Join AIA Long Island on Thursday, September 17, for an Architecture in Film screening of The Great Gatsby (1974). Directed by Jack Clayton from a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola, the film stars Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan, alongside Sam Waterston and Bruce Dern.

The evening opens with an insightful talk by architect John DeFazio, AIA, examining the rich intersection of architecture and cinema. DeFazio will explore how production designers harness spatial environments to shape character, evoke mood, and map social hierarchy. Drawing on The Great Gatsby—a masterpiece renowned for its deliberate spatial storytelling—the discussion will trace the story's visual evolution across its major film adaptations, from the silent 1926 original and the 1949 film noir to the 2000 TV version and Baz Luhrmann’s flashy 2013 spectacle. We will see how Fitzgerald famously used contrasting architectural styles—pitting East Egg’s conservative Georgian mansions against West Egg’s ostentatious French-imitation villas—to critique the American Dream.