NEW YORK (AP) ― When the playwright Tony Kushner recently grabbed a microphone and sat down for a post-screening Q & A with a filmmaker and the film’s cast, he mumbled that he felt like Richard Pena.

So central has Pena been to film in New York over the last 25 years that for many merely sitting in front of a movie screen here is likely to bring him to mind. As the programming director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and chairman of the New York Film Festival selection committee, he’s one of the city’s most devoted advocates of global cinema.

This year’s New York Film Festival, the 50th, is also Pena’s last. After 25 years, Pena is retiring at the end of the year.

“I’d be really pleased to be known as the person who kept the ― what I think ― extremely high level of the festival constant,’’ Pena said in a recent interview in Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater. “That indeed I was given a trust in 1988 and I didn’t screw up.’’

Most would give him far more credit than that. Pena has overseen film at Lincoln Center through a tumultuous period that’s seen the graying of art house audiences, the birth of digital filmmaking and distribution, the exponential growth of film festivals and the shift of the art film’s epicenter away from Europe and toward the Middle East, Asia and South America.

It hasn’t always been easy ― critics have claimed narrowing relevancy for the NYFF ― but most see in “The Festival’’ an exalted, uncorrupted platform of some of the best in movies. When the 50th NYFF begins Friday, it will be much how it’s always been: a carefully curated, highly-selective few dozen films from around the world, including choice offerings from international festivals and highly anticipated fall films from Hollywood.

The premiere of Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi,’’ a 3-D adaptation of the fantastical best seller, opens the festival. “Sopranos’’ creator David Chase’s directorial debut, “Not Fade Away,’’ is the midway centerpiece. And the Robert Zemeckis drama “Flight,’’ starring Denzel Washington, will close the fest.