The Kansas City Public Library welcomes film expert David Kipen for an illustrated examination called David Lean and the Romance of Steam Locomotion on Sunday, November 2, at 2 p.m. in the Truman Forum at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.

David Lean often brought drama and romance together with the grandeur of trains, thus creating memorable scenes such as: Peter O’Toole preening atop a derailed train in Lawrence of Arabia; a dying Alec Guinness dynamiting the trestle bridge in The Bridge on the River Kwai; and the railway romance of Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter.

David Kipen leads this examination of a filmmaker who never outgrew his love for the greatest camera subject of them all. Kipen is director of literature at the National Endowment for the Arts and authored The Schreiber Theory: A Radical Rewrite of American Film History. He is also the film critic for The Bob Edwards Show on XM Radio.

This event is presented with the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in support of its Art in the Age of Steam exhibition, now on display at the museum.