July 2019

Talking pictures came relatively late to Japan: it would be 1930 before a feature-length Japanese talkie was released, and silent films continued to be produced throughout the decade such as Yasujiro Ozu’s rarely screened 1933 drama Dragnet Girl (Hijosen no onna), which didn't even feature a musical score. However, 2017 Villa Aurora fellow Udo Moll will be at hand to create the sound track for this master piece, full of stunning imagery and distinctive mise-en-scène.

"Dragnet Girl is a formally accomplished and psychologically complex gangster tale pivoting on the growing attraction between Joji, a hardened career criminal, and Kazuko, the sweet-natured older sister of a newly initiated young hoodlum—a relationship that provokes the jealousy of Joji’s otherwise patient moll, Tokiko. With effortlessly cool performances and visual inventiveness, Dragnet Girl is a bravura work from Yasujiro Ozu." (Criterion Collection)

NAJA is a jazz collective comprised of three Germans and four Americans. The musicians have been seamlessly fusing jazz adaptations of classical pieces with touches of avant-garde compositions and funk-infused, straight-ahead rhythms.

Pianist and founder of NAJA, Markus Burger, and saxophonist Jan von Klewitz as well as the entire ensemble played to sold-out houses at Villa Aurora before. Welcome back!

NAJA will depart on a 4-concert tour in July of 2019 with concerts scheduled in Southern California, Las Vegas and Alaska. The tour is part of the “Deutschlandjahr USA”, The Year of German-American Friendship, an initiative of the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut.

Under the banner "Wunderbar Together" the campaign will travel across the entire U.S., bringing with it a collection of events and exhibits revolving around business and industry, politics, education, culture, and science, to highlight the unique importance of transatlantic relations.