Kazan-retto: see Volcano Islands.

Kazan, Elia, 1909-2003, American stage and film director, producer, writer, actor, b. Turkey, as Elia Kazanjoglous. Immigrating with his Greek family to the United States in 1913, Kazan studied at Williams College and the Yale Drama School before beginning his acting career with the New York Group Theatre in the 1930s. He became (1947) a founding member and director of The Actors Studio. In 1952, appearing before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, he admitted to membership in the Communist party in the 1930s and named eight other Hollywood figures who were also members, an act that was controversial throughout the rest of his life.

Kazan's outstanding stage productions included The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), All My Sons (1947), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947; film version, 1951), Death of a Salesman (1949), and Tea and Sympathy (1953). He was the most important director to bring the realistic, emotionally charged approach and "method" acting style of the mid-20th-century New York theater into American moviemaking. Kazan won best-director Oscars for Gentlemen's Agreement (1947) and On the Waterfront (1954) and an honorary life's achievement Academy Award in 1999. Among his other major films are A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Viva Zapata (1952), East of Eden (1955), A Face in the Crowd (1957), and Splendor in the Grass (1961). He also directed the films America, America (1963) and The Arrangement (1969), adapted from his own 1962 and 1967 novels, parts of a fictional series that also includes The Anatolian (1982) and Beyond the Aegean (1994).

Kazan, city (1989 est. pop. 1,094,000), capital of Tatarstan, E European Russia, on the Volga. It is a major historic, cultural, industrial, and commercial center. Manufactures include chemicals, explosives, electrical equipment, building materials, consumer goods, and furs. Kazan's port and shipyards on the Volga make it an important water transport center. A settlement near the city's present-day site was founded by the Eastern Bulgars c.1000 A.D. Kazan later became the capital of a powerful, independent Tatar khanate (1445), which emerged from the empire of the Golden Horde. The khanate was conquered and the city sacked in 1552 by Ivan IV. It became the capital of the Volga region in 1708 and was an outpost (18th cent.) of Russian colonization in the east. It was burned by Pugachev in 1774 and was rebuilt during the reign of Catherine II. Little remains of the Muslim period except the Suyumbeka tower in the impressive 16th-century kremlin. Tolstoy and Lenin studied at the Univ. of Kazan (founded 1804). The city also has a branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an ancient cathedral, several monasteries and mosques, and the Russian Islamic Univ. (founded 1998). The name is sometimes spelled Kasan.

Japanese Kazan-rettō or Iō-rettō

Group of three small volcanic islands, western Pacific Ocean. Administratively part of Japan, they lie south of the Bonin Islands. After they were visited by Japanese fishermen and sulfur miners in 1887, the three islands of Kita Iō, Iō (Iwo Jima; the largest), and Minami Iō were claimed by Japan in 1891. Iō was the scene of heavy fighting during World War II. After the war Japan retained residual sovereignty over the islands, but the U.S. administered them from 1951 until they were returned to Japan in 1968.

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orig. Elia Kazanjoglous

(born Sept. 7, 1909, Constantinople, Ottoman Empire—died Sept. 28, 2003, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. stage and film director. At age four he immigrated to the U.S. with his family. An actor with the Group Theatre (1932–39), he became a noted Broadway director with plays such as The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947; film, 1951), Death of a Salesman (1949, Tony Award), J.B. (1958, Tony Award), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). In 1947 he cofounded the Actors Studio. He was praised for his naturalistic style in movies such as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Gentleman's Agreement (1947, Academy Award), On the Waterfront (1954, Academy Award), and East of Eden (1955). Though bitterly attacked for his cooperation with the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early 1950s, in which he turned over names of suspected communists, he received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1999.

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City (pop., 2006 est.: 1,112,673), capital of the Tatarstan republic, western Russia. Located at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka rivers, it was founded in the 13th century by Mongols of the Golden Horde; it became the capital of an independent khanate in the 15th century. In 1552 Ivan IV (the Terrible) captured Kazan and subjugated the khanate. The city was burned in a revolt (1773–74), but after its reconstruction it grew in importance as a trading centre, and by the beginning of the 20th century it had become one of the chief manufacturing cities of Russia.

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orig. Elia Kazanjoglous

(born Sept. 7, 1909, Constantinople, Ottoman Empire—died Sept. 28, 2003, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. stage and film director. At age four he immigrated to the U.S. with his family. An actor with the Group Theatre (1932–39), he became a noted Broadway director with plays such as The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947; film, 1951), Death of a Salesman (1949, Tony Award), J.B. (1958, Tony Award), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). In 1947 he cofounded the Actors Studio. He was praised for his naturalistic style in movies such as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Gentleman's Agreement (1947, Academy Award), On the Waterfront (1954, Academy Award), and East of Eden (1955). Though bitterly attacked for his cooperation with the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early 1950s, in which he turned over names of suspected communists, he received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1999.

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