FORT LEE, N.J. — On Sunday, September 13 at 5 p.m., the Barrymore Film Center in Fort Lee will screen Elia Kazan’s 1963 Oscar winning film “America, America.” Nominated for four Oscars including best film and winning for best direction Elia Kazan’s “America, America” (1963) is a black and white masterpiece of expressionistic realism. This groundbreaking film, which Kazan called his favorite, brings together a deeply personal story with an important human rights history. Set in the late 1890s during a period of oppression and violence toward Christian minorities – Armenians and Greeks – in Ottoman Turkey – the film tells the story of Kazan’s uncle’s harrowing odyssey out of Turkey with his Armenian friends who are fleeing the massacres that have ravaged their communities. This Greek boy’s epic journey from his small village to Istanbul and finally to Ellis Island is one of the great immigrant survivor stories in American cinema.
The film will be introduced by Pulitzer Prize winning poet and New York Times bestselling author Peter Balakian, and renowned film historian Foster Hirsch. Hirsch, Professor of film studies at Brooklyn College, is the author of many books including The Hollywood Epic, Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Screen, and recently Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties. Balakian is the author of many books including Pulitzer Prize winning Ozone Journal, PEN/Albrand winning memoir Black Dog of Fate, and Vise and Shadow: Essays on the Lyric Imagination that includes his essay “The Anatolian Embrace: Armenians and Greeks in Elia Kazan’s America, America.”
The Barrymore Film Center is located at 1 Park Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey — the birthplace of the American motion picture industry. The Barrymore presents film screenings, live performances, special events, and community programs that celebrate film and cinema and cultural arts. Committed to accessibility and inclusion, the Barrymore Film Center provides programming designed to welcome audiences of all ages and abilities. For more go to barrymorefilmcenter.org.
