Villa Aurora Events Archive
August 2015
3rd Annual SILENT SALON
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
Saturday, August 1 @ 8:00 p.m.
Curated by Suzanne Lloyd
Introduced by Cari Beauchamp
Cari Beauchamp is an award-winning historian, documentary filmmaker and author of Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood. She is also the resident scholar of the Mary Pickford Foundation and will be talking about her latest book, My First Time in Hollywood: Stories from the Pioneers, Misfits and Dreamers who made the Movies.
SAILOR-MADE MAN (1924, 48 mins. Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer, starring Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis)
The idle son of a millionaire, Lloyd joins the Navy to proof himself worthy of marrying the girl he loves. Having landed in a harbor in the Orient, his beloved who is vacationing with her father nearby, is kidnapped by a lecherous maharajah and his hordes. The time to proof his heroism has come.
“Lloyd exhibits the athletic prowess and sight gags that cemented his reputation as one of the great comedy legends of all time.” (Rotten Tomatoes)
HIGH AND DIZZY (1920, 26 mins. Directed by Hal Roach. starring Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis)
The film revolves around a tipsy doctor, his sleepwalking patient and love interest, and a prohibition-era police-man, who the drunk doctor and buddy want to get away from. The climactic, skyscraper-scaling scene anticipates the later Safety Last (1923)
Michael Mortilla is a composer, conductor, arranger, music director, and accompanist. In his native Manhattan, he worked with and composed for dance legend Martha Graham. For 14 years Mortilla taught music, production, and theater & dance accompaniment at the Department of Theater & Dance at UC Santa Barbara.
Michael has received numerous commissions including from The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Olympic Games Art Festival. Mortilla’s scores have been performed throughout the U.S. from the White House to the AMPAS and from Lincoln Center to the first ever broadcast of a feature over the internet (Charlie Chaplin’s “The Rink”). He plays internationally on TV and in theaters.
Partners
The Harold Lloyd Foundation, Flicker Alley and Villa Aurora present:
Fellows&Friends @ Fire And Forget
Berlin
Fire & Forget. On Violence
In August, as part of our Fellows&Friends series, we visited the exhibition *FIRE AND FORGET. ON VIOLENCE* at the KunstWerke in Berlin. The term “fire and forget,” which originates from military jargon, refers to weapon systems that, once fired, seek out their target on their own. The exhibition uses this military expression as a starting point for an examination of common notions of war and violence. To this end, it focuses on the most visible agents of violence: weapons.
After assistant curator Nina Mende gave us an introduction to the exhibition’s concept, Dean Markovic and Mona Jas guided us through the exhibition. Following the tour and an aperitif in the KW courtyard, we attended a discussion between Villa Fellow Rosa von Praunheim and television journalist Tina Mendelsohn on the topic of violence.
3rd Annual SILENT SALON
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
Saturday, August 22@ 8:00 p.m.
curated by Josh Morrison of Flicker Alley
SILENT COMEDY HOLLYWOOD !
A look at various silent comedies turning the camera on themselves and their industry!
A FILM JOHNNY (1914, 15 mins., starring Charlie Chaplin)
Charlie’s attempts to meet his favorite movie actress doesn’t make him a lot of friends at the Keystone Studio.
A classic slapstick comedy featuring Chaplin (as stagehand David) mostly manhandling large props. The plotline also includes a strike by the stagehands and the first Hollywood gay jokes.
THE DARE DEVIL (1923, 20 mins, starring Ben Turpin, directed by Del Lord)
“The Dare-Devil” is one of the comedy classics of the silent screen, a consistently funny slapstick parody on moviemaking. While the plot about a pampered star insisting a stunt man do all the difficult scenes might seem a bit cliché in the 21st century, it was a newer concept in this film made over 90 years ago. (AXS Entertainment)
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413 – A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA (1923, 13 mins.)
This short experimental film tells the story of a man who comes to Hollywood to become a star, only to fail and work as extra 9413.
Michael Mortilla is a composer, conductor, arranger, music director, and accompanist. In his native Manhattan, he worked with and composed for dance legend Martha Graham. For 14 years Mortilla taught music, production, and theater & dance accompaniment at the Department of Theater & Dance at UC Santa Barbara.
Michael has received numerous commissions including from The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Olympic Games Art Festival. Mortilla’s scores have been performed throughout the U.S. from the White House to the AMPAS and from Lincoln Center to the first ever broadcast of a feature over the internet (Charlie Chaplin’s “The Rink”). He plays internationally on TV and in theaters.
Partners
The Harold Lloyd Foundation, Flicker Alley and Villa Aurora present
is land a part
Berlin
Information
The poet Uljana Wolf and the composer Marc Sabat met in 2010 during their stay at Villa Aurora and together they developed "is land a part" in 2014.
The work forms a cycle of reflections based freely on Wolf's "false friends" (kookbooks, Berlin 2009) and was composed after the text's English translation by Susan Bernofsky, "False Friends" (Ugly Duckling Press, Brooklyn 2011). Each text is based on a letter of the alphabet, meandering in sound and meaning, to open an associative space between and beyond the two languages German and English. Wolf's work, which takes up the idea of translating, opens new perspectives to explore "harmony" perceived in music. Imagine several streams of sound flowing side by side that seem to reveal a common source to the audience at times or unite like islands before they split up again to follow their own course.
Uljana Wolf, recorded text
Marc Sabat, live electronics
Frank Reinecke, Bass
Duration: 35 minutes
Uljana Wolf lives as a poet and translator in Berlin and Brooklyn.
Marc Sabat, Canadian composer and audio artist, living in Berlin since 1999th
Frank Reinecke was born in Hamburg and studied with Klaus Stoll at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin.
The concert is part of the 35th Lange Nacht der Museen and accompanies the exhibition Photo Poetics: An Anthology at Deutsche Bank KunstHalle.
Partner
A cooperation of Deutsche Bank KunstHalle and Villa Aurora