Hellenic Studies Program November Events

[Syrimis, George]

Monday, November 9,  5:00 PM

Maria Georgopoulou
Director of the Gennadius Library, American School of Classical Studies at Athens

"Sacred Commodities? Icons from Venetian Crete."

Room 351, Loria Center, 190 York Street, New Haven


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Friday, November 13,  4:30 PM

Modernizing: Political, Social, and Cultural Change in Greece after 1974: A speaker series based on the films of Nikos Perakis.

Alexander Kitroeff,
Professor of History, Haverford College

"Socialist Reality & Rhetoric - Greece in the 1980s."

Followed by a screening of the film Arpa Colla, directed  by Nikos Perakis.

Nicos Perakis wrote and directed this sly comedy about the movie industry in Greece during the early '80s, a period which saw a general decline in both the frequency and quality of Greek films. The story concerns two filmmakers, a conformist (Dimitris Chrissomallis) and a radical (Nikos Kaloyeropoulos), whose uneventful track record has relegated them to making commercials while they dream of financing their return to the big screen. Visiting various producers and well-off friends, the pair does their best to convince would-be investors, but they are hampered by their divergent goals, Chrissomallis dreaming of a mainstream film and Kaloyeropoulos driven by his political convictions to make an important piece of agitprop. Along the way, Perakis gets in numerous digs at every aspect of the moviemaking process, the industry which controls it, and the society which subverts it. (Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide)

212 York Street, Room 106, New Haven
Please consult the linked map if you are unfamiliar with the venue: http://www.yale.edu/seas/York212

The series is funded by the The Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund.

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Saturday, November 14, 7:30 PM

Cappella Romana Vocal Ensemble: Renaissance Encounters: Greek East and Latin West

The Renaissance was fed by encounters, both real and imagined, between Western Europeans and Greeks. Hear how Byzantine and Latin musicians of the 15th and 16th centuries captured these cultural meetings in music. Cappella Romana is a vocal chamber ensemble dedicated to combining passion with scholarship in its exploration of the musical traditions of the Christian East and West, with emphasis on early and contemporary music. For additional information see http://www.cappellaromana.org/

Trinity Lutheran Church, 292 Orange Street (corner of Wall St.)

Cosponsored by the Hellenic Studies Program and the Yale Institute for Sacred Music.

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Thursday, November 19, 5:00 PM

Yiorgos Kalogeras
Professor of Comparative Literature, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

"Entering through the Golden Door: Cinematic Representations of a Mythical Moment"

Abstract: In representing Southern European emigration to America, cinema has depicted the immigrants' passage as a passage into modernity and citizenship. However, their prospective constitution as U.S.A. citizens is contingent upon the redefinition of their identity in terms of class, gender and race. In Charlie Chaplin's The Immigrant (1917) an ironic parallelism is drawn between the Statue of Liberty and the roping off of the future Americans like cattle by the Ellis Island authorities; their eventual establishment in U.S. society can be conceived only if the immigrants are defined as aesthetically interesting ethnics/exotics, subjects to the artist's palette. In 1963, Elia Kazan's America-America represents the immigrant entering the U.S.A. as subject to effective bartering between immigration officials and the white slave driver the immigrant is indentured to. Most significantly, this film associated the immigrant crossing with the establishment of a white identity. More recently, Greek director Pandelis Voulgaris in The Brides (2004) represents entering the U.S.A. by referring back to Chaplin's 1917 short film. Immigration is constituted as an instance of fetishization of the immigrant, in this case a woman. Finally, Italian director Emmanulle Creolese in Nuovomondo (2006) depicts arrival on Ellis Island as a traumatic ordeal of exclusion, a result of scientific racialization, but also as a consequent ironic sublimation by the immigrant of the official discourse of the American Dream.

Room 102, Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven



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ALL EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

The activities of the Hellenic Studies Program are funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for Hellenic Studies at Yale University