THURSDAY: 2.21
MUSIC:
- 77 El Deora + Houston Jones + Rancho Deluxe @ Cafe Du Nord
- Pat Metheny @ Yoshi's SF
8am CCA INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE EXHIBITION
Celebrating the art and experiences of CCA’s fall and spring 2007 international exchange students. Cost: FREE! @ California College of the Arts ... 5212 Broadway , Oakland, CA
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm WHEN COMPASSION TRIUMPHED
The Iranian Student Association of UC Berkeley presents the inspiring international documentary that remembers When Compassion Triumphed. In 2003 an earthquake of 6.6 magnitude struck the city of Bam in Iran, killing and injuring tens of thousands of residents and two American tourists. The massive tremor destroyed nearly all of the beautiful ancient city of Silk Road fame. But it failed to shake the local tradition of hospitality to travelers. Relying on interviews that shatter common assumptions, the hour-long "Bam 6.6" follows the experiences of Adele Freedman, a Jewish American woman who was vacationing in Bam with her fiance, Tobb Dell'Oro, when the earthquake struck. Adele, who had to face Tobb's tragic death alone halfway around the world, found unexpected comfort when the Iranians around her reached out spontaneously and made her recovery a priority. Without narration, the film interweaves Adele's ordeal with the grief and open-mindedness of other survivors, emergency volunteers, medical professionals, and U.S. rescue and aid teams. The producer/director, Jahangir Golestanparast, will answer questions from the audience 8 to 9 pm. Dwinelle Hall, Room 145, UC Berkeley.
7pm OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS
Finally you'll know what they're talking about when they give out some of the lesser known oscars! All ten films will be screened during the course of the week, so check their calendar for showtimes. What's great about short films is if a film sucks, it'll be over quick and the next one will start. It's right up there with the attention span of the internet generation. @ Embarcadero Center Cinemas 1 Embarcadero Center
7pm OSCAR DOCS 2008
In the same vein as the previous event, the Doc Institute at SF State and Sundance Kabuki are sharing the love with three days of Oscar nominated documentaries. They'll be showing every nominated feature and short, so you have no excuse not to make an educated vote on your office's Oscar ballot this year. Some of the showings will have brief Q&A's with the directors afterwards: check the website for details. Cost: FREE! (?)@ at Sundance Cinemas Kabuki 1881 Post Street. Official Site: http://docfilm.sfsu.edu/
10pm SHIPS IN THE NIGHT
Shake that ass with queer cuties and support 4 young black lesbians convicted for defending themselves against a sexist and homophobic attack. ships in the night: queer dance party and benefit for the New Jersey 4. always a benefit ...always hot bodies on the ship: your favorite intimate queer dance party is back with DJ's Durt, Lil Manila,
and friends playing the booty jamz. at the Gangway! (841 Larkin, at Geary, SF) $3-5 to benefit the New Jersey 4: young black lesbians convicted for defending themselves against a sexist and homophobic attack. http://www.myspace.com/shipsinthanight
7:00 p.m. YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN
Power of the homeland. Author Sylvia Sellers-Garcia discusses "When the Ground Turns In Its Sleep," her novel based on first-person accounts gathered during Guatemala's 36-year long civil conflict. The story follows a Guatemalan man, raised in the U.S., who returns to his homeland to seek out the truth about his personal and political histories. @ Revolution Books (2425 Channing Way, Berkeley)
7:30 pm POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE
UC Berkeley’s renowned poetry program, June Jordan’s Poetry for the People is thrilled to present a new, 3-part, series of multigenerational, multidisciplinary performances featuring internationally-known, award-winning poets as well as acclaimed local writers and musicians. Featruring Tyehimba Jess (winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series and several other awards) as well as Berkeley spoken word artist and HBO Def Poet Rafael Casal and Bay Area phenom vocalist Jennifer Johns. $15. @ La Pena Cultural Center on Shattuck Ave, in Berkeley.
FRIDAY: 2.22
MUSIC
EVENTS
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm PEACE + KISSES!
Make-out for 2 hours in front of the Marine Recruiting Station and tell recruiters - and the nation - THIS is what we want in Berkeley, NOT soldiers! The recruiting station is at 64 Shattuck Square, just 2 blocks from the downtown Berkeley BART station - on Shattuck Ave where it runs one-way north, and just south of University Ave! Don't Enlist, Stay & Kiss: That way EVERYBODY makes out!
9pm SUITE JESUS
Two rooms, five DJs, eight artists, live painting by Ethen B. Luce and N8 Van Dyke. Phew -- we're exhausted already. Fashion. Art. Music. Sweet jesus, what else do you need?!@ 111 Minna Gallery 111 Minna St. , San Francisco, CA
RED HOTS BURLESQUE
Welcome to a show where burlesque has no boundries including bizarre beauties, senseless sideshow and burlesque burlesque burlesque! Not for the faint of heart or weak of humor. Performers include both local and visiting talent. And for the very first three shows feast your eyes on the Glamazon of the Amazon, direct from the shores of The Coney Island Circus Sideshow, Serpentina! She's nearly 6 feet of sexy woman excited to show you what the sideshow has taught her. The show also includes the spicy and seductive, absurd and amusing including: Dottie Lux, Sparkly Devil, Kellita, Lady Satan, Ruby White, RJ Owens, Lady Monster and more more more! Also at every event, enjoy the video stylings of the Red Hots Burlesque official videographer, Val Killmore. Every show includes a raffle where you get to choose where the night's donation goes to! Cost: $4-10 Official Site: http://www.redhotsburlesque.com/ @ El Rio 3158 Mission St
10pm SHE'S THE DJ
Once again DeeCee's Soul Shakedown highlights the Bay's best female DJs and performing artists at this all-star ladies' night. @ Club Six.
[all weekend]WONDERCON
With the Alternative Press Expo's recent move to November, SF's comic nerds and sci-fi dorks now have only one outlet for their obsessions this spring. WonderCon '08 features career panels hosted by LucasArts animators, historical lectures on the origins of manga, panel discussions with indie pen-and-ink star Beck Cloonan and DC Comics' retro-genius Darwyn Cooke, and sneak previews of some of this summer's biggest-budget, FX-enhanced flicks. Evening entertainment includes screenings of esoteric and mainstream anime, fan-film showcases, and the annual costume competition. There's a little something for the fanboy (and fangirl) in everyone. @ Moscone Center (747 Howard St)
6:30 pm A WALK INTO THE SEA
Andy Warhol's Factory has become nearly as famous for how it devoured artists and wild things as for how it manufactured them. That said, few still remember Danny Williams, the subject of A Walk into the Sea, which is helmed by his niece, Esther Robinson. Warhol's former lover and the director of more than 20 recently discovered films, Williams borrowed his mother's car at a 1966 family gathering and disappeared forever. Ultimately, that Williams has largely faded from public memory works to this documentary's advantage, which evenhandedly unpacks not only his ascent and descent, but the overall artistic fragility of the '60s. @ Roxie New College Film Center (3117 16th St) Price: $9
PASSION & POWER: THE TECHNOLOGY OF ORGASM
Don't be too complacent about that breezy Cosmo headline promising "ten G-spot toys you'll love." As Wendy Slick and Emiko Omori's documentary shows, the road to The View-approved Hitachi Magic Wands was paved with much faulty medical discourse, legal battles, and pioneering feminist scholarship over one contentious piece of plastic: the vibrator. Passion and Power traces the history of the love buzzer from its 20th-century inception as a hysteria suppressant to a pleasure tool reclaimed by first-wave feminists. The doc also critiques a strange, sexist double standard: some states prohibit the sale of vibrators, but allow men to buy Viagra.@ the Roxie (16th St. between Valencia and Guerrero).
ALSO: Stop by Good Vibes on your way for a pre-screening coctail!
SATURDAY: 2.23
MUSIC
- Six Organs of Admittance + I'm A Gun (Seattle WA) + Donovan Quinn & the 13th Month @ Bottom of the Hill
- Silian Rail (CD RELEASE PARTY!) @ El Rio
- French Miami + Master/Slave + The New Centuries + Death of a Party + Battlehooch + Shitkickers + Settler + Little Teeth + Thunder Thighs + The Bug Pedals + Top Critters + Godstomper + Bad Touch @ Thee Parkside (Benefit for The San Francisco AIDS Foundation)
- Deerhoof @ Phoenix Theater
EVENTS
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM ZINE MAKING CLASS
1. The Long Haul created a little zine making space in the loft where they make Slingshot. If you're looking for a place to make your zine in the Bay Area, the Slingshot zine loft has everything you need for (non-computerized) cut and paste layout and design. We have a typewriter, copy machine, box of graphics, paper, saddle stapler, pens, scissors, light table, and razor blades. (The copy machine is for making graphics -- once you make your original in the loft, you need to take it to a copy shop to make copies of your zine. Then you can staple it in the loft.) They're going to have a zine-making workshop on February 23rd at 2:00 PM. Drop by to learn everything Slingshot knows about making a zine, with teaching by Matt Holdaway and others.
5:30 - 6:15 pm GAY SHAME MEETING
Gay Shame is a Virus in the System. They are committed to a queer extravaganza that brings direct action to astounding levels of theatricality. They will not be satisfied with a commercialized gay identity that denies the intrinsic links between queer struggle and challenging power. They seek nothing less than a new queer activism that foregrounds race, class, gender and sexuality, to counter the self-serving "values" of gay consumerism and the increasingly hypocritical left. They are dedicated to fighting the rabid assimilationist monster with a devastating mobilization of queer brilliance. Gay Shame is a celebration of resistance: all are welcome. Gay Shame meets every Saturday in the Reading Room of Modern Times Bookstore @ 888 Valencia btw 19th & 20th. http://WWW.GAYSHAMESF.ORG
10am CHINESE NEW YEAR COMMUNITY FAIR
Acrobatics, gooey new year's pastries and kite-making are just three of the reasons you should head to Chinatown for the New Year community fair. Gung hay RAT choy!
7:00 p.m. IT'S SLAMMING
They speak, we listen. Youth Speaks, the nation's leading nonprofit presenter of Spoken Word performance, education, and youth development programs, presents the Teen Poetry Slam preliminaries, a showcase for young people in the Bay Area and beyond who are creators of social, artistic, educational and political change. @ Eastside Cultural Center (2277 International Blvd., Oakland)
10pm THATS THE BLAP (4th Ed.)
That's The Blap" is one of the most innovative shows to come around in years, just ask the SF Chronicle!! "Dnae Beats" will provide live BLAPS on 2 MPC 2500!!! If you love hip-hop w/ soul and energy, then this is a show you won't want to miss! This month's special guest is AZEEM from OM Records!! Not to mention we got The Gurp City All-Stars "CON-MAN" (Conceit and Z-MAN) who will join forces to devastate the mic!! To top it all off we got 2 of Bay Areas finest DJ's, B.cause & A-RON to rock the spot!! Need I say more? (maybe. like, what the hell is a blap? i dont know, but apparently it's amazing.) @ The Elbo Room ( 647 Valencia St) Also, if you rsvp and show up before 11pm there's reduced admission.
SUNDAY: 2.24
MUSIC
- The Lovely Public + Agent Ribbons (Sacramento) + Swallows (Portland OR) @ Hemlock
- 60 Watt Kid @ El Rincon
- Heart @ Wells Fargo Center For The Arts
EVENTS
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN REVISTED
Heath Ledger's death marks the loss of a prodigious talent. His American acting career began with lighthearted fare, but Ledger quickly branched out to challenging, provocative films, most prominently Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain. Ledger gives a note-perfect performance as Ennis Del Mar, a reticent cowboy who must suppress his inner life to conform in an unforgiving society. The film's powerful depiction of love denied earned it critical acclaim and multiple awards; it's a sad reminder of the power Ledger had to move an audience. @ The Castro Theatre (429 Castro St) Price: $9.50
MONDAY: 2.25
7:30-9pm DISCUSSION:: ATTENTION DEPICTION DISORDERS
Working from the Information Age cliché that quantity overwrites quality (and over-stimulation trumps measured intake), RE/Search publisher V. Vale and Asphodel boss Naut Humon put together a suitably manic audio-visual discussion about our ADD culture. Not unlike the list compiled in J.G. Ballard's sci-fi story "Project for a Glossary of the 20th Century," Vale and Humon's musings on "the age of shuffle" and "infotainment" embrace radical possibilities while still retaining critical skepticism. Their talk, presented by Berkeley's Center for New Media, will conclude with a practical example: rare footage of a 2004 Survival Research Labs performance.@ Berkeley Art Museum Theater (2621 Durant Ave). FREE!
8:00 pm TRAMPOLINE HALL
At some point in your social life, you've probably found yourself in the awkward position of discussing a subject you're not terribly familiar with: finances, music, the presidential primaries. But talking yourself into a corner is precisely the point of Trampoline Hall, a roving literary salon devoted to impromptu punditry and makeshift expertise. Each night, three people give talks on subjects about which they only have a passing knowledge, and the audience is encouraged to play devil's advocate. Past lectures have covered everything from the number 32 to female poisoners in 18th-century France. Debate club this is definitely not.@ 12 Galaxies (2565 Mission St.) Price: $7
TUESDAY: 2.26
7:30pm DOCUMENTARY: CASTING A GLANCE
Minimalist filmmaker James Benning finds an ideal (and inanimate) muse in Robert Smithson's earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970). Built on the shore of Utah's Great Salt Lake during a drought, Smithson's sculpture re-emerged in 1999 after three decades underwater. Cue Benning, who made 16 pilgrimages to document the site for this slow, meditative film. Made up entirely of stationary short takes, Benning's work bears witness to the mutable beauty of Smithson's masterpiece as it reveals itself through the seasons and tides. It's an incredible spectacle that Casting a Glance treats with something like awe. @ the Pacific Film Archive Theater (2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley) Price: $9.50
7:00 p.m. BLOODY BLING
Do you have blood on your fingers? Priority Africa Network Presents a screening of "Bling: A Planet Rock," a look at the diamond industry in war-torn Sierra Leone and its connection to hip-hop. Featuring Ishmael Beah, author of "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" and interviews with Kanye West, Big Daddy Kane, Jadakiss and Mr. T. Sponsored by the Black History Month Committee, Black Womens Collective, African Student Alliance and Ethnic Studies Department. @ the Student Union, Mills College (5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland)
WEDNESDAY: 2.27
MUSIC
- Minipop + Two Sheds @ Bottom of the Hill
- Girl in a Coma (Austin) + Perfect Machines + Killola (LA) @ Annies Social Club
- Broken West + The Walkmen @ The Independent
EVENTS
6:00 p.m. THE UGLY SIDE OF BEAUTY
What the beauty industry doesn't want you to know. Stacy Malkan, communications director of Health Care Without Harm and media strategist for the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, reads from her new book, "Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry." Cosponsored by the Breast Cancer Fund. $8 suggested donation. @ The Women's Building (3543 18th Street #8, San Francisco).
FREE THE UC
A teach-in & forum featuring Gray Brechin, author, Imperial San Francisco, plus speakers from: Tuition Relief Now, Berkeley Stop the War, Berkeley NOW, Fiat Pax, Stop BP-Berkeley, International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, Students for Justice in Palestine, Students Organizing for Justice in the Americas, Save the Oaks, Student Worker Action Group, Third World Liberation Front and more! The goal of the Coalition to Free the UC is to transform the University of California from an elitist, corporate, militaristic, autocratic institution into a responsible, just, diverse equitable, democratically-governed body that educates and works for the common welfare. Join the discussion! @ 145 Dwinelle (on the UC Berkeley campus). http://www.freetheuc.org.
THURSDAY: 2.28
MUSIC:
- The Magnetic Fields + Stellastarr @ Herbst Theatre
FRIDAY: 2.29
MUSIC
- A Place To Bury Strangers + Holy Fuck + White Denim @ Bottom Of The Hill
