Humanities
Roderick Beaton, “Asia Minor in the Life and Work of George Seferis”
by ZoomA Celebration of National Poetry Month In May 1944, at the height of a new crisis facing the Greek government in exile during World War II, which he served as a high-ranking diplomat, George Seferis confided these thoughts to his Alexandrian Greek friend Timos Malanos: ‘It might surprise you if I tell you that the...
Eleni Kefala, “Strangers No More: Constantinople, Tenochtitlan, and the Trauma of the Conquest”
by ZoomThe Byzantines had long dreaded the year 1492. According to their calculations based on the Scriptures, it would bring the end of the world. In an eerie stroke of irony, they were right in their fears. Even though they were slightly off in the timing of the fall of Constantinople into the hands of the...
The Valerie Estes Memorial Lecture and Performance: “Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-Sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora,” by Panayotis (Paddy) League
Royce Hall, 314 UCLAIn this talk, Professor Panayotis League explores the legacy of the “Great Catastrophe”—the death and expulsion from Turkey of 1.5 million Greek Christians following the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922—through the music and dance practices of Greek refugees and their descendants over the last one hundred years. Drawing on original ethnographic research conducted in Greece (on the island...
Smyrna, My Beloved
James Bridges Theater, UCLA 235 Charles E Young Dr N, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesOPENING NIGHT OF THE LOS ANGELES GREEK FILM FESTIVAL!!! To purchase tickets, click here. Filio Baltatzi, an elderly Greek-American woman, goes to the island of Lesvos to help the refugees. She has a secret: almost a century earlier, her family lived on the island when they themselves were refugees, fleeing Smyrna after the destruction of...
Vamvakou!
From June 25-July 1, the UCLA SNF Hellenic Center staff and UCLA graduate students join colleagues from the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vamvakou, Lakonia, to work together with the team of Vamvakou Revival to organize future summer programs in Modern Greek language studies, bioagriculture, and cultural heritage management. Stay...
Smyrna, My Beloved
Saint Sophia Cathedral 1324 S Normandie Ave, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesCommunity Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Burning of Smyrna Sunday, September 25, 2022 4 pm reception followed by the film screenings Free admission and mezedes (No RSVP required) Jim Gianopulos Family Theater, St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral 1324 S. Normandie Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90006 This moving historical saga, Smyrna, My Beloved, follows...
Johanna Hanink, “Bones, Stones, Trees, and Roots: On the Enduring Urgency of Karkavitsas’ Archeologist (1904)”
by ZoomHow does a novella written more than one hundred years ago help to illuminate pressing issues in Greece today? Karkavitsas’ Archeologist, an allegory for the contestation of antiquity’s role in Greek modernity, was published at a time when Greece’s ancient past was emerging as a modern national industry. Major excavations were tied to the establishment...
Roger Michel, “Phidias Unbound: How Robot-Generated Replicas Could Solve the Parthenon Marbles Quandary”
by ZoomThe Parthenon Marbles, commonly known as the Elgin Marbles, were removed from the ancient Acropolis of Athens in 1801 by Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Carved by the sculptor Phidias, they were eventually sold to the British government in 1817 and are housed in the British Museum. Public debate about repatriating the...
Angelopoulos Retrospective: Landscape in the Mist
Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesLandscape in the Mist (Topio stin Omichli) Greece/France/Italy, 1988 A young girl and her brother run away to find the father they’ve never met in Germany. Ducking train conductors and hitching rides, they’re befriended by Orestes, a young man working with a troupe of traveling actors before his compulsory military service. Theo Angelopoulos conceived the...
Angelopoulos Retrospective: Eternity and a Day
Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesEternity and a Day (Mia Aioniotita kai mia Mera). France/Italy/Greece/Germany 1998 Bruno Ganz plays a famed Greek author with a growing list of uncompleted projects after becoming despondent following the death of his wife and his own recent terminal diagnosis. Lost in reveries of a brighter past, he’s snapped back to life when, on impulse,...
Angelopoulos Retrospective: Days of ’36
Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesDays of ’36 (Meres tou ’36) Greece, 1972 A political assassination kicks off Theo Angelopoulos’ portrait of one Greek dictatorship made under the shadow of another. This opening act of violence triggers a series of more ambiguous but equally ominous machinations—a prison escape, a hostage crisis, foreign powers conspiring over cocktails—with Angelopoulos emphasizing the atmosphere...