Director Giedrė Žickytė Up Next on Tom Needham’s SOUNDS OF FILM

Director Giedrė Žickytė Up Next on Tom Needham’s SOUNDS OF FILM.

Giedrė Žickytė is the director of THE JUMP, a Cold War thriller about a sailor’s desperate leap for freedom.

In 1970, off the coast of Cape Cod, Lithuanian sailor Simas Kudirka jumped from his Soviet ship onto a US Coast Guard vessel seeking asylum. Denied refuge by the American crew, Simas was sentenced to a Soviet labor camp for treason, sparking an international cause célèbre. As his dramatic case played out in the media and up through the highest levels of the US government, this ordinary man became a symbol for freedom-seeking refugees everywhere. It was later discovered and verified that his mother had been born in Brooklyn and gone to Lithuania at a young age, which meant she was a U. S. citizen. As a result, Kudirka was declared a U. S. citizen and in 1974 released by the Soviets. His story was told in a 1978 made-for-TV movie, THE DEFECTION OF SIMAS KURDIRKA, starring Alan Arkin as Kudirka.

The Port Jefferson Documentary Film Series is screening the movie virtually online Monday, April 19, 2021 at 7 PM with 48 hours to view. For more information, visit: https://portjeffdocumentaryser...

Tom Needham's THE SOUNDS OF FILM is the nation's longest running film, music and ideas themed radio show. For the past 30 years, the program has delivered a popular mix of interviews and music to listeners all over Long Island, parts of Connecticut and streaming worldwide live on the internet at wusb.fm. Past people interviewed for the show include Alec Baldwin, Billy Joel, Noah Baumbach, Matthew Broderick, Ralph Macchio, Marco Beltrami and Alexander Payne.

Worldwide listeners can tune into the SOUNDS OF FILM internet livestream on Thursday at 6 pm EST at wusb.fm.