The big news for fall – and it doesn’t get any bigger than this – is the return of MoMA’s film programming to good old 53rd street. I can’t say I won’t miss the temporary digs on 23rd street, despite the uncomfortable seats and occasionally problematic climate control. And the Gramercy brushed some cobwebs off the old Titus 1 and 2 experience; the median audience age seemed to have dropped by several decades.

But MoMA proper belongs further uptown, and the refurbished facilities – new seats, new sound system, new projectors – might just give the Walter Reade a run for the best screening facility in New York. The inaugural program of premieres (cleverly titled “Premieres”) boggles the mind.

Jean-Luc Godard’s “Moments choisis” (November 21) a feature-length 35mm edit of his magisterial video essay “Histoire(s) du Cinema” is as momentous a world premiere as they come. Equally essential is Abbas Kiarostami’s “Five” (November 21), an avant-garde mediation on animist landscapes. Woefully underrated at Cannes, this remarkable poem-on-video is primed for local reappraisal.

The other defining event of fall, as always, is the New York Film Festival, set to run from October 1 to 17. Led by the glorious restoration of Samuel Fuller’s WWII masterpiece “The Big Red One” (October 2), this year’s line-up is a knockout. Pedro Almodovar’s “Bad Education” (October 9), his strongest film in years, casts Gael Garcia Bernal as the “femme” fatale in a complex pastel noir.

Mr. Godard’s sublime “Notre Musique” (October 3) is surprisingly tender and predictably masterful. Ousmane Sembene’s “Moolaade” (October 13) is a gorgeous, rousing drama of female resistance in an African village. Jonathan Caouette’s bracing experimental memoir “Tarnation” (October 5) is surely the greatest film ever assembled on Apple’s cheap iMovie software. And Alexander Payne’s “Sideways” (October 17), a bittersweet comedy about wine, women, and sad-sack men closes the festival on a deeply satisfying note. If you miss the festival screenings, all five open theatrically this year. And all five are among the year’s best films.

Other highlights include a retrospective of Shaw Brother’s martial arts films and new works by heavy-hitters: Ingmar Bergman’s “Saraband” (October 15), Eric Rohmer’s “Triple Agent” (October 2), Mike Leigh’s “Vera Drake” (October 8), Jia Zhangke’s “The World” (October 11), Zhang Yimou’s “The House of Flying Daggers” (October 9), Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s “Cafe Lumiere” (October 16), and Todd Solondz “Palindromes” (October 15).

And then there’s the film I’m most looking forward to seeing (again), Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s visionary “Tropical Malady” (October 2). Don’t even try to pronounce his name (in any event, he doesn’t mind being called “Joe”), just do whatever it takes to catch the festival screening. Though scheduled to open in 2005, this beguiling plunge into narrative labyrinths and jungle dream-states deserves to be seen on the biggest, brightest screen possible. Standby tickets are always available same day at the box office, and this is definitely one worth queuing up for.

You can prepare your mind by catching up with his previous film, “Blissfully Yours,” when it finally – finally! – arrives for a limited run at Anthology Film Archives this Friday. This sui generis stunner, one of the great films of the past few years, demands but rewards patience. Shot in very long takes, with no immediately apparent narrative, it unspools in the late afternoon sun like a sexually explicit avant-garde jungle picnic. The real-time flow of images induces a nearly synaesthetic affect: You begin to feel a lazy warmth creep into your skin, a slow, pleasant dazing of the senses. Here’s a rare movie that reaches for transcendence and succeeds – the title is absolutely precise.

Anthology’s on a roll this fall, with two other can’t miss programs. A select retrospective of the filmmaking team of Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet runs from October 15 to 21, providing an essential look at their immensely innovative but rarely screened work. Also keep an eye out for Manoel de Oliveira’s deliciously ironic “A Talking Picture,” which kicks off a mini-run on December 10.

Across town at Film Forum, “On The Waterfront” returns for a 50 anniversary engagement in a restored print (November 5).Then “The Big Red One” plays for a week (November 12), and “Days of Being Wild,” Wong Kar-wai’s splendid sophomore film, gets a repertory run (November 19) courtesy of Kino International, which will also be releasing an essential Wong box set in the fall). Over in Astoria, The American Museum of the Moving Image unleashes a Ken Russell retrospective (October 16).

As for Hollywood, relief from the season’s Oscar-grubbing comes via “Team America,” a bawdy puppet satire from the creators of “South Park.” If it ends up half as good as the hilarious trailer, it looks to provide bipartisan catharsis just in time for the presidential election.