June 2023

Join us on Thursday, June 1st, 2023 at 7 PM for a screening of the film NO HARD FEELINGS (FUTUR 3) at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, followed by a discussion with filmmakers and Villa Aurora Fellows Faraz Shariat and Paulina Lorenz and LA-based producer, writer, and filmmaker Byron Jose.

In this stunning debut from director Faraz Shariat, Parvis Zareh (Benjamin Radjaipour) is a young, proud, and openly gay son of Iranian immigrants, who immerses himself in pop culture, fashion, clubbing, and casual internet sex-dates as a means of escaping the suburban boredom of his home in central Germany. As punishment for shoplifting, he is sent to perform community service in a refugee shelter where he meets and falls in love with Amon (Eidin Seyed Jalali), a young migrant who has fled Iran with his sister Banafshe (Banafshe Hourmazdi). As the three become friends, and Parvis and Amon fall in love with each other, Parvis finds himself caught between the generation of migrants before him, the third generation of newcomers, and the rest of German society. Shariat's semi-autographical story challenges homophobia and xenophobia through a vibrant visual style full of pop culture references.

"NO HARD FEELINGS is a love story, an immigrant tale and the announcement of an exciting new talent in Shariat."
- Jessica Kiang, Variety.

FUTUR 3 (NO HARD FEELINGS)
Germany (2020) 92 min., German, Farsi with English Subtitles
Director: Faraz Shariat, Screenplay: Faraz Shariat & Paulina Lorenz,
Cinematography: Simon Vu, Cast: Benjamin Radjaipour, Eidin Jalali, Banafshe Hourmazdi, Jürgen Vogel, Maryam Zaree, Producers: Paulina Lorenz, Faraz Shariat, Jost Hering, Production Companies: Jünglinge Film in co-production with Jost Hering Filme, Iconoclast Germany, La Mosca Bianca Films.

AWARDS (SELECTION):
Berlinale 2020: Teddy Award Best Queer Feature Film; Teddy Readers Award, Panorama Audience Award, Molodist Kyiv IFF 2020: Special Jury Diploma, Outfest 2020: Grand Jury Prize Best Screenplay, Inside Out LGBT 2020: Best First Feature.

2003 Villa Aurora fellow Veronika Kellndorfer's site-specific exhibition Dialogue with Silver Lake. Metabolism of Architecture at the Neutra VDL House explores the idea that architecture serves as a preservation of history. After the opening on June 3, 2023, tours of the exhibition can be booked on Saturdays.

Based on the idea that history is stored in buildings, Veronika Kellndorfer captures traces of time in architecture and transfers them into an expanded concept of the pictorial idea. She investigates how the past manifests itself in buildings and how these traces can be transformed into images of architectural spaces. Her work raises essential questions concerning representation and the capacity of art to create accurate and evocative images of architecture. After a research stay in the Neutra VDL House in March 2022, Kellndorfer has produced a collection of new works that respond to the site's context, history, and design.

Join us at 2220 Arts + Archives on Tuesday, June 27nd for a screening of works by visual artists and Villa Aurora 2023 fellows Annika Kahrs, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, moderated by Hamza Walker.

Annika Kahrs will show excerpts from three different projects: installation-stills from Le Chant des Maisons (2022), a video installation that shows a sonic and visual process of construction and deconstruction, performed by different musicians and multiple carpenters at the church of St. Bernard in Lyon, excerpts from her current work in progress, Gravity’s tune, which deals with the acoustic recording of the gravitational waves, and the lord loves changes, it’s one of his greatest delusions (2018) which is based on two iconic Julius Eastman pieces - "The Holy Presence of Joan d'Arc" and "Gay Guerrilla" - and the observation that the latter is based on Martin Luther's chorale "Ein Fester Burg Ist Unser Gott," the ultimate protest song of the Reformation movement. As in almost all of Annika Kahrs' works, the aim here is to exploit as far as possible the extensibility of music and science - both factually and figuratively. The individual voice asserts itself within a staging in which all nuances between harmonic interplay and provoked dissonance must be tested and endured. It is always a matter of unlearning rehearsed habits and apparent certainties in order to renegotiate everyday situations.

Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani will present their 2020 film Appropriation Takes You on a Weird Ride which investigates the strange German enthusiasm for Native Americans in relation to contemporary racism and its deep colonial roots. This fascination, especially with regard to the construction of a german identity, has a rather frightening than impressive chronology: It begins with the first-century Germanic Cherusci chieftan Arminius and stretches to the adventure novels of Karl May and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows in the 1800s, through the ethnographic exhibitions (Völkerschauen) in zoos and circuses and the founding of “Indian clubs” at the turn of the twentieth century, onward to the appropriation of Indigenous identities by Nazi ideologists, up until the present day, when new right-wing groups have developed an unsettling identification with the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.