The Burning Child, U.S.A., 2017. 120 mins. Preview screening of Director’s Cut.

Join Joseph Leo Koerner, the Thomas Professor of History of Art and Architecture and Senior Fellow, Society of Fellows at Harvard University, for a special Director’s Cut screening of The Burning Child.

The Burning Child is a cinematic journey into the Viennese interior. Since about 1900, when Vienna became central Europe’s magnet metropolis, the city has been inspiring fateful dreams of home and homemaking. Its most famous denizens—Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt, Adolf Loos, and others—designed visionary interiors that determined the future of the modern home around the world. Part documentary, part personal journey, The Burning Child unravels the dream of homemaking in this most, and least, homely city. Through interviews, testimony, and archival footage, the film presents the Viennese interior against the backdrop of Austria’s troubled past; with Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938, homemaking met a truly catastrophic end for Vienna’s most ardent homemakers.

This film screening is part of the Malbin Program Series: Studies and Stories of Exile, and is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Artists in Exile: Expressions of Loss and Hope. Generously sponsored by the Lydia Winston Malbin Fund.