Starts:

Thursday May 22, 2025

    7:00 PM

Join us for the inaugural screening in a new series exploring New York's literary landscape as reimagined through film. We begin with "Smoke" (1995; 1h 52m), a meditation on chance encounters and storytelling in a Brooklyn tobacco shop. Written by novelist Paul Auster (author of The New York Trilogy), it features a remarkable ensemble cast, including Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker, Stockard Channing, Ashley Judd, and Giancarlo Esposito.

Directed by Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club) and scripted by Auster himself, Smoke is a film of quiet brilliance—unfolding in a mosaic of character vignettes, it draws on Auster’s signature preoccupations: coincidence, identity, and the redemptive power of narrative. Its artistry lies in the way it elevates small moments into something mythic without ever straying from the texture of real life.

Our own John Dermot Woods, novelist and SUNY creative writing professor, will briefly introduce the film with literary context.

The Literary New York: Page to Screen film series celebrates not merely adaptation, but the tension and harmony that emerge when New York’s written stories find new life on screen. These narratives remind us that to inhabit this city is to participate in an ongoing story—one constantly being rewritten, reimagined, and projected twenty feet high.

We will meet in the Board Room. Please RSVP.