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Shelter Island Library: A film for Memorial Day

COURTESY PHOTO
COURTESY PHOTO

As part of its Friday Night Dialogues series, the Shelter Island Library will show the 2014 film, “The Monuments Men,” on May 22 at 7 p.m. in the library’s Community Room on the lower level.

The movie is loosely based on the non-fiction book, “The Monuments Men: Allied Heros, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History,” written by Robert M. Edsel in 2009.

In the last years of WW II, a small group of architects, curators, art scholars and museum directors joined the Armed Services, with the blessing of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Their mission: To find and return to their owners the art treasurers that were being systematically looted by the Third Reich and then hidden.

George Clooney co-wrote the screenplay, directed the film and starred in the leading role, joined by a stellar cast including Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin and Bob Balaban. While the movie got mixed reviews from some, Peter Travers in Rolling Stone described it as a “proudly untrendy, uncynical movie.”

And Rex Reed wrote in the New York Observer, “These unheralded heros were called the ‘Monuments Men.’ This is their story. It is true. It is history. As a film, it is riveting, suspenseful, harrowing and exciting, and somehow, it also manages to be something rare among war pictures — a big-scale entertainment.”

Experience a largely unsung part of WW II history on May 22; admission is free, but donations will be appreciated.

Island artist Jackie Black has installed a tribute to her father, “A Portrait of Walter,” a WW II Army infantryman, in the Community Room where the film will be shown. There will be a reception for visitors to the exhibit on the lower level gallery at 6 p.m. prior to the film.

Coming up: “Opulent Oceans” with American Museum of Natural History author Melanie Stiassny on June 12; “Perserving Plum Island for Future Generations,” a virtual tour of Plum Island with Chris Cryder of Save the Sound on June 19; and “Washington, Nous Voila: Hermione and the Return of Lafayette” with Roger McKeon on June 26.