, King says he’s looking at ‘social dreaming’ — a little-known kind of group therapy. ‘It’s a fascinating process of tackling problems which has been developed over the last 20 years,’ he says.

The retrospective at MoMA runs May 9-30. Retrospectives of King’s work have also been shown in Montreal, London, Rome and Taipei.