March 2, 2017 Director James Schamus to Screen “Indignation” at Library

Film director James Schamus will screen his film “Indignation” and field questions from film historian David Bordwell at the Library of Congress on March 13.

“James Schamus on Philip Roth and the Art of Adaptation” will take place at 3 p.m. on Monday, March 13, in the Mary Pickford Theater on the third floor of the Library’s James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Ave, S.E., Washington, D.C.  The event is free and open to the public.  Tickets are not needed.

“Indignation” is a 2016 American drama film written, produced and directed by Schamus, who makes his directorial debut, and is based on Philip Roth's 2008 novel of the same name. The film, set mostly in Ohio in 1951, is about Marcus, a working-class Jewish student from New Jersey, who attends a small college, where he struggles with sexual repression and cultural disaffection, amid the ongoing Korean War.

Schamus, of Columbia University, has been writer and producer of many contemporary classics of American independent film, including “The Wedding Banquet,” “The Ice Storm,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” As an executive at Focus Features, he acquired and distributed still other major works, notably Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” and Gus Van Sant’s “Milk.”  

Bordwell is serving as the Kluge Chair in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress from January through April. A film theorist and historian, he is the Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  He has written more than 15 volumes on many aspects of modern cinema.  At the Kluge Center, Bordwell is drawing on the vast resources available in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division to work on a book project titled “The Art of Cinema 1908-1920.”

Bordwell also will lecture at the Kluge Center, presenting “Studying Early Hollywood: The Search for a Storytelling Style” at 4 p.m. on Thursday, March 16, in room 119 on the first floor of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C.  The event is free and open to the public.  Tickets are not needed.

Through a generous endowment from John W. Kluge, the Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world's best thinkers to energize one another, to distill wisdom from the Library's rich resources, and to interact with policymakers in Washington.  For more information about the Kluge Center visit loc.gov/kluge/.

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States—and extensive materials from around the world—both on site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov, access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov, and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.