SHADOWS IN PARADISE

Documentary by Peter Rosen

Music Performed by ensemble recherche, Martin Fahlenbock, Jaime González, Shizuyo Oka, Jean-Pierre Collot, Melise Mellinger, Barbara Maurer and Åsa Åkerberg

Combining interviews with rare archival footage, Shadows in Paradise portrays the vibrant atmosphere of the Los Angeles German-speaking exile community during the 1930s and 1940s, revealing their struggles, frustrations and accomplishments.

By 1939, 30,000 intellectuals and radicals were exiled from Europe; eighty percent of which were Jewish. The events of WWII forced many of the greatest minds of the 20th century into exile in the United States.

The scores of émigrés who settled in Southern California, such as composers Arnold Schoenberg, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Ernst Krenek, Erich Zeisl, and Walter Arlen, writers Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, and director Fritz Lang, briefly transformed the area into one of the capitals of world culture, and profoundly altered the horizons of American music, literature, and the arts.

‘What is homelessness? My home is in the works that I took with me. They are the German language and style of thought, the traditional treasures of my country and people. Where I am, there is Germany… Exile creates a special form of life, and the various reasons for banishment make little difference. The sharing of a common fate is more fundamental than such nuances of opinion. And people find their way to one another.’ Thomas Mann

Picture format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sounds formats DVD: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Original Language: English

Subtitles: German, French

Running time: 55 mins

Euroarts DVD 2058268