Villa Aurora Events Archive
February 2015
Susan Sontag Revisited
Berlin
Information
Sontag combined ingenuity and a boundless curiosity with unconventional critical analyses and avantgarde commitments; open towards all things new in culture and art, she supported many artists just breaking onto the scenes of literature, fine art, and film from the early 1960s onwards and helped them gain worldwide recognition.
Who was Susan Sontag? The SUSAN SONTAG REVISITED series of events will seek to answer this question in readings, performances, lectures and film essays created specifically for this symposium. Some ten years after Susan Sontag’s death, we will commemorate this great universal intellectual and at the same time demonstrate the currency and relevance of her reflections for the present day.
20.01. – 05.02.2015: Film series at Kino Arsenal, Potsdamer Straße 2, 10785 Berlin
As a tribute to Sontag the filmmaker, Kino Arsenal will present a retrospective from 20 January to 5 February 2015.
9.01. + 30.01.2015 from 12:30h: Symposium at ICI – Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin, Christinenstraße 18 – 19, Haus 8, 10119 Berlin, free admission
The two-day symposium at the ICI Berlin features lectures, conversations, talks, and film essays by artists and scholars who were closely connected to Susan Sontag and have dealt with her work intensively.
For more information visit Facebook or the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry
Partners: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung; Berliner Senat; Hauptstadtkulturfonds; Arsenal, Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V.; SYNEMA - Gesellschaft für Film und Medien; DEFA Stiftung
Screening of "An Apartment in Berlin"
Laemmle's Music Hall (9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA)
Information
"An Apartment in Berlin"
presented by the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival
Q&A with director Alice Agneskirchner, moderated by Susan Freudenheim, Executive Editor of the Jewish Journal
Attracted by its cosmopolitan and international atmosphere, Berlin has become a magnet for young Israelis - and the three characters at the center of this film are no exception. But Berlin is also the place where the Nazis planned the systematic extermination of the Jews. Three generations after the Holocaust, Eyal, Yael and Yoav embark on a complex journey into the past by retracing the lives and refurnishing the original apartment of the Adlers, Galicia Jews who came to Berlin 100 years ago to fulfill their dream of a free and successful life. Along with the filmmaker they examine the connection to the tragic history of Germany while turning the apartment into a space for discussion and encounters with both the present as well as the past.
Director: Alice Agneskirchner
Documentary/German with English subtitles/84 minutes
Partners
Presented in cooperation with the Villa Aurora, the Goethe Institut, Hillel at UCLA, the Consulate General of Germany and the Jewish Journal
Lecture: Laurence Rickels - GERMANY: A Science Fiction
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
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“In Rickels’s work, as, for instance, in Lars von Trier’s films, misery is not a problem to be resolved and overcome, but the foundation for future insights, a setting in which new and difficult material will be revealed in a dialectic that often includes disaster." - Artforum
In I Think I Am: Philip K. Dick, Laurence A. Rickels investigated the renowned science fiction author's collected work by way of its relationship to the concept and condition of schizophrenia. In his new book, Germany: A Science Fiction, he focuses on psychopathy as the undeclared diagnosis implied in flunking the empathy test. The switch from psychosis to psychopathy as an organizing limit opens the prospect of a genealogy of the Cold War era, which Rickels begins by examining Dick's The Simulacra and follows out with readings of Simulacron 3, Fahrenheit 451, The Day of the Triffids, This Island Earth and Gravity’s Rainbow, among many other genealogical stations.
Participant
Laurence A. Rickels is emeritus professor of German and comparative literature at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Currently he is Professor of Art and Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts-Karlsruhe as well as Sigmund Freud Professor of Media and Philosophy at the European Graduate School. Visit Rickels online at: LARickels.com
Pre-Oscar Reception
Los Angeles
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On the day before the official Academy Awards Ceremony German Films and Villa Aurora invited to the traditional reception for the German Academy Award nominees in the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. More than 300 people celebrated the nominated films with German participation: "Grand Hotel Budapest", "Citizen Four", "Ida" and "Salt of the Earth"
Philipp Leinemann’s "The Kings Surrender"
Goethe-Institut Los Angeles (5750 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 100, Los Angeles, CA 90036)
Information
Dir. Philipp Leinemann, Screenplay: Philipp Leinemann Germany, 2014, 104 min. German with English subtitles, digital. Starring: Roland Zehrfeld, Mišel Matičević, Mohamed Issa, Hendrik Duryn, Tilman Strauß, Oliver Konietzny
Awarded the Bavarian Film Prize 2014 for Best Cinematography, and the Jury prize for Best Narrative Feature at the 2014 Austin Film Festival, director and screenwriter Philipp Leinemann’s feature tells the story of violent youth gangs and a police force way out of its depth.
When a police operation goes awry and two policemen die, the powder keg threatens to ignite as the SWAT team knows only one goal: revenge - irrespective of the law.
In a frenzied hunt for the culprit, it's everybody against everybody else, and the whole neighborhood is torn apart by one question: Is it friendship or justice that really matters?
Discussion with filmmaker Philipp Leinemann, and reception following the screening. Presented with the support of Walker + Worm Film
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Partner
With this screening, the Villa Aurora and Goethe-Institut Los Angeles continue their collaboration. Under the label “Villa @ Goethe”, artists residing at the Villa Aurora have the opportunity to showcase their projects (past, present, and future) with the friends, patrons and guests here at the Goethe-Institut.