After reviewing The Journey - The Greek American Dream in this blog, I had to see Elia Kazan’s ( born Elias Kazanjoglou) famous film about a Greek immigrant coming to this country, “America, America.” I thought that I had seen it sometime…and that it would be something like Sergio Leone’s film, “Once Upon a time in America,” but I was totally shocked after I received my used VHS copy from Amazon. ( None of the local libraries owned the film.)

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Since 1979 I have been assisting the people who program the Charleston Jewish film events, first working with Peter Godfrey, and now for more than a decade, Dr. Fred Pollock. During the 29 years I have received preview copies of many of the films, and now I am donating them - all but one VHS - to the B’Nai Jacob Synagogue in Charleston for people to use at their pleasure. ( I have donated films to the WV Filmmakers Film Festival in Sutton, housed at the Elk Hotel, and philosophy movies to the Pocahontas County Free Libraries based in Marlinton. All of those films are also available for anyone in WV to use.)

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Chopin’s grave located in Pere-Lachaise Cemetary, shown in film Forever

Icarus Films, like its sister smaller NYC film distribution companies like New Yorker, Zeitgeist, Kino, etc. provides Americans with intelligence access to many of the best films produced from around the world. Recently I received a batch of film including Dust, Do Communists Have Better Sex?, Forever, Nanjing - Memory and Oblivion, The Sugar Curtain, Bird’s Nest, and others. Below are  short reviews of the films.

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Thanks to the Kanawha County Public Library, I got to see a commercial film that I missed when it came to the theaters, The Jane Austen Book Club. The film is about a real book club of women, and one man, who read all of Austin’s book. All of the women are real including one who works for the California State Library.

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Larry Groce is the founder and programmer for the new Charleston art festival called “FestivALL.” This year for its second incarnation, he hired Squonk Opera of Pittsburgh to create an “opera” about the town. “Charleston the Opera” is actually a performance work of art that included filmed footage plus three dance performances by local dance companies. The two-time event took place on Saturday, June 21, at 3 PM and 8 PM, tickets selling for $25. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend either show - and I guess it was not filmed so you can’t see it either. However, you can listen to the music used. It’s called “You Are Here” and can be purchased from Squonk’s website.

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Peter Argentine is one of Pittsburgh’s leading documentary filmmakers, working all over the world including making a film about the White House. He has produced “Monongah Remembered,” a 25 minute film about the worst coal mine disaster in history and hopes to raise enough money to expand it to a full hour. The film was shown once on WVPBS TV and is now available for purchase.

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Thanks to the November 2007 return home by WV-born Christopher Janus, my interest in Greece has been reawakened. Watching his wonderful, award-winning film, “Goodbye, Miss Fourth of July”made me realize that ethnic prejudice was very real in West Virginia around the time of WWI, and probably still is - despite the many ethnic groups that sent coal miners to WV over the last century. ( The WV Labor History president emeritus Dr. Fred Barkey has spent his career as a WV labor historian, writing about all of the ethnic groups that came to WV, especially the Belgians. See his book, “Cinderheads in the Hills - The Belgian Plate Glass Workers of South Charleston” for which he was knighted. WVLHA also published a chapter in their forthcoming book, “Ethnic Notions.” In November 2007 at the Janus film event a chapter on Greek West Virginians was published and distributed.)

While searching on the web for information about Greek-Americans, I discovered the recently founded Los Angeles Greek Film Festival, celebrating its second year recently. While going through the film program, I ran across a masterpiece of a film, The Journey - The Greek American Dream. (more…)