New Plaza Cinema Lecture with Max Alvarez: Casablanca - 80th Anniversary

Casablanca: An 80th Anniversary Celebration

Humphrey Bogart. Ingrid Bergman. Claude Rains. Paul Henreid. Dooley Wilson. Michael Curtiz. Rick’s Café Américain. “As Time Goes By.” We are shocked — shocked! — to learn that the iconic Warner Bros. masterpiece Casablanca is turning 80 years old in December!

To celebrate this historic cinematic occasion, film historian Max Alvarez will share fascinating discoveries about how Hollywood’s “happy accident” — a major motion picture with a chaotic and unpromising production history — emerged as one of the most beloved thriller romances ever to reach the silver screen.

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

Website: www.maxjalvarez.com