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Shadows in Paradise

By 1939, 30,000 intellectuals and radicals were exiled from Europe, 80% were Jewish. These dramatic events sent many of the greatest minds of the 20th century into exile in the United States. The manna of creative intensity that hovered over Berlin in the 20’s, - in music, art, theater and film –that glow of aesthetic productivity was extinguished. In some ways, Los Angeles in the 30’s and early 40’s may be seen as its afterglow…when scores of émigrés, fleeing the upsurge of European fascism, briefly transformed Southern California into one of the capitals of world culture, and profoundly altered the horizons of American music, literature, and the arts.

Arte  ( France and Germany )  KCET/PBS

Co-produced with WDR Cologne

54 minutes