Avalon at the George Eastman Museum

A tight-knit Jewish immigrant family living in the Avalon neighborhood of Baltimore is slowly unraveling, as each new generation embraces an American way of life (like moving to the suburbs). By the 1940s and 1950s, television plays a central symbolic role in the family’s assimilation and reveals the fracturing in small yet poignant moments: television replaces mealtime conversation, and two cousins of the younger generation create commercials for their burgeoning business using Americanized names. Avalon is the third in the semi-autobiographical tetralogy of “Baltimore films” by director Barry Levinson, who won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay for Avalon.