Peter Balakian and Foster Hirsch to introduce Elia Kazan’s ‘America, America’ at Barrymore Film Center
Fort Lee, N.J. — On Sunday, Sept. 13 at 5 p.m., the Barrymore Film Center will screen Elia Kazan’s 1963 Oscar-winning film, America, America.
Nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and winner of the Academy Award for Best Director, America, America is a black-and-white film of expressionistic realism. The film, which Kazan called his favorite, combines a personal story with a significant historical context.
Set in the late 1890s, during a period of oppression and violence toward Christian minorities—Armenians and Greeks—in the Ottoman Empire, the film tells the story of Kazan’s uncle’s harrowing odyssey out of Turkey with his Armenian friends as they flee massacres that have ravaged their communities. This Greek boy’s epic journey from his small village to Istanbul 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 film historian Foster Hirsch, professor of film studies at Brooklyn College.
Hirsch is the author of numerous books, including The Hollywood Epic, The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir, and recently Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties. Peter Balakian is the author of Ozone Journal, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Albrand-winning memoir Black Dog of Fate, and Vise and Shadow: Essays on the Lyric Imagination, which includes his essay, “The Anatolian Embrace: Armenians and Greeks in Elia Kazan’s America, America.”
“For too long, the historical context and events of this great film have been ignored,” Balakian noted. “A film that opens with Armenians being burned alive in a church in Turkey surely demands commentary and explication. I’m looking forward to discussing this history.”
The Barrymore Film Center is located at 1 Park Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the birthplace of the American motion picture industry. The center presents film screenings, live performances, special events, and community programs celebrating film, 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 information, please visit barrymorefilmcenter.org.
