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Get Prepared for Oscar Night – Exploring the Movies in L.A. Exhibitions

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Its Oscar Time! – The 87th Academy Awards Ceremony is February 22, 2015

The 87th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will honor the best films of 2014 and will take place February 22, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles.

If you’d like to catch up on some movie history in particularly German-American related, then go see some of these great exhibitions out here in Los Angeles that for sure will get you in the right mood for the grand night. And the winner is… !

Light & Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933–1950

The Skirball Cultural Center co-presents with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences the exhibition Light & Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933–1950, which pays homage to the lives and work of émigré actors, directors, writers, and composers who fled Nazi Europe and made a lasting impact on American cinema and culture. Explore how the experiences of German-speaking exiles and émigrés such as of directors Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang, actress Marlene Dietrich and many more, influenced the classic films of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

“The exhibition demonstrates how the experiences of exodus and exile affected the lives and work of émigrés in many different ways. It is a story of immigration, acculturation, and innovation that intersects with the flourishing of Hollywood as an American cultural phenomenon.” (Skirball Center)

The exhibition will close March 1st with the screening of the PBS documentary, Cinema’s Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood at 11am.

Parallel to the above mentioned exhibition a site specific installation by Austrian artist Isa Rosenberger can be visited. Café Vienne honors the recently rediscovered work of Austrian American Jewish writer Gina Kaus (1894–1985) and the cultural role of the Viennese coffee house.

LACMA presents Haunted Screens: German Cinema in the 1920s

This exhibition explores masterworks of German Expressionist cinema and features over 150 drawings, as well as manuscripts, posters, and set models, the majority gathered by Lotte Eisner, German emigrée film historian and author of the pioneering 1952 text The Haunted Screen.

Haunted Screens closes on April 26 and is included in the general admissions ticket.

Further reads: Expressionist Films ad the German Trauma 

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Source: Skirball Cultural Center, LACMA

Photo: Wikipedia

OSCAR SHORTS : And the Winner was – “The Lost Thing”

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After the Gruffalo didn’t win the Oscar after all, I took my little son to watch the Oscar Animation Shorts the other day. According to the judgment of my son the first short Madagascar was quite boring. Asking him for his favorite one, his vote fell for none of the nominated ones but for one of the additional award wining shorts: “The Cow Who Wanted to Be A Hamburger is a children’s fable about the power of advertising…” (Everything Burger blog). I am not sure if it was the story or the way the film was made, that intrigued him, but I found the film, with its intensely flickering pictures  somewhat headache causing.  The story though was quite reminiscent of what we go through as parents all the time. In short : Mom& Dad have no clue about anything and really don’t understand what their kids really want and desire. Despite what the parents try to tell them, kids have to go out into the world, do their own experiments and make mistakes and hopefully learn and grow by mastering them. So also the little calf in the movie. Reality forces it to wake up from its splendid dream of life and face the real world and make some real decisions.

Let’s Pollute seems like an instructional movie, yet is a satire which is initially somewhat confusing for kids. My little son needed some explanation, since he was startled by the movies apparent support of pollution. Yet, he thought it was quite funny.

Pixar’s entry Day & Night is cute and is typically Disney. Of all the shown shorts this is the one, let’s say most pleasing to the eye, since it is the animation what we are most used to watching. Gruffalo, the German/British entry, is a cute children short, in the sense of what one expects from a kid’s movie: pleasantly drawn and clear images, simple story . My son and I enjoyed watching it and the voices of the characters are captivating.

The Lost Thing , by Shaun Tan, in comparison, has extravagant drawings as well as a profound storyline. The movie appears to have a subliminal depressing tone in my opinion, but it has the most  imaginative pictures and storyline; both reminiscent of Dali’s surreal paintings. The pictures are not as easy and clean to watch and understand as in Gruffalo, but very complex and full of little odd details. It’s  definitely very artistic and deserves the Oscar.

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“The Gruffalo” – Germany’s Oscar-nominated animated short

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Animated short films are in the OSCAR spotlight. This year’s film nominees can be seen in theaters from Friday on in Los Angeles. “The Gruffalo,” is Germany’s Oscar-nominated animated short, produced by A Magic Light Pictures Production. The LA Times calls the film ‘a charming fable about outsmarting one’s fears.