2015

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

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/94849519" width="500" height="300" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Nothing Bad Can Happen - Trailer from Drafthouse Films on Vimeo.

Tore is a fervent new member of the fundamentalist Christian youth group, "Jesus Freaks".

Returning from his baptism, he and his fellow believers encounter a broken-down van belonging to a man named Benno. Tore seems to restarts the van by prayer, which he interprets as a message from God.
Soon, he moves in with Benno, his wife, young son and adolescent daughter and sleeps in a tent in the backyard, helping the family with their garden. After Benno punches him in the nose during a party for his own amusement, the violence between them escalates into a downward spiral of physical and psychological abuse.

A powerful debut from writer director Katrin Gebbe, the film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes.
Strengthened by performances from newcomers Julie Feldmeier and Swantje Kohlhof, Nothing Bad Can Happen explores a harrowing intersection of religion and heresy that is based on true events.

Related Links:

Katrin Gebbe

www.katringebbe.com

Drafthouse Films

www.drafthousefilms.com

"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

Presented in cooperation with the Villa Aurora, the Goethe Institut, Hillel at UCLA, the Consulate General of Germany and the Jewish Journal

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"

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

<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9fopXDhCdCU?showinfo=0" width="496" height="300" frameborder="0"></iframe>

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.

REENGINEERING VILLA AURORA

Villa Aurora Artist in Residence Steven Warwick / Heatsick will present a new work in progress that is being developed during his stay here. He will be joined by saxophonist and former Aurora fellow Ulrich Krieger (today member of the faculty at Calarts) to debut a special performance at the Villa Aurora.

Warwick will use the villa's pipe organ normally used for silent movies alongside Krieger on saxophone to perform a soundtrack for the Salon space, including mixed media and objects dispersed around the room as well as field recordings and video footage that he has recorded gathered during his time in the city to create an interlinking installation performance.

Special custom drinks will be served at the event, guests are encouraged to wear comfortable clothing and to bring along a cushion. You can look forward to a very special event!

T@MS and Eclectic Salon present: VARIED TRIO

Lou Harrison was not the first composer to write for violin, piano, & percussion trio, but in 1987 he did create it's most lasting and beloved work, theVaried Trio.

This program takes the Varied Trio as a point of departure and inspiration for the evening, featuring five new pieces. Takuma Itoh's Vanishing Act reimagines the role of the percussionist, eschewing pitch, with stunning effect, while Harrison disciple Bill Alves takes an opposite approach in his new work, building a custom set of tubes for the percussionist with 41 pitches to the octave. Brian Shepard embraces Lou's love of flair and the non-traditional with his raucous Last Tango on the Left, and Jason Heath carries on Harrison's exploration of extended techniques, featuring alchemical and illusionary interactions between live performers and electronic processes in his Kimiya for violin and piano. Dennis Aman builds a new microtonal percussion instrument for his Petaluma, based on a poem Lou Harrison wrote for his friend and kindred spirit, "Lines of Eleven and Eight on Harry Partch." The last line of the Lou's poem captures perfectly the essence of the final work on the program, Harrison's own Varied Trio: " it is our flesh that knows all these lovely ratios, as we know also blooms and loves and tunes and sunlight."

Three of Los Angeles' premiere chamber musicians--Yuri Inoo, Aron Kallay, and Shalini Vijayan--form the Varied Trio, a fearless chamber ensemble dedicated to the music of the here and now. Explorations in color, rhythm, and melody are born from the unique combination of violin, piano, and percussion. The trio's repertoire ranges from icons of the genre, such as Lou Harrison's Varied Trio, to new works created specifically for the group by the leading composers of today.

Masterpiece Discovery: Brahms String Sextet No.1 in B flat

Salastina Music Society’s Masterpiece Discovery concert format shines the spotlight on great pillars of the classical repertoire. The series has included Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings, Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, and many more. By sharing well-chosen musical examples (and explaining their meaning within the context of the piece as a whole), first-time and veteran concert-goers alike enjoy a uniquely enriching performance experience. Each performance is followed by a Q&A, which invites the audience to further engage with the material they’ve just heard
Currently in its fifth season, the Salastina Music Society is an L.A.-based concert series dedicated to presenting world-class performances of chamber music. Since its founding, Salastina has earned a national reputation for bringing a fresh approach to the classical concert experience, resulting in innovative performances with broad audience appeal. To date, dozens of Salastina performances have been broadcast nationally on American Public Media’s Performance Today.

followed by a Q&A with the producer and editor Mathilde Bonnefoy

In January 2013, Laura Poitras was making a film about international surveillance when she started receiving encrypted emails from “citizen four,” a source who wanted to blow the whistle on the NSA’s covert surveillance programs. In June 2013, she packed her camera and traveled with journalist Glenn Greenwald to Hong Kong, where they met Edward Snowden. The documentary resulting from this tense encounter is a real-life thriller. Poitras compresses days of questioning, waiting, and watching the world’s reaction into a masterful film that combines an intimate character study with a gripping plot that hurtles toward an explosive conclusion.

<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6ADUs8iN7NE" width="490" height="290" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Eclectic Salon & MicroFest present: Wolfgang = 2 x 3 + 4

Bach/Schweinitz: Ricercare string trio
Schweinitz: Franz and Morton piano trio [US Premiere]
Schweinitz: Plainsound String Quartet 'Holy Howl', Op. 57 [West Coast Premiere]
Formalist Quartet + Richard Valitutto

"Pure Bach thus sounds like Stockhausen, the purest of tones and no vibrato serving as effective means for speeding music to the brain. Funny things start occurring with high frequencies that lie somewhere between what would get the attention of a dog and those audible to a concertgoer. Everything in our bodies and this world vibrates, and when you mess with the essence of vibration, you mess with perception. I would not recommend driving under the mind-blowing influence of Schweinitz." Mark Swed, LA Times

Masterpiece Discovery: Brahms String Sextet No.2 in G-Major, Opus 36

Hosted by Brian Lauritzen, from KUSC and LA Philharmonic’s “Inside the Music”

Performers:  Salastina Music Society, with special guests Carrie Dennis, principal viola of Los Angeles Philharmonic and Robert deMaine, principal cello of Los Angeles Philharmonic

Salastina Music Society’s Masterpiece Discovery concert format shines the spotlight on great pillars of the classical repertoire. The series has included Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings, Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, and many more. By sharing well-chosen musical examples (and explaining their meaning within the context of the piece as a whole), first-time and veteran concert-goers alike enjoy a uniquely enriching performance experience. Each performance is followed by a Q&A, which invites the audience to further engage with the material they’ve just heard
For this set of Masterpiece Discoveries, Dr. Bill Sloan has generously loaned the artists use of his Stradivarius and Guarneri del Gesu.

A cooperation with

Checkpoint California is being supported by

Thierry & Katharina Leduc

The observation of the “return of religious longing” was the reason Dietrich Brüggemann co-wrote, with his sister Anna, the award-winning screenplay for the movie Kreuzweg (Stations of the Cross). In 14 stations, the film traces the ordeal of Mary (Lea van Acken), a young girl who suffers from her parents’ rigid religious dogmatism. Following the screening, Brüggemann and Stefan Kriekhaus—who dealt intensively with American expressions of Christianity during his stay at Villa Aurora—discuss cinematic approaches to the subject.

Dietrich Brüggemann (born in Munich, 1976) is a German film director and screenwriter. He studied film directing at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf from 2000 to 2006 and currently lives and works in Berlin. His film debut, Neun Szenen, was screened at the 2006 Berlinale and Perspektive Deutsches Kino and was awarded the Studio Hamburg Newcomer Award. In the same section he presented his second movie, Renn, wenn du kannst, in 2010. For Kreuzweg, written with his sister Anna, Brüggemann received the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlinale 2014.

Stefan Kriekhaus (born in Haan am Rhein, 1968) is a director, screenwriter, and producer. He has worked as a freelance writer since 1998, among others he has co-authered Henner Winckler`s films Klassenfahrt (2002) and Lucy (2006). In 2005 Kriekhaus made the short film Baden, his directorial debut. Kriekhaus worked on several television productions, including Verliebt in Berlin (2006, as dialogue author), and Königinnen (2009, as dramaturgic consultant). His short film Die Ruhe bleibt (2012) won the Silver Bear at the Berlinale from the International Short Film Jury.

Uljana Wolf dedicates falsche freunde (false friends), her second book of poetry, to the irritation of translation, the transgression of man and language. Here, poetic charge derives from highlighting word pairs from two languages ​​that look or sound alike but that have different meanings. The transition of bodies migrating between states plays a role, as do relations between people of different cultural backgrounds and languages. Wolf’s third volume of poetry, Meine schönste Lengevitch, looks at multilingualism and the clash of language regimes. Wolf discusses with Daniel Graf the linking of the ordinary and the political with poetry.

Uljana Wolf (born in Berlin, 1979) studied German literature, cultural studies, and English in Berlin and Krakow. She lives as a poet and translator in Berlin and Brooklyn. Wolf’s first publication, kochanie ich habe brot gekauft (2005), was followed by two collections of poems, falsche freunde and Box Office, both in 2009, and her critically acclaimed collection of prose poems, Meine schönste Lengevitch, published in 2013.As a translator, Wolf focuses on works by female lyricists from English and from Eastern European languages. She is the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards, including the 2006 Peter Huchel Prize, the 2006 Dresden Lyric Prize, the 2008 RAI Media Award / Meran Lyric Prize 2008, and, in 2013, the Wolfgang Weyrauch Prize.

Daniel Graf (born in 1980) studied modern German literature, linguistics, and musicology in Tübingen, Vienna, and Leipzig. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann. Graf has worked for the literary magazine Edit and he completed an editorial fellowship at Berlin Verlag. He then worked as a freelance editor for Rowohlt and as trainee in the rights department of Grove Atlantic, in New York. Since May 2012, he has been a non-fiction literary agent at Graf & Graf, Berlin.

(Original version) and discussion with director Heinz Emighaus and architect Arno Brandlhuber

In his film Schindlers Häuser (Schindler’s Houses) Heinz Emigholz shows forty buildings dating from the years 1921 to 1952, made by the Austrian-American architect Rudolph Schindler, whose pioneering work established a unique branch of modern architecture in Southern California. The film also offers a portrait of urban life in Los Angeles. The screening is followed by a discussion with Heinz Emigholz and the architect Arno Brandlhuber.

Heinz Emigholz (born in Achim, 1948) is a filmmaker, artist, writer, and producer whose career has generated an expansive filmic and artistic oeuvre. In 1984 Emigholz began the film series Photographie und jenseits (Photography and Beyond) a “collection of freely combinable films that deal with products of human design,” with the sub-series Architektur als Autobiografie, which presented, in chronological order, the still extant buildings of architects such as Bruce Goff, Adolf Loos, Pier Luigi Nervi, Auguste Perret, and Rudolph Schindler. From 1993 to 2013 Emigholz was a professor of experimental film at the Universität der Künste Berlin. In May of 2012 he was appointed a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.

Arno Brandlhuber (born in Wasserlos, 1964) is a Berlin-based architect and professor. He studied architecture at the Technischen Hochschule Darmstadt and the Accademia del Arte in Florence. Since 2003 he has been the chair of architecture and urban studies at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg. Brandlhuber is co-initiator of the forum Academie c/o in Berlin, which addresses the “the production of the space in the Berlin Republic.” In 2006 Brandlhuber founded his own studio and purchased a building plot in Berlin-Mitte (Brunnenstraße 9), where he built studios for artists and a gallery. Since 2010 he has been working with the idea of Berlin as a “green archipelago,” an urban concept that was developed in 1977 that promotes heterogeneity, cost-effective construction, and affordable rent.

(English version with German subtitles & Original English version) and discussion with director Rosa von Praunheim and guests

In Marta and Hilda, Rosa von Praunheim explores the relationship between Marta Feuchtwanger and Hilda Waldo after Lion Feuchtwanger’s death. Both had devoted their lives to his work and were thus confronted with special challenges when he was gone. In Can I Be Your Bratwurst, Please?,  created for the series “Erotic Tales,” by Regina Ziegler, Rosa von Praunheim toys with California’s beauty craze. A stranger from the Midwest comes to Hollywood, rents a room in a motel, and becomes a fanciful treat for all the motel guests. Both films were made during von Praunheim’s fellowship at the Villa Aurora, in 1998. Screening to be followed by Q & A with Rosa von Praunheim and guests.

Rosa von Praunheim (born as Holger Radtke in Riga, 1942) is a key representative of postmodern German film. In the 1960s his debut experimental and short films, such as Samuel Beckett (1969), and Schwestern der Revolution (1969) (Sisters of the Revolution) achieved immediate acclaim. With his 1970 documentary Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt (It’s Not the Homosexual Who’s Perverse, It’s the Society in which He Lives), von Praunheim become an icon of the gay movement in Germany. Among his accolades are the German Film Award (1979), the First Steps Honorary Award (2013), and the Special Teddy Award (2014). In March 2015 von Praunheim was awarded the German Order of Merit.

In his debut album, Intersex, Steven Warwick, aka Heatsick, musically interpreted the sexual theory of the Jewish-born physician Magnus Hirschfeld, who fled Nazi Germany in 1931. On stage, Heatsick works with a keyboard and manipulated guitar pedals to forge a sound reminiscent of the electronic music of the 1970s. In spring 2015 Steven Warwick spent time at Villa Aurora, as a fellow of Musikboards Berlin.

Saturday, June 20 @ 8:15 p.m.

In Person: Suzanne Lloyd

HAROLD LLOYD in GIRL SHY (1924, 82 min. directed by Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor)

Harold is a shy tailor's apprentice who has a pronounced stutter and is afraid of girls. He spends his lonely evenings writing a book called “The Secret of Love Making” until he is galvanized into action when he discovers that the girl he loves (Jobyna Ralston) is about to marry a bigamist. What follows is arguably the greatest race-to-the-rescue sequence of the entire silent cinema. The film's ending was the inspiration for Mike Nichol's The Graduate (1967) over forty years later. One of Lloyd's most influential and important films.

The Harold Lloyd Foundation, Flicker Alley and Villa Aurora present

SILENT SALON 2015

Veronika Kellndorfer is a Berlin-based artist who frequently works in Los Angeles; Steven Rowell is a Los Angeles-based artist who has lived and worked in Berlin and who will be returning to Berlin as a Villa Aurora fellow in 2015.

Both artists treat locations and structures that could seem benign in their overt aspect, but which in fact belie disconcerting implications that both enhance and transcend their aesthetic interest. As these implications reveal themselves to the viewer, the mere appearance of these works recedes into their accruing status as metonyms for narratives of potentially dark aspects of contemporary history.
Kellndorfer often integrates formal and conceptual aspects of a work by means of her emphasis on semi-transparent and semi-reflective layers inherent in her subjects—a strategy that simultaneously achieves and symbolizes this integration. Rowell’s research-based projects invariably generate tensions between their themes and the formal aspects of their revelation, an attribute that both reinforces their expressive affects, and invests them with aesthetic criteria that transcend conventional research or documentary.

A cooperation with the Senate Chancellery Berlin as part of the City Partnership Berlin—Los Angeles

The question of national and social boundaries has risen anew today owing to terrorism, hybrid warfare, and disaster scenarios and the concomitant dynamics of persistent monitoring. These developments have had a deep influence on our habits of perception. Where is the boundary between state and individual responsibility? Is the much-vaunted “civil society” reduced to absurdity when it undertakes to “break the habit" of social inequality? What does it mean when a city like Los Angeles faces bankruptcy? Or when a bankrupt bank-loan officer sits next to a broke debtor in a self-help group? How much ordinary life is possible if there is always "earthquake weather" (Strubel)? Last but not least: Is the “state of emergency” the dominant narrative of the present?

Travel Prologue: Imperien schauen sich an: Das eingeschossige Amerika (Empires facing each other: Little Golden America) ​​

with Felicitas Hoppe, in German

3668 IlfPetrow is the name of a mysterious minor planet, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina and named after the writer duo Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, who traveled to America on behalf of the Russian newspaper Pravda for four months in the 1930s, at the height of the Stalinist terror and the Great Depression. Under the title Das eingeschossige Amerika (literally, One-Storied America; translated as Little Golden America), the two satirists’ travelogue is an independent minded, fascinating combination of words and pictures that reflects the tension between the USSR and the USA during the emergence of fascism in Europe. Seventy years later, their steps are recounted by writer Felicitas Hoppe—together with visual artists Alexej Meschtschanow and Jana Müller, whom she met at the Villa Aurora. Das eingeschossige Amerika, published in German in 2011, by the Andere Bibliothek of the Eichborn Verlag, with a foreword by Hoppe, shows the Russian duo’s original route and the traveling artists’ reexamination of the East-West relationship—now in light of current political developments.

ENIAC Girls.

In an intriguingly abstract way it tells some of the stories around the early days of computer development in the U.S., focusing mainly on the group of young women that programmed the ENIAC computer between 1946 and 1948. ENIAC was the first fully functional computer based on purely electronic components. Without any precedence to their task, the "ENIAC girls" had to invent the basics of computer programming themselves. Mixing composed and improvised parts, acoustic trumpet playing and electronic music, Udo Moll creates a captivating concert installation.

Udo Moll's initial musical socialization process took place in the brass orchestra of the city of Uhingen. He studied empirical cultural sciences, musicology, romanistic and new German literature at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen. Furthermore, he studied the jazz trumpet with Manfred Schoof and composition with Johannes Fritsch at the Music Academy Cologne.
Udo Moll works as a freelance composer, trumpeter and in the field of electronic music.

For more Information about his work, check out Udo's website:


www.udomoll.de

Screening of FASSBINDER IN LALALAND and performance DRINK COLD, PISS WARM by Anna McCarthy

DRINK COLD, PISS WARM*

FASSBINDER IN LALALAND by Anna McCarthy

The short film tells the story of a woman living in Los Angeles who pretends to be Fassbinder. She speaks Bavarian with a strong American accent. On the occassion of “her” birthday she gives the first interview in 33 years.
Commissioned by and as part of the Fassbinder festival in Munich 2015 and filmed on location and during McCarthy's fellowship at Villa Aurora, Los Angeles
Starring residents of Villa Aurora: Friedel Schmoranzer-Johnson, Margit Kleinman, Diana Norris, Marius Lorenz, Mathilde Bonnefoy, Cyrill Lachauer, Antje Engelmann, Udo Moll.

www.annamccarthy.de

Susan Philipsz and Christian Jankowski are among the most remarkable artists working today. Philipsz explores the emotional and psychological effects of sound on the reception of spaces. At the end of 2015 she will travel to California as fellow of Villa Aurora to study the intelligence activities of the FBI in the context of exile experiences of Hanns Eisler, which will result in a video and sound installation. Jankowski’s work is best known for ironically and humorously confronting the supposed certainties and mechanisms of mass- media society. His work 16mm Mystery, created during his stay at the Villa Aurora and shown at “Checkpoint California,” evokes 9/11 via the staging of collapsing skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles. In this talk the two artists illuminate their working methods from a California perspective.

matanicola (Nicola Mascia und Matan Zamir) / Claudia De Serpa Soares / Jeff Wood

“Intervention #4” is a continuation of matanicola’s ongoing improvisation series “versus,” which will be featured during the exhibition Checkpoint California. Expanding on their idea of two or more artists standing in opposition to each other, the series of events focuses on improvisation as a creative act. The goal is to allow a single happening to emerge out of each confrontation, each of which takes place in a different city or venue, and each time with a different combination of artists. The performances have a very flexible format, without any rules or long rehearsal periods, they seem as if they are occurring spontaneously. An instant composition is being created as it is being performed in front of an audience, exposing the fragility and risks taken during the creative process. The site specific performances are deeply inspired and influenced by the architecture of the performance venues; a reaction to space itself and a chance to discover and collect new choreographic material.

matanicola

The Israeli choreographer and performer Matan Zamir and Italian Nicola Mascia founded the Berlin-based collaborative duo matanicola after working with prestigious international companies and artists such as: Sasha Waltz & Guests, Batsheva Dance Company, Benoit Lachambre, Ohad Naharin, Emio Greco/PC and Yasmeen Godder amongst others. Their body of work, thus far, includes six productions: “under” (Kurt Jooss Prize 2007, created in 2005, in collaboration with Israeli choreographer Yasmeen Godder); “Ladies first” (2007); “What on Earth” (2010); “Piece of me” (2011); “To this purpose only” (2013, for and with the Italian company Fattoria Vittadini, “bodieSLANGuage” (2014); as well as an ongoing improvisation series: “versus” (2006).

Their work has been commissioned, co-produced and supported by Sasha Waltz & Guests, Sophiensaele, Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Tanz im August – Internationales Tanzfest and Radialsystem V in Berlin, Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V., European Association for Jewish Culture, Goethe-Institut and Grand Theatre Groningen. matanicola has been invited to numerous international festivals. In 2012, the duo was invited by the Festival Les Grandes Traversées in Bordeaux, to curate the twelfth edition of the festival entitled “matanicola’s Magical Mystery Tour.” matanicola has also been collaborating as choreographers and performers on music videos and live shows with artists such as Peaches, Hanayo and Mignon.

Saturday, July 11 @ 8:15 p.m.

Mabel Normand Night: curated by Josh Morrison of Flicker Alley

A celebration of the legendary silent movie actress Mabel Normand

FATTY AND MABEL ADRIFT (1916, 30 mins.)

Fatty and wife Mabel, together with dog Luke, spend their honeymoon at cottage on the seashore.  Fatty’s rival Al St. John and his buddies set the cottage adrift at high tide, while the couple is asleep. They awaken surrounded by water with the cottage afloat.

THE EXTRA GIRL (1923, 72 mins.)

When Sue (Normand) arrives in Hollywood to sign her movie contract, she finds out, it was a case of mistaken identity, and ends up working in the props department of the studio. However, her parents wanting to remedy the situation, come to Hollywood and invest money with a questionable individual.

The Harold Lloyd Foundation, Flicker Alley and Villa Aurora present:

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.

The Harold Lloyd Foundation, Flicker Alley and Villa Aurora present:

The Harold Lloyd Foundation, Flicker Alley and Villa Aurora present

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 and it had its Berlin premiere on the occasion of the Lange Nacht der Museen last August in a cooperation of Villa Aurora and Deutsche Bank KunstHalle.

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.

Klick here to see more images

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.

The admission is €18 (€12) and allows entrance to all institutions participating at 35th Lange Nacht der Museen. For children under 12 years admission is free. Tickets are available online.

Saturday, August 29, 2015, 21pm
Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle / Atrium
Unter den Linden 13/15
Entrance Charlottenstraße, 10117 Berlin

A cooperation of Deutsche Bank KunstHalle and Villa Aurora

Like Cage, Gerhard Stäbler is an energetic shaman of possibility, interested in generating innovation by any means available. (…) He is a brilliant transformer of existing languages and signifiers – but, like Cage himself, he is a clear-eyed, conscious person, aware that we can all exist in our everyday worlds, and always ready to imaginatively project aspects of that awareness onto the people and spaces that are around us.
Paul Attinello

Gerhard Stäbler was born in 1949 in Wilhelmsdorf, near Ravensburg in Southern Germany. In 1968 he began studies in composition at the Nordwestdeutsche Musikakademie in Detmold, continuing at the Folkwang-Hochschule in Essen. The Cornelius Cardew Memorial Prize (1982) was the first in a series of awards, prizes, and commissions.
Stäbler has been active not only as a composer, but also in politics and social organizations. He founded the the Aktive Musik new music festival and was the artistic director of the 1995 World Music Days of the ISCM, held in the Ruhr Valley. Since 2012, the two composers have put together a series of concerts at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the series Naturally Beautiful! in Benrath Castle.

Kunsu Shim was born as the son of re-migrants from Japan in 1958 in Busan, South Korea. The ocean provided the adolescent Shim with the experience of spatial openness and expanse. This notion can be seen later as the basis of his production. He studied composition in Seoul and in Stuttgart/Germany with Helmut Lachenmann. His concert tours led the award-winning composer around the globe, he has been awarded several artists residences and lectured at Folkwang-Hochschule. Kunsu Shim resides permanently in Germany.

Hosted by the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library of the USC Libraries, the conference will also feature programs and events developed in collaboration with USC’s Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies, USC’s Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life, Villa Aurora, and other institutions in the Los Angeles area. The conference will explore Lion Feuchtwanger’s Jewish identity, his family background, and the Jewish milieus he belonged to in Germany, France, and Southern California. We will emphasize the intersections of German and Jewish identities and ask how they changed with the rise of the Nazis and the experience of living in exile. We will also devote attention to Feuchtwanger’s knowledge of Jewish sources and the connections to Judaism that ran through his life and work. A particular focus will be on new research concerning Jewish themes in Feuchtwanger’s works (and in the works of his brothers and other emigrants).

Preliminary Program and Time Schedule

Thursday, September 17, 2015

9:30AM Participants will be picked up from hotel and shuttled to Villa Aurora, Pacific Palisades

11-11.30AM Welcome address

11:30AM-1:00PM PANEL 1: Setting the Stage: Lion Feuchtwanger and Judaism Chair: TBD
Jonathan Skolnik: Judaism and Exile in the 1930s: Lion Feuchtwanger in Comparative Context
Anne Hartmann: Lion Feuchtwanger and the Question of (his) Jewish identity in Stalinist Russia
Margrit Frolich: Lion Feuchtwanger’s Jewish Historical Consciousness in America

1:00-2:30PM Lunch break

3:30-5PM IFS Member-Meeting & Dinner
5PM Shuttle buses leave for Santa Monica/Aero Theater

6:00PM Frank Stern Introduction to Jud Suess (1934)

Friday, September 18, 2015

9:30-11:00AM PANEL 4: Other Writers And Judaism II
Chair: Joerg Thunecke
Sven Steinberg: Edgar Hahnewalds Roman “Karl Herschowitz kehrt heim”
Michaela Enderle-Ristori: Umwertung aller Werte? Heinrich Mann und das Judentum
Doris Berger: Light & Noir. The Light & Noir exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center and audience
reactions to it

11:00-11:15AM Coffee Break

11:15AM-12:15PM PANEL 5: Feuchtwanger and Israel
Chair: TBD
Yael Feldman: “The Old man has Returned to his People”: The Reception of Feuchtwanger’s
Josephus Trilogy in Pre-state Israel
Paul Lerner: Feuchtwanger and Arnold Zweig on the Nature and Challenge of the Jewish People

12:15-1:45PM Lunch Break

1:45-2:45PM PANEL 6: TBD
Chair: TBD
Sean Nye: From Sepp Trautwein to Bertram de Born: Feuchtwanger on Music, Exile, and Religion
Marje Schuetze-Coburn: Aufbau & Lion Feuchtwanger: Perspectives on News and Culture as Exiles

2:45-3:00PM Coffee Break

3.00-4.30PM PANEL 7: TBD
Chair: TBD
Galit Hasan-Rokem: Sources of Complexity: Biblical, Rabbinical, and Mystical Elements in Jud Suess
Ian Wallace: Jued Suess (1934): The British Dimension
Adrian Feuchtwanger: A Post-Nationalist Weimar Novel? A Third Generation View of Der Juedische
Krieg (1932)

4:30-4:45PM Coffee Break

September 19, 2015

9:30-10:30AM PANEL 8: Judaism & Christianity in Feuchtwanger’s Work Chair: TBD
Detlef Blasche: Das Christentum in Feuchtwangers Werk (in German) Romana Trefil: Das Judentum Feuchtwangers und seine literarische Reflexion vor dem Hintergrund historischer Aspekte und unter Beruecksichtigung seiner im US Exil enstandenen Romane Die Juedin von Toledo und Jefta und seine Tocher

10:30-10:45AM Coffee Break

10:45-12:00PM 20 years of the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library at USC - a tour & exhibit

12:00-1:00PM Lunch Break

1:00-2:00PM PANEL 9: Graduate Student Papers I Chair: TBD
Marlene Danzinger: “Wie Punkersdorf unter Palmen” The Voices of Uncredited Viennese Exile Actresses
Sarah Kaufmann: “Die Zweite Reihe” Viennese Exile Filmmakers Behind the Screen

2:00-2:15PM Coffee Break

2:15-3:45PM PANEL 10: Graduate Student Papers II Chair: Michaela Ullmann
Adi Nester: German and Jewish Identity in the Works of Erich Zeisl and Paul Ben-Haim
Sebastian Musch: Feuchtwanger between Judaism and Buddhism Laura Marie Reiling: „Exilwirrwarr“ – Heimat, Haus und jüdische Identität in Volker H. Altwassers Bruno Frank-Roman Glückliches Sterben

In the 1930s, at the at the height of the Stalinist terror and the Great Depression, writer duo Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov were sent to America on behalf of the Russian newspaper Pravda. Under the title »Das eingeschossige Amerika« (literally, Single-Storied America; translated as Little Golden America), the two satirists’ travelogue is an independent minded, fascinating combination of words and pictures that reflects the tension between the USSR and the USA during the emergence of fascism in Europe.

Seventy years later, their steps are recounted by writer Felicitas Hoppe—together with visual artists Alexej Meschtschanow and Jana Müller, whom she met at the Villa Aurora. »Das eingeschossige Amerika«, published in German in 2011, by the Andere Bibliothek, with a foreword by Hoppe, shows the Russian duo’s original route and the traveling artists’ reexamination of the East-West relationship—now in light of current political developments.

Copresented with Goethe-Institut Los Angeles

Music/Words is an interdisciplinary live performance series exploring connections between poetry and music.

Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 1 and Brahms’ Sonata # 3 op. 5 in f minor will be on the program of ECLECTIC SALON # 9.
Movements of the Sonata will be alternating with readings of Brecht’s poetry, some of which were created during his years in exile in Santa Monica.
Schoenberg and Brecht were frequent guests at Villa Aurora, as were other intellectuels and artists of the time.

A cooperation of Literarisches Colloquiums Berlin and Villa Aurora.

Celebrating 20 Years of the Artists Residence Villa Aurora

THE ARTIST IN TIMES OF CRISIS

Moderator: Peter Tokofsky
Senior Public Programs Specialist
J. Paul Getty Museum

Panelists:
Mary Beth Heffernan, Gerd Ludwig and John Malpede

The panel discussion is followed by a reception featuring music by Dublab.

This event is generously supported by

Performance Lab

Feuchtwanger Re-Freshed #2

School of Dramatic Arts, via the Western Edge Playwrights' Salon of the school's Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing, the USC Libraries Feuchtwanger Collection and Villa Aurora present:

FEUCHTWANGER RE-FRESHED #2:

Graduate playwrights and their instructors will present short scenes inspired by Feuchtwanger's works. Actors include students from USC's BFA program, recent graduates, and former head of MFA Acting Andrew Robinson.

What happens to great ideas that never get the chance to grow into stories? Feuchtwanger collected long lists of ideas for novels and plays that he intended to write, but was unable to get to in his busy lifetime. The USC MFA Dramatic Writing playwrights have taken five of these ideas and turned them into short plays, bringing Feuchtwanger back to life in our own complex time.

The show will be followed by a reception.

Double Jeopardy

Hollywood Emigrés and the Second Red Scare (1947-1952): Migration and Integration

This colloquium investigates the precarious conditions of directors, screen writers and actors who immigrated to the United States around the time of the Second World War in order to escape persecution in Nazi Germany and Eastern Europe, only to find themselves persecuted in the 1950’s by the House Un-American Activities Committee, spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy. In many ways their condition mirrors the uncertain realities of refugees of our days like those fleeing the tyranny of the Syrian Government and ISIS only to find themselves unwelcome in their new homelands.

Including original filmic materials to illustrate their lectures, distinguished Film Studies, and German Studies scholars Doris Berger (Exhibitions Curator at the Academy Museum) and Jan-Christopher Horak (Director, UCLA Film & Television Archive) and Turner Prize-winning visual artist Susan Philipsz focus on the lives of five émigrés whose lives express unique narratives in relationship to this phenomena: Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler, Lion Feuchtwanger, Paul Henreid and Edward G. Robinson.

Audio and cinematic renditions of the Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht testimonies before the House Committee on Un-American Activities will be presented.

A reception will follow the colloquium

Double Jeopardy constitutes the second event in a series of works by Warren Neidich titled The Hollywood Blacklist Project, 2014-2017. The first work, Book Exchange: The Hollywood Blacklist, premiered January 2015 at Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair. The third installment, Threshold and Re-Imagining the Hollywood Walk of Fame, will premiere at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibition in 2016 and 2017.

Curated by Warren Neidich and co-sponsored by the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles with the support of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), and the Villa Aurora.

Eclectic Salon and Salastina present

MASTERPIECE DISCOVERY

Selections from Handel's Messiah

Do you like Christmas? Cookies? Twinkly lights and candles? What about music and singing?

If you answered yes to any of the above, may we suggest that you join us in an intimate exploration of the vivid word-painting, profound spirituality, and timeless splendor of Handel's beloved Messiah.

Has there ever been a Christmas without one? The Messiah is in a dead heat with the Nutcracker for the title of "Most Beloved Holiday Work of All Time." Don't just listen to it for the millionth time. Get to know it better. Come to a deeper understanding of why it's so enduring.

This festive Holiday edition of Masterpiece Discovery with Brian Lauritzen includes a sing along of the Hallelujah Chorus.

And yes, there will be cookies.

Guest Artists
Jessica Rivera, Soprano
Audrey Babcock, Mezzo-Soprano
Arnold Livingston Geis, Tenor
Keith Colclough, Bass-Baritone
Maia Jasper White and Kevin Kumar, Co-Artistic Directors and Violins
Zachary Dellinger, Viola
Jacob Braun, Cello
Maksim Velichkin, Harpsichord
Brian Lauritzen, Resident Host