Program Notes
Off-the-Wall Preview: Synecdoche, New York
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a synecdoche as a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part...
Keep that in mind while watching Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (2008).
Program Notes: Goodbye Solo (2009)
In this era of anti-immigration rhetoric, it’s sometimes useful to consider what a newcomer to the U.S. brings to the table — namely a sense of enthusiasm and hope.
Program Notes: Under the Same Moon (2007)
A hard-nosed critic can find plenty to pick apart in Patricia Riggen’s Under the Same Moon (2007).
That is, if he can suppress his desperate need to blubber like a girly-man.
Program Notes: America America (1963)
Most films about the immigrant experience begin with the protagonist’s arrival in a new land. America America, though, ends with a shot of the Statue of Liberty as its hero sails into New York Harbor. It’s the physical and emotional journey he takes to get there that interested filmmaker Elia Kazan.
Film Series Introduction: I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door
Unless you're a full-blooded Native American, you're an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants.
You could even say that the journey to the New World is built into our DNA.
The experiences of our forefathers in coming to this country — and the struggles of today's immigrant — is the subject of The Golden Door film series playing in September at the Kansas City Public Library's Central Library.
