New Plaza Cinema Lecture - Orson Welles: A Turbulent and Brilliant Life

Orson Welles: A Turbulent and Brilliant Life - Encore Lecture

He became a CBS radio star at age 20. He revolutionized the New York stage at age 21. He terrified Middle America with his “War of the Worlds” broadcast at age 23. By age 25, he was directing Citizen Kane in Hollywood, and by age 37, he had reinvented himself as an independent filmmaker. He was Orson Welles (1915-1985), actor extraordinaire and visionary stage and screen director who remains one of the most maligned and misunderstood artists in cinema history.

Join film historian Max Alvarez as he helps to restore the reputation of this genius and his complex cinematic creations, including The Magnificent Ambersons, The Trial, Chimes at Midnight, and the recently completed The Other Side of the Wind.

Author, film historian, and public speaker Max Alvarez is a former visiting scholar and guest lecturer for The Smithsonian Institution and previously film curator at National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. His partnerships have included University of California, Los Angeles and Berkeley; Museum of the Moving Image, New Plaza Cinema, Library of Congress, and the National Gallery of Art in D.C. Alvarez’s lecture topics range from the Cold War and political blacklisting to depictions of elections and the US presidency in Hollywood movies, immigration on film, China during the 20th Century, European women artists, censorship history, 20th century Jewish culture, and the British and American theater. Author of The Crime Films of Anthony Mann (University Press of Mississippi) and a major contributor to Thornton Wilder/New Perspectives (Northwestern University Press), his latest book is The Cinéphile’s Guide to the Great Age of Cinema (released June 2020). www.maxjalvarez.com