PROGRAM
A screening of “LINCOLN,” followed a conversation between the screenwriter Tony Kushner and the film’s historical advisor Harold Holzer.
Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln has been acclaimed as the legendary director’s masterpiece. At its center is Daniel Day-Lewis’s Oscar-winning performance as Abraham Lincoln, who is depicted in his struggle to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery.A. O. Scott, reviewing Lincoln in The New York Times, wrote “Go see this movie…Lincoln is a rough and noble democratic masterpiece.”
SPEAKERS
Harold Holzer
Harold Holzer is one of the country’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era. A prolific writer and lecturer, Holzer has been the author, co-author, or editor of forty-two books to date, the most recent of which was Emancipating Lincoln: The Emancipation Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory (Harvard University Press). He serves as chairman of The Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, successor organization to the U. S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission (ALBC), to which he was appointed by President Clinton in 2000, and co-chaired from 2001-2010. President Bush awarded Holzer the National Humanities Medal in 2008. He is serving currently as the first Roger Hertog Fellow at The New-York Historical Society.
Tony Kushner
Tony Kushner is one of the most accomplished playwrights of our time. He first came to national prominence in the early 90s with the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, an examination of the AIDS epidemic set against a backdrop of American religious, political and social history. Kushner received Oscar nominations for his screenplays for Lincoln and Munich (co-written with Eric Roth), both directed by Steven Spielberg. He also wrote the screenplay for HBO’s Emmy Award-winning adaptation of Angels in America.
