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A Master Class in Filmmaking with John TurturroMaster ClassIn-Person

John Turturro headshot in front of a concrete wall.

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

In partnership with The New Yorker Magazine

In this master class, John Turturro will discuss Mac and Romance & Cigarettes, two films that he wrote and directed. Both films are set in Queens, both feature working-class Italian American characters, and both revolve around tragic familial conflicts. Yet the two are quite different stylistically. Mac, released in 1992, is a muscular, neorealist drama in the vein of early De Sica, and Romance & Cigarettes, released in 2005, is an idiosyncratic, madcap musical tragicomedy. This class will explore how the latter is, in some ways, a continuation of the former, and how their disparate styles emerged organically from a similar artistic process.

John Turturro

John Turturro is an actor and director whose film credits include Do the Right Thing, Barton Fink, Quiz Show, The Big Lebowski, The Truce, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? He has directed six films, including Mac, which won the Caméra d’Or award at Cannes. On stage, Turturro won an Obie for Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and appeared in La Puta Vida, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, and End Game. On television, Turturro won an Emmy for his role on Monk and starred in HBO’s The Night Of and The Plot Against America, and can be seen currently in Apple’s series Severance.