January 13, 2024 8:00 pm
Providing a compelling personal look at Arnold Schoenberg and some of the key factors that shaped him, Jacaranda, in conjunction with UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, is screening two documentary films by Emmy-nominated director, editor and writer Hilan Warshaw and Emmy-winner Peter Rosen that focus on different aspects of the legendary composer’s private life and career.
Through the Darkness (52 minutes, 2021) tells the true story of two artistic geniuses – Schoenberg and painter Richard Gerstl – whose passion for their art and the same woman drew them together and ultimately drove one of them to take his life and changed the course of artistic history.
Shadows in Paradise: Hitler’s Exiles in Hollywood (56 minutes, 2008), directed by Rosen and edited by Warshaw, chronicles the exile of tens of thousands of Germanic intellectuals and radicals, including many of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, among them Schoenberg, to the US and LA, which was transformed by the exodus into one of the cultural centers of the world. Thomas Mann wrote, “Exile creates a special form of life, and the various reasons for banishment make little difference – the sharing of a common fate are more fundamental than such nuances of opinion… people find their way to one another. All of German literature settled here.”