Villa Aurora

My first reason for being in Los Angeles is to attend to a conference about the writer Lion Feuchtwanger (same reason I went to Sanary two years ago); the opening day was today, and as this year's main theme is "Feuchtwanger and Film", that was what the lectures were about. The most interesting one presented a Russian film based on Die Geschwister Opperman from 1939, which had the bad luck of being a film about a Jewish family in Germany in 1933 (which is when Feuchtwanger published the novel, one of his most urgently written books)... and opening just a short time before the Hitler-Stalin pact. At which point it became politically inconvenient for Stalin & Co. and was withdrawn from the theatres, and by the time the Stalin-Hitler alliance was forgotten, so was the film. The lecturer showed us excerpts, and despite some changes made from the novel (the young idealistic Zionist daughter of one character in the novel becomes the young idealistic Communist daughter, the family's chauffeur is changed into a working class hero lecturing his employer's son on the big picture), it seems to have resulted in a very intriguing film.

Meeting fellow Feuchtwangerians I last saw two years ago in France was lovely; turns out I'm the only one who was given a guest room in the Villa Aurora (where Feuchtwanger lived, and where I had a scholarship in 1995) for the duration of my stay in Los Angeles. Which is great for me, because the rest of them has to stay in hotels, and the Villa Aurora looks like this:


( Cut for picspam )

10 things to love meme for Babylon 5 and Heroes

While I wait for today's conference to begin, a meme from various people on my flist:

A list of ten things that you love about your current fandom(s) posted to LJ and a challenge to all of your f'list to do the same.

Because I'm feeling nostalgic, I'll start with one of my older fandoms:

( Babylon 5 )

And now for a current fandom:

( Heroes )