Pixel Vision Archives — Page 33 of 133 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The Performant: Rep flow

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February 21, 2012

Boxcar Theatre gets hardcore with Sam Shepard

Every year it feels like it’ll be impossible for the ever-inventive Boxcar Theatre company to top their last season, and somehow each year they pull it off. After launching an ultra-ambitious repertory program of four Sam Shepard plays, to be performed in two separate locations over the course of the next two-and-a-half months, artistic director Nick A. Olivero — who isn’t just producing the festival, but also directing “Fool For Love,” and co-starring in “True West” — still made time for an internet interview about “Sam Shep in Rep.”

The Performant A couple of years ago you guys presented a three-play repertory program of Tennessee Williams plays. What made you decide to up the ante to four for Shepard?

Nick A. Olivero Because I’m insane. People should know that by now…

Performant What is it specifically about those two playwrights that makes them so appealing to be tackled in such a manner?

Olivero They are both amazing writers… Rep is not easy, any actor will tell you that, and you won’t convince an actor to give up four months of their acting life for crummy roles. Williams and Shepard write rich characters that just about every actor is foaming at the mouth to play.

Performant You yourself are alternating the roles of Lee and Austin in “True West” with Brian Trybom. What attracts you about each role? What daunts you?

Olivero Have you ever heard the phrase, “It sounded like a good idea at the time?” This show is exhausting. And invigorating. Lee has this incredible physical journey and is completely spontaneous, it’s fun to play that on stage. Austin’s journey is much more emotional; the descent into madness (and drunkenness)… Although audiences historically tend to love Lee… it is actually Austin who is the tougher role to play. Anyone can go out there and start slapping people around, it takes precision to figure out the mental roller coaster of Austin who loses it all. It’s precisely that which attracts and scares the hell out of us at the same time.

Performant Originally you had planned to stage “Fool for Love” in an actual motel, but are now working on building space for it in your Boxcar Studio space. What were some of the complications in trying to arrange for an offsite presentation?

Olivero I would still love to do it in a motel room, but with everything going on in this project it became a larger headache then it was worth… Plus this new space as been an idea of mine for some time now and it made financial sense to invest that motel rental money into a permanent venue that other groups can benefit from as well.

Performant Tell me a bit about the staged Sam Shepard reading series. What plays will you be reading and who will be involved?

Olivero We are presenting Icarus’ Mother, Savage Love, Curse of the Starving Class, Suicide in B Flat, Action, 4-H Club, and Cowboy Mouth throughout March at the Studios. We are working with Eileen Tull, Barry Eitel, Ellery Schaar, Mark Mieklejohn, Will Hand, and Ben Randle

Performant Ever think to yourself that life would be so much simpler if you had just gone into Dentistry?

Olivero I have no idea why I do this except there is some stupid part of my brain that says “wake up and go into the theatre and do dumb stuff”… truth be told, when the houses are packed I never give it a second thought …. nowhere else in the world is someone stupid enough to craft a rep experience like this where, as an audience member, you can dig deep into a Contemporary American treasure like Sam Shepard and fully explore the themes and characters he has created. Dentistry has got nothing on a visit like that.

“Sam Shep in Rep”
Through April 26
Boxcar Playhouse and Boxcar Studios
505 Natoma and 125A Hyde, SF.
(415) 967-2227
www.boxcartheatre.org

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6 places to take a nude figure drawing class

Andrew Lam

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February 20, 2012

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6 places to take a nude figure drawing class

Clothes are nothing but hindrances when it comes to drawing the human body. Strip down to the barest essentials in these nude figure drawing classes offered around the Bay Area. Most of these classes are uninstructed, so you will be on your own to explore the aesthetic beauty of the human form.

“Figure Drawing Without Instruction”

9:30-12:30 p.m. and 6:30-9:30 p.m.; Wednesdays 6:30-9:30 p.m., $16/class. 23rd Street Studio, 3747 23rd St., SF. (415) 824-3408, www.23rdstreetstudio.com

“Uninstructed gesture poses with nude art model”

Tuesdays 6:30-9:30 p.m., $15/class. Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru, Alameda. (510) 523-6957, www.frankbettecenter.org

“Drawing from the Nude Model”

Tuesdays 7-10 p.m., $12/class. Lightning Coyote Studio, 2914 Linden, Oakl. (510) 836-0363, www.lightningcoyote.com

“Berkeley Nude Life Drawing Group”

Wednesdays 7 p.m., $13/class. Firehouse North Gallery, 1790 Shattuck, Berk. www.firehouseartcollective.blogspot.com

“Gay Men’s Sketch”

Tuesday 6:30 p.m., call for reservations. Mark I. Chester Studio, 1229 Folsom, SF. (415) 621-6294, www.markichester.com

“Figure Drawing: Gestural Poses”

Wednesdays 9:30-12:30 p.m, $55/four sessions. The Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno, SF. (415) 500-2323, www.emtab.org

Quilt odyssey: Eliza Fernand travels the country collecting stories and stitches

Tony Robles

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February 16, 2012

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Perhaps this particular project can be traced back to a brightly colored, patchwork tent. Eliza Fernand already had a history of creating otherworldly sculptures and visual arts pieces out of unique fabrics and textures (pillowy raindrops, threaded waterfalls), but no real work in the specific craft of quilting when she began a now years-long endeavor. Under the umbrella term of Quilt Projects, she kicked off a tumble into the world of quilting with that pieced-together structure.

Though the precursor for what would eventually become Quilt Projects actually began in 2010 when she moved to Boise for an artist’s residency in collaboration with Portland-based artist Anna Weber; they set up a sewing studio with public collaboration in mind, asking people to bring in sentimental clothing then offering to deconstruct the items and reconstruct them into quilts. It spurred something in her.

“Quilts easily embody ideas of everyday artwork – beautifying our surroundings, warmth and comfort, storytelling, community gathering, sentimentality, reuse of materials, and cultural traditions. I am interested in incorporating those themes into new structures, and researching that history from different angles.”

Often moving from one artist’s residency to the next, one gallery showing to another, she crafted the aforementioned multi-color tent in early 2011 then brought it Portland, Ore. and Salt Lake City, and invited people to come inside, have a seat, and tell their quilt tales – this piece of the project would become known as Quilt Stories. These field recordings of oral histories, soon gathered in other cities as well, would later manifest into songs backed by vibrant, detailed installations, but this is jumping too far ahead.

Out on the road last year, Fernand crisscrossed the Midwest, the South, and the East Coast, collecting personal quilting stories on tape and, in addition to that, stitches on a group quilt. In the Amish tradition, she gathered pieces for an all-white quilt (though unlike the Amish, hers pops with pastel thread). The quilt is a circle, so the stitching moves from the middle out to the edges, and it’s now at eight-feet wide. “It’s nice because the circle of people working on it can get bigger and bigger,” Fernand says from her current residency at Real Time + Space in Oakland.

With her colorful tents (she added a second one), her group-effort white quilt, and a trusty recording device, Fernand traveled last summer, zigzagging from Boise to small towns in Washington State, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Indiana, Minneapolis, Wisconsin, and Michigan – where she grew up.

In the fall of 2011, Fernand collected stories and stitches in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. She visited elementary schools and all-ages punk venues, speaking to wide ranges and ages about their experiences with family quilts or quilt-making, and she also began lecturing on her own work.

“A big part of this project is research, field work, and learning through experience – I’m not a good book learner,” Fernand explains “Traveling is a way for me to learn.” Also mentioning, “I was happy to find that if I take the poles out, the tent fits in a carry-on bag.”

Back to the music; another element to the Quilt Stories arm of Quilt Projects, is the transition from spoken word to song. Fernand listened to the more 200 stories she collected last summer and fall – the final ones recorded in Benzonia, Mich., a town she holds dear from childhood – and cut them up then arranged bits into lyrics.

Working with a musician pal who lives in New York, she’s so far created five songs and an instillation to back up the music: there are patchwork balloon structures, and a projection of Fernand dancing in an empty elementary school in Michigan. As open as she is as a visual and performance artist, singing is a somewhat newer undertaking, so during these performances she’s usually half in a tent, or cloaked in a comfy security quilt.

In Oakland, at the residency center, she’s hosting a weekly craft night-quilting circle to add to the Amish-inspired white quilt; it takes place every Sunday from 6 to 9 p.m. through March. During this two-month stay back in the Bay Area (she had a residency at Oakland’s Lobot Gallery in 2009), she also will lecture on her work next week, and yes, she’ll sing the words of quilters. She’ll perform Quilt Stories at Shed Gallery on March 22, partially hidden in one of those colorful patchwork tents she’s been lugging around the country.

Craft Night
Every Sunday until April, 6-9 p.m., free
Real Time + Space
125 10th St., Oakl.
facebook.com/quilt.stories

Art Talk at Real Time + Space: Eliza Fernand & Amy Ho
Mon/20, 8 p.m., free
Real Time + Space
125 10th St., Oakl.

Quilt Stories performances
March 22, 8 p.m.
S.H.E.D. Projects
1917 Peralta, Oakl.
Shedprojects.org

Live Shots: Surreal Valentine’s re-wedding at Eternity Ball

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February 16, 2012

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Photos by Bowerbird Photography

For Valentine’s Day, Sam Love and I celebrated by going to one gigantic wedding reception. Oh wait, there was a wedding ceremony too. Actually a re-commitment ceremony, where a popular SF wedding officiant, Cynthia Gregory, in her formal black robe, honored a husband and wife’s 20 years of marriage together and blessed them and their continued union. The bride still fit in her wonderfully fluffy satin wedding dress a-la 1992, cinched tight in the back with a gigantic bow.

Weddings are expensive. Tickets to the Eternity Ball, were steep, at $150 a pop, adding to the feeling of a genuine wedding experience. But also like a wedding, any second doubts or financial jitters could be easily soothed with an open bar, and then liberated on the dance floor with a good shake, to all the best 1980s cover songs by some fine Bay Area wedding crooners.

I have to say, I was a bit nervous that the event would be a snooty, swanky affair, but despite the fact that the invitation suggested tuxedos, ball gowns, and wedding dresses as appropriate attire, it was really just another excuse for San Franciscans to do what they do best: dress up and go wild.

One bride sported a pink wig, and her groom wore a black top hat over his flowing dreadlocks. A posse of about six ladies dominated the color palette in their fire engine red, polka dot country girl dresses. Way back in 1985, one of the women bought the dresses at Gunny Sacks for two dollars each. She wrapped them in boxes and told her girlfriends to come over for a surprise, and to bring their pearls. They opened their “gifts,” and after some adjustments, went out on the town, looking perfectly matchy-matchy.

The dresses still fit and come out once or twice a year. This time, the ball gave them a chance to be instant bride’s maids. Besides dancing, costumes, music and drinks, there were space-age edibles to nibble, like mac-and-cheese served in a flying saucer and truffles floating on liquid nitrogen. The whole evening was rather surreal and amazing, much like a wedding party dancing in a house of mirrors, and fueled with a bottomless supply of booze.

But there was one thing missing … where was my slice of wedding cake?

What to Read: ‘SoMa’ by Kemble Scott

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February 15, 2012

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“Everyone you meet here in San Francisco has some anecdote about ‘the wild night I ended up in SoMa,’” author Kemble Scott said back in 2007. Sure, the neighborhood has experienced a gentrified taming since then. The outdoor orgies of yesteryear have been replaced by outdoor patio furniture stores, but luckily the gritty South of Market spirit – a cornucopia of illicit drugs and sexcapades – has been cleverly captured by Scott, pen name of journalist provocateur Scott James, who now writes a local column for The New York Times.

SoMa follows the intertwined path of three young people struggling in San Francisco immediately after the first dot com bust. Unemployed and desensitized, they push their limits and their luck to try to regain a sense of fulfillment. SoMa is now an artifact of the oftentimes-surreal turn-of-the-century subcultures that were embedded in the neighborhood.

Kemble Scott is the second author invited to participate in the Magnet Book Club (We’ll be running a series of interviews with authors appearing at the nonprofit space.) The gay men’s health center in the Castro will host Scott on Feb. 28 at 7:30pm for an intimate, wine-induced discussion of SoMa. To lead up to that event, we spoke to the author.

SFBG What are some of the reactions the book has gotten since publication?

KS When the book first came out, we had a book club at the LGBT Center. The crowd was a mix of older gay men and younger guys, and it turned into a debate about “post-gay.” One older man said he was sickened when he read about straight people in SoMa. He thought that because I was gay and I wrote a novel that I should write exclusively about the gay experience. When I wrote it I didn’t envision it solely for gay readers.

SFBG I don’t think there’s one character in SoMa who is either completely gay or completely straight.

KS The characters fall all over the rainbow of sexuality, it’s more complicated and similar to what we really have here in San Francisco. But I understand where he was coming from. We have this older generation who literally had to fight for their rights. It was a very polarizing conversation. When you open a book for interpretation, you’re also opening it up to misinterpretation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ez_yfnuQ-0

SFBG SoMa started as a short story. Why did you decide to turn it into a full-fledged novel?

KS At that time I was writing the SoMa Literary Review, a kind of new Tales of the City, and an editor at Alyson Books approached me and asked me if I had ever thought about turning it into a book. I said, sure! So I printed out several stories, stapled them together and sent them. But they didn’t want just a print out of the website. So I had to work to tie them all together.

SFBG How did you go about connecting all the stories?

KS That’s where my journalism background came in. Reading about all these separate instances and digging to find that there are commonalities. In SoMa it’s this desensitizing, this information overload, everyone always on their phones, playing video games nonstop and applying it to sexual exploration. You hear about a 22-year-old who is into fisting and wonder, how did this happen at such a young age? This extreme push to feel anything at all.

SFBG How has SoMa changed since the time in which the book takes place?

KS I moved there in 1997. There was no ballpark then. It’s become more expensive, more residential. It was such a free-for-all, I’m talking whole alleys devoted to outdoor orgies, because there were no lights, no one cared, no one lived there. The Powerhouse [since moved to the Tenderloin] was an all-out orgy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VenXQHZsL-g

SFBG Isn’t it still?

KS I’m not saying they don’t have their racy moments, but back then it was the one reason you’d go there. Now, you’re lucky if it happens. All that stuff is now happening online. There are whole websites dedicated to setting-up an orgy.

SFBG My friend set up an orgy on Facebook. But that’s not as cool as trekking down to SoMa.

KS Some say SoMa has lost its flavor. A part of it is that it’s no longer a feasible neighborhood for young people. That was its adolescence, now SoMa is closer to middle age. We are still exporting that fantasy. They were playing hardcore porn at a bear bar I went to in Madrid, and it was set in San Francisco! One of the guys I recognized. He goes to my gym.

SFBG Why did you agree to do this book club?

Kemble Scott Book clubs bring that relationship that usually happens in the reader’s lap. You’re not there when they’re reading it, you can’t hear what they’re thinking or experience their reaction. It’s great hearing what readers have to say, and not in an anonymous way, which is what you get on Amazon.

Kemble Scott will be Magnet Book Club’s guest of honor on Tuesday, February 28 at 7:30pm. Book club is open to the public and copies of SoMa are available at Books, Inc. in the Castro for 15% off. Magnet is located at 4122 18th Street (between Castro and Collingwood) in San Francisco.

Gooooooold! Are you ready for the Oscars?

Sue Vaughan

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February 15, 2012

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Gooooooold! Are you ready for the Oscars?

It’s Academy Awards season, and whether you’re planning to hit a viewing party at the Roxie, the Balboa, the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, or your Meryl Streep-obsessed BFF’s apartment, it’s best to show up prepared. Especially when there’s a pool going.

Best Picture (and Best Director)
Black-and-white silent charmer The Artist has emerged as the clear front-runner, with copious wins at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, the Director’s Guild of America, and the Producer’s Guild of America, plus a Golden Collar Award for the film’s charismatic canine co-star. I honestly can’t think of another movie that could step up at this point; dwindling threats The Help and The Descendants will have to find glory in other categories. Look for The Artist‘s Michel Hazanavicius to pick up Best Director, too, unless Martin Scorsese scores an upset for Hugo. (He won’t.)

Best Actor
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy‘s Gary Oldman is my pick, but I also wanted L.A. Confidential to beat Titanic in 1998. Wasn’t gonna happen then, won’t happen now. It’s a suave-off between The Artist‘s Jean Dujardin, who’s been raking in kudos for his performance since Cannes 2011, and The Descendants‘ George Clooney, a previous winner in the Supporting Actor category (for 2006’s Syriana). Clooney is also nominated for his adapted screenplay for The Ides of March, which he directed. Close call, but look for The Artist tsunami to carry Dujardin to the podium. Consolation for Clooney: he’ll be nominated again. And again. And again.

Best Actress
I was ready to declare this category the Battle of the Padded Butts and Power Wigs: Meryl Streep’s Margaret Thatcher (in The Iron Lady) versus Michelle Williams (in My Week With Marilyn). These performances are eerily similar in some ways, with respected thespians (Streep a multiple prior winner, Williams a multiple prior nominee) portraying complex women who come fully-furnished with extremely well-defined public images. But The Help‘s Viola Davis, also a prior nominee, just picked up the Screen Actors Guild trophy; could she be the choice vote for Academy members who are tired of “acting” that feels more like an imitation?

Best Supporting Actor
Christopher Plummer, who is only two years younger than the Oscars, has been making films since the 1950s and is also a beloved star of stage and the small screen. He was first nominated, in this same category, for 2009’s The Last Station, after which he reportedly said, “It’s about time! I mean, I’m 80 years old, for God’s sake. Have mercy.” His performance as Ewan McGregor’s dying, newly-out father in Mike Mills’ twee yet pleasant Beginners breaks no new acting ground, but the Academy loves to reward a legend. Do you really think Jonah Hill has a chance? Captain Von Trapp for the win.

Best Supporting Actress
This one’s the Battle of the Poop Gags. “Eat my shit” versus “It’s coming out of me like lava!” The Help‘s Octavia Spencer already has a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, and SAG awards decorating her mantle, so she’s nearly a lock. However, newly Emmy’d (for her sitcom, Mike & Molly) Bridesmaids scene-stealer Melissa McCarthy can’t be totally counted out. The dolphin speech alone should keep her in the race.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCZkmwSzv4k

Best Adapted Screenplay/Best Original Screenplay
The Writers Guild of America awards are Sun/19, so this category may shape up even more after this weekend. For adapted, I think you can guess what I’m rooting for (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which just won at the BAFTAs), but The Descendants, adapted by director Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash from the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, also has a decent shot. Steven “Schindler’s List” Zaillan and Aaron “The Social Network” could sneak in with Moneyball, though let’s be honest: a kind word to describe that movie is “tedious.” Apologies to A’s fans.

Original screenplay will probably go to Hazanavicius for The Artist, but if the idea of a silent movie winning “best screenplay” rubs you wrong, there’s always Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (not that great, except for the Hemingway scenes) and my top pick: Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig’s Bridesmaids. A win for Bridesmaids would (sorta) make up for the fact that Diablo Cody was robbed of a nomination for Young Adult.

But who knows, really. Rooney Mara could pull off an Adrien Brody-style upset win. Eddie Murphy (remember when he was gonna host, for like five minutes last fall?) could show up and kick Billy Crystal off the stage. Maybe this will be the year something exciting actually happens! Gotta tune in to find out. And to see the gowns. It’s all about the gowns, anyway, right?

The 84th Academy Awards air Sunday, February 26 starting at 4 p.m. (for red-carpet fiends) on ABC.

Riding the ‘Dark Wave’: Jay Howell comes home for a zine release

Andrew Lam

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February 15, 2012

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Jay Howell may have left us for the palm trees in Silverlake, but that doesn’t mean that he’s gone forever.

You may know Howell for his zine Punks Git Cut, his drawings of people with neon faces on vintage book pages, or as that really tall guy you always used to see in the coffeeshop. Upon moving to sunny (and smoggy) Los Angeles, Howell has gotten a car, finished up doing the character development for Bob’s Burgers, and is currently working as the art director for a show on Nickelodeon. He returns to San Francisco on Sat/18 for an art show at Fecal Face Dot Gallery to celebrate the release of his new zine The Dark Wave — a 50-page comic book about the lead singer of a death metal band and his existential journey to the ocean.

On a rainy Monday afternoon, the Guardian called up Howell – who was more than likely basking beneath the Southern Californian sun – for a phone interview about writing The Dark Wave and his obsession with Harlequin romance novels:

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Hey Jay. How’s life in Los Angeles?

Jay Howell: LA is awesome. I love the weather. I like beach-sunny-California style stuff. It’s really cheesy but I love it. I’ve been drawing more beach themes and things like that. I moved here to work on Bob’s Burgers and then around the same time got offered a pilot deal for Nickelodeon. Our show is just about completed and I think it’s the most favorite thing I’ve ever made.

SFBG: We’re excited to have you back this weekend for your show. What’s Dark Wave all about anyways?

JH: The lead singer of a death metal band has a panic attack on stage and runs in to the night. He runs in to the forest and finds surfing somehow. It’s pretty weird. He basically falls asleep in an empty coffin, then a flash flood spills him out of the coffin, and then the coffin lid comes off and turns in to a surfboard. There’s some writing, but the pictures mostly tell the story. I drew everything in pieces with Rapidograph pens and used Photoshop to put it all together.

THE DARK WAVE from Eighty Four Films on Vimeo.

SFBG: Is the story all in the course of one night?

JH: It’s a wild night.

SFBG: Does this guy have a name? And are there other characters?

JH: I just call him the singer. There are other people in the beginning but it’s usually just him and his surfboard. [The story] is all about this guy’s weird journey. He just wants to keep running and see what happens.

SFBG: What prompted your panic attack?

JH: I don’t know. I get them all the time too. Probably living too much outside of your mind and then wondering where the hell you are.

SFBG: Why death metal and why a coffin?

JH: I was drawing and I thought it would be really funny to have black metal dudes surfing. You know, like really morose surfers. And then I just started writing a story in my head about it. [The singer] never turns in to a happy dude, but he takes up surfing the only way that suits him.

SFBG: You usually ditch the canvas and opt for pages off of books for your artwork. Do you have specific books that you use?

JH: I generally buy the same brand of book every time. They’re called Harlequin novels and they have a romance series. I was in a thrift store maybe six months ago and I noticed that the titles in these books were just so funny. I was doing all these drawings about people reading books with funny titles [because] I really like making up fake names and fake book titles. Then I saw those books and it was just so perfect. It turned out that there were hundreds and hundreds of these books published in the 1970s and ‘80s. So I bought them on eBay 40 or 50 at a time.

SFBG: Back to Dark Wave. Is it much different from Punks Git Cut?

JH: Definitely. It’s way more of a comic book. I’ve been reading tons of comic books lately and I’ve been doing some comics myself. I’m moving away from the zine format a bit and I’m even working on a full, proper comic book right now. I just kind of want to get more in to that kind of stuff.

SFBG: I noticed that a lot of your usual humor was toned down for television. What can readers expect from Dark Wave?

JH: Dark Wave is all about sex and drugs. Yeah, it’s nasty. It’s definitely an adult comic for sure. I’m really excited for people to see it. My buddy Scott – he’s in a death metal band in San Diego – even wrote a theme song for it.

“Midnight on the Sun” zine release and art show

Sat/18 6-9 p.m., free.

Fecal Face Dot Gallery

2277 Mission, SF

(415) 500-2166

www.ffdg.net

Bike-borne tacos are coming! But not without your help

Andrew Lam

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February 14, 2012

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Now, Rose “Slam” Johnson’s Hot Bike would not be the first taco bike in the Bay Area. That honor, of course, is due to Alfonso Dominguez’s El Taco Bike. But Hot Bike does have something going for it, besides the adorableness of its creator (one of our Hot Pink List designees from last year’s Queer Issue). Where Dominguez’s ride was merely the storage receptacle for delicious steamed tacos de canasta, Johnson’s will serve as an actual portable kitchen on a Yuba Mundo utility bike. That’s right — vegan tacos made to order.

She’s looking to raise $5,000 to make her dream a reality. Yes, that means a Kickstarter. But the video’s cute too! Look at it:

Potential offerings for the Hot Bike include roasted veggies and sweet beans (!), each topped with Johnson’s signature beet coleslaw. The project is the culmination of many years of dreaming by the queer community activist, who has done work with the SF Bike Coalition’s Bike to School program, AIDS Life Cycle, the YMCA’s bike program, and the LGBT Center’s youth meal nights. She’s into the way that food has the power to bring people together. And she lives for biking — Johnson often spends the summer on the back of two wheels, having trekked up and down both coasts.

Johnson plans to focus on catering events, or posting up alongside other food carts. I asked her during our recent interview on the bench outside of the 24th Street Philz Coffee why she wouldn’t be into doing the jingle-jangle ice cream truck thing (visions of door-to-door taco service pinging about my head) and she said it had to do with a concept she calls the “street food bubble.” See, people it seems are hesitant to buy tacos off the street from somebody whose kitchen hygiene skills are unproven. That’s why she likes to vend her wares in more established areas.

“Once it’s popped, it’s popped,” Johnson continued. “But yeah, otherwise people are skeptical of selling food on the street.”

Overcome what skepticism remaining in your heart on Sun/26, when she takes her outfit (minus bike, that’s not built yet) over to Public Works for the club’s Stardust Sunday party featuring the First Church of the Sacred Silversexual, Mancub, and 8ball of the Space Cowboys.

Stardust Sunday feat. tacos by Hot Bike

Sun/26 8 p.m.-12:30 a.m., $5 presale

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

www.publicsf.com

The Performant: Strangelove

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February 14, 2012

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“City of Lost Souls” at ATA, and “Awkward Dinner Party” at the EXIT Theatre, subverted the Valentine spirit.

Talk about a hot mess. The florid, fluid, City of Lost Souls (1983), Rosa von Praunheim’s seldom-screened, “transgendered ex-pat food-fight sex-circus musical extravaganza” begins with a motley cast of unapologetic misfits sweeping up a trashed-out Berlin burger joint, the “Hamburger Königin” (Burger Queen). Shimmying on the counter, falling out of her lingerie, punk rock’s first transwoman cult darling, Jayne County, belts out “The Burger Queen Blues” while her fellow wage slaves, Loretta (Lorraine Muthke), Gary (Gary Miller), and Joaquin (Joaquin La Habana) gyrate suggestively across the linoleum until the boss-lady, Angie Stardust (as herself), a regal, “old school” transsexual wrapped in an enormous fur coat, curtails their goofy antics with a whistle and megaphone.

In stern German she orders them back to work—preparing for the next round of abusive food fights, which characterize the “service” at her uniquely unappetizing restaurant. A Theatre of the Ridiculous-style foray into the secret lives of gender outlaw ex-pats in flirty, dirty Berlin, “Lost Souls” isn’t your typical romance—but it’s a love story all the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOh0bn03xt4

Though much of the film adheres to just the merest suggestion of plot, the characters that emerge from its glitter-dusted frenzy are well worth getting to know. Angie Stardust in particular is given reign to share not just her conflicted opinions of Germans and Germany, but also her stories of childhood abuse, reminiscences of her career as a club singer in New York, and her longing for gender-reassignment surgery.

A model matriarch of the tough-love variety, she alternately flatters and bullies her employees and tenants of her Pension: the glamorous Southern trannie Tara O’Hara, the “sexual trapeze” artists Tron von Hollywood and Judith Flex (who also narrates much of the film in humorously-exaggeratedly, American-accented German), the frail, pouty Loretta, trashy, spotlight-seeking Lila (Jayne County), and downright spooky Gary—not just a burger-flipper with a smoking hot dancer’s body, but a quasi-cult leader and practitioner of erotic black magic.

Presented at ATA by New York’s Dirty Looks film series, the film manages to wear serious commentary on racism, homophobia and transphobia, ageism, politics, abortion, and sexual identity on its gold lamé sleeve, while shamelessly rocking shredded pantyhose and too much mascara, masturbating from the perch of a flying trapeze, serving dog turds as dinner, and billing writhing orgies with nubile bodies as “group therapy”. Recently restored, this historical, hysterical document of Berlin-dwelling sexual revolutionaries provides giddy enjoyment alongside its food (fight) for thought, from Jayne County’s signature grimaces, to Tron von Hollywood’s rippling abs.

While no dinner is so awkward as one in which dog turds serve as the meat, improv concept show “Awkward Dinner Party” rallied with a boorish dinner guest (John Kovacevich) who turned out to be a 4000 year-old deity with a crush on the hostess (Lisa Rowland), a gracious retiree saving up for a Winnebago with mild-mannered husband Frank (Dave Dennison). Conceptualized and performed by Rowland and Dennison, every “Awkward Dinner Party” features a different guest star, and as a completely improvised work, each night promises to be its own unique smorgasbord.

What remains a constant is the awkward — the dinner guest you can’t get rid of no matter how boring (or scary) they might be, the third wheel who reminds you why you became a coupled two-wheeler in the first place. A nomadic production, ADP will be serving its next tasty improv at Noh Space in April. No jacket required, but an RSVP is always a nice gesture.

Something to celebrate: 4 local standouts from SF Beer Week’s opening pours

Andrew Lam

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February 13, 2012

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The first drinkers to make it into the SF Beer Week opening celebration on Friday, January 10 had the run of the taps, and with over 50 breweries pouring two to six beers apiece in this year’s more spacious Concourse Exhibition Center venue, that counted for a lot. Yet, for some reason, the two guys at the head of the line were still speed walking. Maybe it was a preemptive strike against beer gut.

Sorry gents, but it’s a losing battle. Calorie counting was a loser’s game on Friday, but for anyone interested in the best and brightest of San Francisco suds, it was a can’t-miss situation. Here were some of the standouts — all local SF brews:

Almanac: SF’s fledgling Almanac brewery poured my first beers of the Week, and subsequently walked with my heart. The gypsy brewer (so named because it still doesn’t have its own facilities) makes small batch beers with fruit from featured Northern California farms — after the batch is made, it may never come back. It was pouring three of its fruit-based beers on Friday: the Belgian golden strong blackberry, farmhouse pale ale plum, and the winter wit orange and ginger. This week, the upstart is pairing with some of the city’s foodie flocking points to create some incredible limited edition products made with its beers: Dynamo Doughnuts,Humphrey Slocombe, and Wing Wings. Plus tonight (Mon/13), the brewery will be pairing up with Speakeasy and Pacific Brewing Laboratories to provide drinks during the hog butchering lesson and feast at the Beast and the Hare for all you carnivores.

SF Beer Week at the Concourse Exhibition Center. It really was a sausage fest.

Pacific Brewing Laboratories: “It’s been so amazing,” said Pacific Brewing Laboratories‘ Patrick Horn. Horn — who Guardian readers will remember from his local snack-beer pairings in last fall’s Beer Issue — was talking about his nanobrewery’s recent transition into non-nano — a.k.a, the SoMa outfit’s appearance in stores and bars around the city. Horn says the only trouble his outfit has been having is keeping up with the demand for its Squid Ink and Nautilus saison, which as it happens were the two brews he was pouring on Friday.

Shmaltz: I was partial, as always, to the SF-born Shmaltz‘s Albino Python, with its notes of ginger, sweet orange peel, and crushed fennell. Another recent happening: the brewery’s developed a new recipe for its Genesis dry hopped session ale, which it hardly ever does. Once a cross between an amber and a pale ale, Shmaltz employee Leah Harmatz says the new recipe was created so that it would be “more crisp.” I had to agree. Shmaltz’s mega carny food beer dinner on Wed/15 is probably going to be the most decadently weird night of Beer Week — set at Elk Lodge No. 3, attendees will enjoy their comestibles with performances by sideshow wackos as a garnish.

Southern Pacific Brewing: This brand-new brewery‘s recently opened brewery-pub-restaurant in the Mission has to be one of the neighborhood’s most exciting new spaces — vast and airy, the multilevel seating is going to be a place to beat in the Indian summer months when everyone wants to kick back with their favorite uber-local microbrew. On Friday, it was pouring its extra India pale ale and black ale, only two of a wide array of beers it makes on-site in their warehouse building.

Trash Lit: The Expats (almost) lives up to the hype

Zelda Bronstein

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February 10, 2012

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Trash Lit: The Expats (almost) lives up to the hype

There’s an awful lot of hype around this first novel by Chris Pavone. John Grisham compares it to the early works of Ken Follett, Frederick Forsyth, and Robert Ludlum. The folks at Crown publishing think this is going to be the Next Big Thing in the thriller world. And since I’m such a huge fan of overhyped authors, I decided I’d pour a nice glass of Buffalo Trace and read the first 20 pages.

I have a William Shakespeare theory about thrillers. The way my English Lit professor in college used to tell it, Willie played to a tough room: The theater-goers in 16th Century London got bored fast, and they brought rotten vegetables, and it wasn’t pleasant up there on stage if the plot started to drag. So there’s always action in the Bard’s first scene or two.

I read a lot of thrillers and I drink fast, so if I can’t get past the first couple of chapters, I’m done. Saves a lot of time.

I got past the start of The Expats and kept going; it became hard to put down.

Grisham is wrong: It’s not a lot like the work of Robert Ludlum or Frederick Forsyth — but I can live with that. The world only needed one Ludlum; you like his style, have at it — he wrote 25 books.

Pavone is different, in an odd way more polished. The Expats is as much a novel about a woman trying to balance a job, a husband and kids as it is a spy thriller. And while there’s a little too much Mr. and Mrs. Smith going on, it’s really a pretty fun read.

You get fake passports, big money and a gun just a few pages in. Then you get the more mundane story of Kate giving up her job as a run-of-the-mill government analyst (read: deadly killer spy) to move with her husband to Luxembourg, where he’s got a job doing computer security for a bank.

Except, of course, that’s not what he’s really doing. And the nice expat couple that happens to befriend Kate and hubby might be CIA assassins coming to take out Kate for her past indescretions, or they might by FBI agents trying to frame hubby for something that he might or might not be doing, or they might be something else altogether. But nobody is telling the truth about anything. And Kate is bored taking care of the kids and the house, so she has to become a secret agent again to find out what’s going on.

There’s a great section about what it means to quit your job so you have more time to spend with the kids and then discover that you can’t stand being a full-time parent. There’s a Paris nightclub with naked people and random sex and violence. There’s wierd almost-sex with the hubby’s new best bud who is supposed to be married but really wants to fuck her. She has to fend him off, spy on hubby, spy on the neighbors, lie to everyone involved and still get home in time for dinner.

Unusually literary for a thriller. The flashbacks got tiring after a while, but overall, it works. Put it on the spring list.

West Oakland’s Bikes 4 Life re-opening with rides for all

Andrew Lam

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February 10, 2012

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West Oakland’s Bikes 4 Life re-opening with rides for all

“It keeps me occupied, not doing trouble in the summer, and after I’m gone it’s going to leave me with some experience,” says Lamar, a 16-year-old who works at Bikes 4 Life in the West Oakland community bike shop’s promotional video. After the completion of its remodels, the shop is re-opening tomorrow, Sat/11, and will be handing out free rides to the neighborhood kids.

The shop opened in 2009. It was a direct response to the spate of crime that was taking West Oakland’s youth away from creative, productive pursuits and into Juvenile Hall. Bikes 4 Life welcomes the neighborhood’s kids in for lessons in bike repair and maitenance — skills that have the added bonus of providing kids with the tools for gainful employment down the road.

Making a difference, one spoke at a time. Tomorrow, Bikes 4 Life celebrates the changes to its workshop with an event during which it will give away 20 bikes to neighborhood kids, and get some of its program participants up on their soap box to talk about how the program has made a difference in their lives.

Bikes 4 Life grand re-opening

Sat/11 noon, free

Bikes 4 Life

1600 Seventh St., Oakl.

(510) 452-2453

www.bikes4life.com

Calling all Kevin Smith fans (you know you’re out there)!

Sue Vaughan

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February 10, 2012

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Calling all Kevin Smith fans (you know you’re out there)!

At the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, Kevin Smith created one of festival’s biggest sensations for audiences and film buyers alike by announcing he was going to auction off his film Red State after its world premiere screening.

Added to that, the hate-spreading publicity junkies known as the Westboro Baptist Church announced they would be staging a protest in front of the event with their usual “GOD HATES FAGS” signs, which in turn inspired Smith to stage his own protest of the Kansas-based church as a self-proclaimed “FAG ENABLER,” which in turn inspired hundreds of people from Park City to make their own signs. Tickets to the movie were rumored to have been scalped for close to a thousand dollars, and the buzz surrounding the situation was truly something I have rarely felt at Sundance.

But Smith had yet another trick up his sleeve: after the film completed, instead of auctioning off his film, he sold the film to himself for $20 and went on an inspired and jaw-dropping rant about how “this world of independent cinema had lost its way” (as Sundance director John Cooper stood awkwardly behind him), and that not only would he be self-distributing Red State, but that he was retiring from his 20-year career of filmmaking. Again, all of this had happened within a few hours and we all left the theater not really knowing what the hell had happened.

But all the hype seems even more relevant now that Red State has finished its world tour, recouping his $5 million production budget. On the eve of the world premiere for his latest stand-up movie (Kevin Smith: Burn In Hell, available on ePiX starting February 11), echoes of the naysaying critics bounce around in my brain especially in light of Louis CK’s similarly successful independent release Live at the Beacon Theater.

Smith gave both Hollywood and the indie scene the middle finger and managed to follow through on his goal without both of them. Red State, a surprisingly violent and complex political manifesto confronting gay rights, wasn’t just an immense departure from his usual clunky comedies, it is the stuff film history is built on. If a filmmaker can make millions of dollars with no studio backing, the entire industry (studios, filmmakers, critics, and audiences) best take note. This is how Hollywood was born back in the early 1910s, when a group of filmmakers rebelled against the vertically integrated monopolization of the Motion Picture Patents Company created by Thomas Edison (and friends). This East Coast gang led by Carl Laemmle and William Fox moved out West to create their own studios, which later became Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox, respectively.

Now let’s cut back to the critics of Red State. They were furious with Smith. Not only did they rarely even talk about the actual film in their reviews, they felt they needed to put Smith “in his place,” for he had somehow made a mockery of their profession. Not only had he not needed the studios to release his film, he hadn’t needed reviewers either. He has close to two million Twitter followers, after all! Critics busted out every kind of mocking comment imaginable; some were even quoted as proclaiming that they were the reasons Kevin Smith was famous in the first place. (Do some Googling, the reviews are priceless!) These critics weren’t just baffled or angry, they were scared.

Which brings us up to the present. If you prefer Smith’s earlier, funnier films like Clerks (1994) and Mallrats (1995), or you only like 1997’s Chasing Amy (Criterion released it!), or you even found something to enjoy in his underrated 2010 studio pic Cop Out, the man has made himself into a contemporary icon and has positioned himself as the voice of a whole new era. The uncensored, unrelenting, and utterly sincere Burn in Hell helps answer every single question you may have about love, life, being overweight, questioning God, being gay, the state of cinema, and ultimately following your dream before you drop dead tomorrow.

Live Shots: Making truffles with Neo Cocoa at La Cocina

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February 10, 2012

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“Ganache is proof that God loves us,” exclaimed a student with pink and purple hair, as Neo Cocoa founder Christine Doerr rapidly whisked a bowl of melted chocolate and poured it into a metal frame for cooling. We all stood around a huge table at La Cocina, learning how to make Doerr’s award-winning chocolate delights, essentially the soft and rich insides of a classic truffle without the hard outer shell. After a quick demo, it was time to get to work ourselves, rolling the chocolate in our hands to form balls and then dusting them in all variety of coatings, from fennel powder to cacao nibs.

Doerr, who originally started in the entrepreneur incubator program at La Cocina in 2008, now has her very own professional kitchen in Belmont and has been named one of the top ten chocolatiers in North America. No doubt today’s class was excited to learn chocolatey secrets from such an expert in the world of sweets.

At the end of the night, we all came away with a little box of chocolate heaven, perhaps to share with that special someone for Valentine’s Day. Even if you weren’t at the class, you can pick up a wonderful assortment of Neo Cocoa for your honey at many stores in San Francisco, including Bi-Rite Market and Canyon Market (and even Whole Foods).

Life after the fall: John Felix Arnold’s post-apocalyptic musical comic book art

Andrew Lam

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February 9, 2012

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Artist, illustrator, and graphic designer John Felix Arnold III lived his childhood in movement. His parents were both professional dancers and they kept the family mobile, relocating back and forth from Durham, North Caroline to Brooklyn, New York. While Arnold did not inherit a passion for dance, he was inspired by his mother and father’s kinesthetic sensibilities and he grew into a visual artist.

The February 4 opening of “The Love of All Above,” his new solo show, featured musical performances by Daylight Curfew, Kool Kid Kreyola, and Him Downstairs — a prime example of Arnold’s mixing of media and his obvious passion for the values inculcated by a deeply creative family. The musical performances took place on a funky altar composed of found objects built by Arnold, which will be on view as part of the exhibit.

The artist intends to create a feeling of “walking inside of a giant graphic novel about the end of the world,” with literal panels made from salvaged two-by-fours depicting scenes. He aims to “bring the audience together in one huge ceremonial experience inside of a realized environment.” The sculpture “Say It With Feeling” is displayed with a short set of instructions for how to carry out a ritual ablution in the style of Shinto mystical practices.

Arnold is heavily influenced by Japanese Edo-period print work, comic books, and manga, as well as modern abstract American art. His mural-like assemblages of wood paneled paintings, done in black, white, pastel pink, and blue, have an undeniable Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg inflection to them. Those artists are two of his biggest inspirations, he admitted during a recent interview with the Guardian at the opening of this show. The figures in his work are mainly Asian women, with tribal face paint and hefty looking weapons in their hands, fending for themselves in a Mad Max backdrop of chaotic destruction.

More so than even the content, the interactive element is critical to Arnold’s mission as an artist, because he aims to directly counteract the alienation and distance enforced on us by modern technology. “The ability to interact with one’s surroundings is being lost through the virtual world that we spend more and more of our lives in,” he says. “Our spirituality is dying.” Through his dark vision of what the future might look like, Arnold hopes to promote in his viewers a deeper sense of awareness and gratitude for what they currently have.

Queens Nails Projects presents “The Love of All Above”

Through Jan. 21 by appointment, free

Art Now SF

3075 17th St., SF

(917) 543-5261

www.felixthethirdrock.com

This art will move you: 1AM SF Gallery’s homage to truck graffiti

Andrew Lam

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February 9, 2012

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“Graffiti is anti-corporation,” says Optimist, a long time Bay Area street artist in a Guardian phone interview. “Whereas advertisements on billboards are trying to sell you something, graffiti is trying to open your eyes to see who else is alive out there.” Spurred by this love of street art, Optimist partnered up with fellow street artist Plantrees to curate “Truck Show SF,” a group show which opens at 1AM SF gallery on Fri/10.

At the root of graffiti is an earnest longing for social emancipation, self-expression, and communication. Sadly, graffiti writers are often misunderstood, seen as vandals or gang members. “Truck Show” was put together to fight these stereotypes. The group show is a look at graffiti writers’ move from tagging on subway trains to box-style delivery trucks, and how this transition represents the ceaseless human desire for self-expression and unrestricted communication.

By making the show a charity event, Optimist says he wants to show that graffiti isn’t about “the ego or the fame of the name,” but is something that has the potential to serve as a creative outlet for the youth. “Truck Show SF” will feature 80 Bay Area writers. All profits will be dedicated to the non-profit organization Visual Element, a visual arts program in East Oakland that uses graffiti and mural painting programs to empower high school students.

The graffiti writers in the show range from burgeoning young artists to people who have been involved in graffiti for over 20 years. The sheer number of different individual artists who are coming together for a greater cause is notable. “People always say graffiti writers are taking away from society and they’re selfish,” adds Optimist. “This is a chance for graffiti writers to still do graffiti but at the same time give back to the younger generation who really needs the help.”

Graffiti has been around forever, of course. But long after the cave painting days, the art form experienced a rebirth in the 1970s and ‘80s in New York when a miserable economy bred social dissatisfactions in inner-city neighborhoods. During that era, the idea of the subway train as a moving canvas that could extend writing to the farthest corners of a city took hold. But due to transit regulations and chemical buffering methods which made it nearly impossible to spray on subways, graffiti had to conquer new ground. Optimist says that “the art of graffiti [has transitioned] from underground to up above ground and in to the streets.” Nowadays, you’ll see more graffiti on delivery trucks, which zoom through inner cities all throughout America.

“Graffiti is mostly concerned with letters and hand writing, so it’s all about inventing your own style to express yourself through the confines of the letters,” Optimist continues.

With “Truck Show,” Optimist wanted to show just how completely those confines could be ruptured. The exhibit showcases not only classic letterings, but the emerging style of graffiti shown in galleries.

One of the show’s artists Leon Loucher gets self-referential — he painted an entire night scene as the backdrop behind a figure spraying the first stages of his graffiti piece on a truck. Another artist, Alex Pardee, is more set on experimenting with surrealism. He paints insect-like creatures that burst out of trucks. Artists like Saze used the opportunity to make humorous responses to anti-graffiti sentiments, creating cut-outs of infamous buffers like Jim Sharp, placing the images in front of toy models and paintings of trucks.

“Graffiti is all about the moment,” says Optimist. And although the gallery is removed from the city streets, the pieces it will feature aim to capture the dynamism, action, and spontaneity that drive street art. To emphasize the liveliness of the art form, the actual sides of tagged trucks were brought in and placed amongst a collaged installation to grace the walls of 1AM.

In addition to the obvious similarities of a graffiti-themed art exhibition, Optimist was able to connect the street scene with his 1AM show by virtue of limited resources. “Graffiti writers usually have to deal with their work being next to or in the same space as [pieces done by] people they dislike.” He hopes that this show will achieve something the streets often fail to do, which is to create “a collective of graffiti writers who are joining forces to give back to something much greater – the youth.”

“Truck Show SF” opening reception

Fri/10 6:30 – 9:30 p.m., free.

1AM Gallery

1000 Howard, SF

(415) 861-5089

www.1amsf.com

The Performant: Science, Honor, Psychogeography

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February 9, 2012

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The Phenomenauts and Alley Cat Books shoot for the moon.

Trapped in a world they didn’t create, the spacecraft-garage band known to us as The Phenomenauts must surely come from a more evolved time and place, as evidenced by the spiffiness of their natty uniforms — and the electric jolt of their stage shows. As refinement and heroism (the band motto is “Science and Honor”) are qualities in tragically short supply among your run-of-the-mill rock groups, bands which contain both are bound to stand out, with or without the additions of attention-grabbing technical flourishes such as pinpoint lasers, billows of stage fog, and the custom-built Streamerator 2000, which shoots festive streamers of toilet paper out onto the frenetic crowd. Speaking of frenetic, I love a band that can make San Franciscans dance as if possessed by dervishes with hyperkinesis. For that feat alone, they deserve an intergalactic medal for courage in the face of cosmic indifference.

Headlining last Friday night at the Rickshaw Stop, the band was in top form, steering their craft through a set-list packed with velocity and passion. Their sonic profile can be described as a jaunty blend of Devo, the B-52’s, Oingo-Boingo, the Aquabats, and the Stray Cats, and their costumed concept is straight out of a low-budge sci-fi serial, let’s say “Jason of Star Command,” or “Lost in Space.” From their high-octane, punky cover of the Polecats’ “Make a Circuit with Me,” to the pumped-up psychobilly of Phenomenauts classics such as “Space Mutants,” complete with call-and-response oddience participation, to “It’s Only Chemical,” a slo-mo doo-wop duet between Commander Angel Nova and Leftenent AR7, a robot with strikingly human harmonizing capabilities (obviously an advanced model), the ‘nauts never let their tongue-in-cheek, space-explorer personas get in the way of solid musicianship and creative range.

If NASA had a house band, my guess is they’d want them to sound like the Phenomenauts. Actually, maybe NASA should just hire the Phenomenauts. You heard it here first.

Meanwhile, the excitement surrounding the grand opening of Alley Cat Books — the fourth sibling of an honorable lineage that includes Dog Eared, Red Hill, and Phoenix Books — maintained its momentum with the opening of a new art show in the somewhat cavernous space in the back of the store. The theme was California maps, though the interpretation was open, and one of the more striking pieces involved an interactive slideshow installation of Cuba designed by Hanna Quevado and Azael Ferrer, who I’m assuming also invited the percussion players jamming in the corner of the room. Other pieces included a textured tapestry of California Delta patterns, by Adrian Mendoza and a bare bones affair by Geoff Horne, an unadorned web of straight lines connecting the bars of San Francisco, a useful bit of reference knowledge. I’m looking forward to the promise of events to come, bands, readings, and film screenings are all rumored to be in the works, and of course, when all else fails to capture the imagination, there’re always *books.* And honor.

Sundance Diary, volume eight: the final countdown

Sue Vaughan

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February 8, 2012

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Sundance Diary, volume eight: the final countdown

In a series of posts, Midnites for Maniacs curator-host and Academy of Art film-history teacher Jesse Hawthorne Ficks reports on the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Check out his first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh entries.

No film at this year’s festival encountered as much controversy as Craig Zobel’s Compliance. At the first public screening, an all-out shouting match erupted, with an audience member yelling “Sundance can do better!” You can’t buy that kind of publicity. Every screening (public and press) that followed was jam-packed with people hoping to experience the most shocking film at Sundance, and the film does not disappoint. (Beware: every review I have happened upon has unnecessarily spoiled major plots in the film, which is based on true events.)

What is so impressive about Zobel’s film is how it builds up a sense of ever-impending terror. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the film steps into Psycho (1960) terrain, specifically in the final act of the film. Compliance aims to confront a society filled with people who are trained to follow rules without questioning them. Magnolia Pictures, which previously collaborated with Zobel on his debut film Great World of Sound (which premiered at Sundance in 2007), picked up the film for theatrical release; if you dare to check it out, prepare to be traumatized. You’ll be screaming about one of the most audacious movies of 2012 — and that’s exactly why the film is so brilliant.

Before moving on, the short film that screened before Compliance needs a special mention for being one of the best films at Sundance 2012. Nash Edgerton’s follow up to last year’s brilliantly dark short Spider is an 11-minute short entitled Bear. Not only did it catch me completely off guard every step of the way, it’s the kind of slick, quick fix that had me panting at the idea of him creating a feature-length film.

Back to horror now. Rodney Ascher’s first feature, Room 237, explores the dozens of theories that fans all over the world have regarding Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). Ascher, who debuted at Sundance with his masterful short The S from Hell (2010) — about how the 1964 Screen Gems logo gave people nightmares for years … no, really! — has brought the same sort of enthusiasm towards this cinephilia fantasy.

Investigating theories about Kubrick’s methods vs. his madness, Ascher’s film uncovers just as many details that will give you goosebumps all the way home as it reveals some of the most outlandish speculations you could ever eavesdrop on. Which is why the film is so damn addictive! Just by putting this much time and energy into deconstructing a film that many 1980 audiences felt was inessential art, you realize how important critical thought truly is. Not only should this film be taught in cinema studies classes in hopes to crack Kubrick’s specific codes in The Shining, it’s the concept behind Room 237 (don’t look in the bath tub!) that deserves to be celebrated.

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks’ Sundance 2012 Top Ten
1. Rick Alverson’s The Comedy (USA)
2. Craig Zobel’s Compliance (USA)
3. Katie Aselton’s Black Rock (USA)
4. Matthew Akers’s Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present (USA)
5. Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild (USA)
6. Gareth Evans’s The Raid (Indonesia)
7. Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer (USA)
8. Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 (USA)
9. Nash Edgerton’s Bear (Austrailia)
10. Ben Lewin’s The Surrogate (USA)

Making history: Joanne Griffith’s ‘Redefining Black Power’ project comes to the Bay

Andrew Lam

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February 8, 2012

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“Joanne [Griffith]’s work is centered on one theme: not to offer information as a point of journalistic fact, but to act as a conduit for debate and conversation, especially around issues relating to the African diaspora experience.” So writes Brian Shazor, director of the Pacifica Radio Archives, in the foreward to Griffith’s new book Redefining Black Power: Reflections on the State of Black America (City Lights Books, 206pp, $16.95). Griffith will be presenting her work, part of an interactive project to archive the state of African Americans in the United States in the Bay Area this week — starting tonight (Wed/8) at the Museum of the African Diaspora.

This shouldn’t have to be said, but in these times of reductive news media it does: Obama isn’t the only black voice that needs to be heard, during this Black History Month or any other month. Inspired by the archives of progressive African American voice kept by LA’s Pacifica Radio Archives, Griffith — a leading progressive voice herself, having reported on issues from around the African diaspora for the BBC and NPR — transcribes her interviews with leading thoughtmakers for the book, set up as a series of dialogues. Hear from political prisoner Ramona Africa why Obama is “the new crack,” journalist Linn Washington, Jr. on media matters, green jobs leader Van Jones on hybrid activism. The president is used as a theme of the book, but the interviews use him as a lens to look at issues that range far beyond the White House.

Griffith and the other minds behind Redefining Black Power want these interviews to serve as a jumping off point for other unheard voices. Head over to the book’s website and you’ll find directions on how to add your point of view to those of the better-known activists and professionals already immortalized in the Pacifica archives. You can go to one of Griffith’s upcoming readings (details below) for inspiration. Or better yet, read our recent email interview with her and then do that.

SFBG: Explain where the interviews in the book came from. How did you become acquainted with the Pacifica Radio Archives. Why are they important for people to hear?

JG: The idea for the Redefining Black Power Project, of which the book is part, was born out of the historic audio held in the Pacifica Radio Archives; a national treasure trove of material charting America’s history from a progressive perspective dating back to 1949. Within the collection are key recordings from the civil rights, black power and black freedom movement, including Rosa Parks, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Seale, Elaine Brown, and so many others. But it was one recording of Fannie Lou Hamer addressing the 1964 Democratic National Convention that sparked the idea for Redefining Black Power. The director of the Pacifica Radio Archives, Brian DeShazor, heard the tape and wanted to find a permanent way to preserve and share the voices held in the archives with a wider audience, and what better way than through the written word. Brian approached City Lights Books with the idea, and this book is the result, drawing on the voices of history to link us to the election of Barack Obama, one of the most significant moments in the social and political history of the United States. Through this project, we hope to preserve the voices, opinions and perspectives of African-Americans in this so called ‘Age of Obama’ for historians to digest and explore in years to come.

How did I get involved? As a complete audio nut, I always make a point of visiting local radio stations wherever I travel in the world. Back in 2007, I was in Los Angeles, called KPFK to arrange a visit and was introduced to the Pacifica Radio Archives. Speaking with Brian DeShazor, we came up with an idea to share the historic collection with a UK audience and I’ve been doing this every Sunday evening on BBC Radio 5 Live in the UK for over four years. Because of this work and the extensive list of people I have interviewed over the years, Brian invited me to do the interviews for the Redefining Black Power project. Through this book, we delve into the role of the activist from different perspectives; the legal system, the media, religion, the economy, green politics and emotional justice. All were recorded between September 2009 and August 2011. To be clear though, this book is not an anthology of black leaders speaking on the Obama presidency. This is simply a taster of opinions on the subject, but everyone is encouraged to participate with their thoughts and opinions at www.redefiningblackpower.com and come out to the many events we’re hosting throughout February, including here in the Bay Area at the Museum of African Diaspora from 7 p.m. on Wednesday Feb 8 and at Marcus Books in Oakland with guest panelists Hodari Davis from Youth Speaks and social justice activist Dereca Blackmon on Thursday Feb 9 from 6.30 p.m.

SFBG: Has there been an interview you’ve conducted in which your subject’s answers have deeply surprised you?

JG: Every interview had its own surprise; from Ramona Africa describing President Obama as ‘the new crack’ and why she refused to vote, to economist Dr. Julianne Malveaux revealing the financially precarious situations many African Americans find themselves in; from high foreclosure rates and high unemployment to the low levels of accumulated wealth for black women. Very sobering statistics. Michelle Alexander, too, the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness really shocked me when she said that more African American men are currently incarcerated than were enslaved in 1850.

However, it was Dr Vincent Harding, the man behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech that surprised me the most. A true veteran of the civil rights movement, he made the point that the election of President Obama was never the goal of the movement; instead he prefers to call the work “the movement for the expansion and deepening of democracy in America.” Put this way, it made me realize more than ever, that the work we do today is not in isolation, but part of a wider movement, stretching back all the way to slavery. And the work isn’t over.

SFBG: Your introduction ends with a quote from Kanye and Jay-Z’s Watch the Throne album. What role, if any, does hip-hop play in the book?

JG: Hip-hop doesn’t play a role in this book, other than this quote, but it will feature heavily in the next volume of Redefining Black Power which will focus on the reflections of black entertainers, writers, poets and performers on this moment in US history.

SFBG: What would be the best way the United States could spend Black History Month?

JG: Black history — regardless of whether it is the United States or the UK where I moved from or anywhere else — should be acknowledged daily; this is the only way for us to keep memories alive and never forget where transformative change, like the election of President Obama, comes from.

Listening to recordings like those held in the Pacifica Radio Archives with our youth would be a great place to start. I spent a couple of days with a group of students in Detroit, sharing the archive material and getting them to discuss their thoughts on the recordings; Audre Laude, James Baldwin, Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela, and others. Every one of them said they wished they had heard these voices before. It gave them a context to their own lives that didn’t exist previously, while encouraging them to never give up; too many people have suffered for them to let less than favorable circumstances stop them now.

SFBG: Who should read this book? How should it be used?

JG: Use it as a conversation starter to discuss issues in your own community. Parents, use it as a way to engage your children in history. Students, use it as a resource for papers on race and the Obama presidency. Most importantly, everyone, share your thoughts at www.redefiningblackpower.com. This book is not the end of the project; we’re only getting started.

Joanne Griffith’s Redefining Black Power author readings:

Wed/8 7 p.m., free with $10 museum admission

Museum of the African Diaspora

685 Mission, SF

(415) 358-7252

www.moadsf.org

Thu/9 6:30-8 p.m., free

Marcus Books

3900 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakl.

(510) 652-3244

www.marcusbookstores.com

Will theme camps get the remaining Burning Man tickets?

Sasha Cuttler

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February 7, 2012

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Will theme camps get the remaining Burning Man tickets?

Organizers of Burning Man are working on a plan to deal with the fact that most longtime burners were denied tickets to this year’s event – the result of a new lottery system that seems to have been gamed by ticket scalpers and agencies – and sources tell us it could involve distributing tickets through established theme camps and art collectives.

Black Rock City LLC board member Marian Goodell said last week, in comments to the Guardian and a post the next day on the LLC’s Burning Blog, that organizers are very concerned that so many members of groups that create most of the temporary city’s infrastructure, art, and entertainment didn’t get tickets this year. Surveys show only about 20-33 percent of established camp members got tickets, even less in some camps.

“It’s clear that the theme camps and art projects are a significant part of the community, and this situation is causing problems for them. That’s the part that will hurt us if we don’t take another look at this,” Goodell told me, saying that the LLC planned to gather information and make an announcement within two weeks.

Since then, the LLC has asked many established theme camps and art collectives for specific information on how many of their members still need tickets. There were 700 registered theme camps in 2010, the last year for which the LLC has made that information publicly available, as well as 275 registered art installations, and 1,000 art car permit applications.

Several sources tell us the LLC is considering canceling the open ticket sale that is scheduled for March 28, at which the final 10,000 tickets were to be sold online on a first come, first served basis. Instead, they would sell some or all of those tickets through the leadership of established theme camps and art collectives.

Goodell hasn’t returned Guardian calls on the idea, which sources say has not yet been formally adopted. Yet Goodell said the LLC has ruled out the idea of re-doing last week’s lottery of 40,000 tickets and replacing it with a registration and regulated aftermarket system that would deter gouging by scalpers, as many have suggested, so they don’t seem to have many good options available at this point.

Clearly, the idea of selling tickets through the camps would help reduce the widespread anxiety that much the city’s art and entertainment won’t come to fruition this year, which could have a detrimental impact on the offerings and character of Black Rock City. In my book, The Tribes of Burning Man, I argue that these camps and collectives are the basic building blocks of this culture and the city it creates each summer in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. As LLC board member Harley Dubois said on its website, “Theme camps are the interactive core of Burning Man.”

But she has also told me that it’s important for Black Rock City to be just as accessible to those who choose to camp independently or with small groups that don’t register for placement on the playa, so it’s unlikely that a decision to value theme camps and art collectives over other types of citizens would completely quell concerns over this year’s ticket fiasco.

What do you think?

Live Shots: Golden Glass 2012 slow food and wine festival

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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February 7, 2012

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Wine was flowing freely at 11 a.m. on Sat/4 for the pre-show press tasting. We had prepped ourselves by carb-loading on whole wheat oatmeal pancakes before heading to Fort Mason for the Eighth Annual Golden Glass festival (which raised awareness and funds for slow food programs) preparing ourselves to indulge in a smorgasbord of carefully vetted, sustainably produced wines.

(Oddly, I liked the first wine we sampled, a moscato d’asti by La Caliera, all sweet and bubbly, the best. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it was the first wine to hit our tongues that morning, but I really believe it was just that great. You should try it.)

The wines came from all over Italy and California, along with a sampling of delectable edibles, including hot-from-the-oven bread by Danny Gabriner of Sour Flour and a large, golden roasted pig from the Butcher Brothers. Also at the Slow Food “Ark of Taste” table were some quirky culinary finds, like the Bodega Red potato. Once the staple tater of the gold miners, over time, it disappeared and was thought to have been completely lost until it was recently found. It is now being grown in Marin County, in hopes of reviving this long-lost tuber.

We skedaddled before the show opened to the public, since the event was totally sold out and we had a feeling that wine aficionados were going to take the place by storm, or rather, sips and gulps. But we felt lucky to have tasted such a wide and delicious variety of libations, before we teetered off to find some lunch.

Sundance Diary, volume seven: up all night!

Sue Vaughan

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February 7, 2012

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Sundance Diary, volume seven: up all night!

In a series of posts, Midnites for Maniacs curator-host and Academy of Art film-history teacher Jesse Hawthorne Ficks reports on the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Check out his first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth entries.

Park City at Midnight is what excites me most about each Sundance Film Festival. Yet, many other films screen at midnight that aren’t technically part of the actual category, which brings up the dilemma of what type of film warrants the designation of “Midnight Movie.” Late-night audiences range from the inebriated to the intellectual (and often both combined). This year’s crop of midnight films, in and out of the Park City at Midnight category, was genuinely one of the most eclectic and enjoyable group of films presented in years.

Quentin Dupieux’s Wrong — his follow-up to 2010’s unstoppable cult hit Rubber — is an absurdist journey where everything and nothing can happen, as long as it’s what you’d least expect from a narrative. The reactionary rules of this wandering wonder (don’t read any spoilers about it!) seem to have expanded David Lynch’s quietest, most awkward moments into a web of surrealist silliness that I immediately wanted to watch again as soon as it was over. As audiences were exiting at two in the morning, half of them were bleary-eyed from laughing hysterically, while the other half were in groggy, drunken stupors. For me, this confirms that Dupieux has achieved exactly what he wanted (to make the obvious joke, something so Wrong it’s right).

First-time filmmaker Richard Bates Jr.’s Excision snuck up on the audience, earning mad respect from the sold-out crowd as his film transformed from bloody fun to gory darkness, concluding with one hell of a jaw-dropping finale. While 90210 star AnnaLynne McCord truly went Method to exquisitely explore a disturbed high-schooler, Traci Lords’ passionate and complex performance as her perplexed mother should also be noted — she truly reached shades of Piper Laurie in Carrie (1976).

Jon Wright’s Grabbers had the buzz of being Bong Joon-ho’s The Host (2006) by way of Edgar Wright. The very enjoyable Irish film (which sports a hilarious drunken performance by newcomer Ruth Bradley) quite nicely fills a void for fans of tongue-in-cheek monster movies, and would best be experienced in a theater filled with boisterous bellows from fellow Anglophiles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWlmhMSnVdM

In previous Sundance Diary installments, I discussed Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie and Katie Aselton’s triumphant Black Rock. Now, it’s time talk about Gareth Huw Evans’s unruly, uncompromising, and unbelievable Indonesian action film The Raid. Not since Sundance 1992 (John Woo’s Hard Boiled and Tsui Hark’s Dragon Inn) have I experienced the type of nonstop excitement as The Raid. This movie contains inventive fight sequences and hypnotic violence so insane and intense that you have to scream at the top of your lungs while simultaneously assuming a few of the stunt people had to have died during the film! (Jot down the name Iko Uwais, for this man will be taking over the world shortly, especially if he can shine in his U.S. debut, a remake of Mortal Combat coming in 2013). The Raid offers proof positive that a martial arts extravaganza can be as profoundly affecting as any essential art film.

Up next: Jesse Hawthorne Ficks’ eighth and final Sundance Diary, with his top ten from the festival!

Sundance Diary, volume six: dramarama

Sue Vaughan

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February 6, 2012

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In a series of posts, Midnites for Maniacs curator-host and Academy of Art film-history teacher Jesse Hawthorne Ficks reports on the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Check out his first, second, third, fourth, and fifth entries.

So Yong Kim’s character study For Ellen is only 93 minutes long, but the experience of watching it felt like it took an eternity. But — even though the film did not win awards at this year’s festival — it resonated; it was filled with many memorable, quiet moments. Paul Dano (never before so vulnerable) takes the reigns as a struggling musician who, while taking a break from touring to sign the papers for his long-overdue divorce, is forced to confront his own selfish tendencies when his custody rights start slipping through his fingers.

Writer-director Kim (2008’s Treeless Mountain) uses long, handheld takes that often prevent the viewer from seeing the actual feelings of our anti-hero. This subtle slice-of-life portrait never wavers from its sullen tone, which might explain why many critics seemed underwhelmed after its screening. For Ellen doesn’t give its flawed protagonist an easy way out, in a way that’s reminiscent of Darren Aranofsky’s The Wrestler (2008).

Ira Sachs (2005’s Forty Shades of Blue) delivered his most personal film to date with Keep the Lights On; oddly enough, it might be a little too personal for its own good. Chronicling an extremely passionate and self-destructive relationship from the late 90s to the present, Sachs transparently exposes the very modern Chelsea neighborhood life of daily phone sex, random hook-ups, and casual usage of hard drugs — all wrapped up in a self-absorbed universe that I am sure more people in this generation can relate to than would actually like to admit. The indie auteur’s latest beautifully-shot effort goes overboard with its honesty (especially toward the end) and I was left in an emotional limbo, wanting to care but feeling like I had read too much of someone’s personal diary.

Barely recognized as mumblecore’s first female director, Ry Russo-Young seems to have graduated to full-fledged indie director with Nobody Walks, which won a Special Jury Prize for Excellence in Independent Film Producing. Most audience members were at the screening thanks to star John Krasinski (The Office), who delivers his usual charm. But truly stealing the show was Olivia Thirlby, whose irresponsible yet utterly motivated 23-year-old artist is so wonderfully performed that you forget about some of the major cues the film has taken from Lisa Cholodenko’s Laurel Canyon (2002) and Tom Kapinos’s Californication. Lena Dunham, who made 2011’s monumental Tiny Furniture, co-wrote the film, and her unromanticized take on strong female voices shines quite brightly here.

But nothing in this year’s Dramatic Competition could compare to Ben Lewin’s The Surrogate, which won both the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for Ensemble Acting. Truly delivering hands-down next year’s best actor performance, John Hawkes (2010’s Winter’s Bone) portrays Berkeley, Calif. journalist Mark O’Brien, whose poetry, autobiographical writings, and physical limitations gave writer/director Ben Lewin more than you could ever ask for. O’Brien’s real-life story was already told in Jessica Yu’s 1995 Academy Award-winning documentary Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien, which hauntingly showcased O’Brien’s inspired and difficult life. For his narrative take, Lewin has pinpointed a very specific part of the story, creating a timeless romance and life-altering drama that ranks alongside Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun (1938) and David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnUuVxL0UJ4

But it’s the acting that makes this film so unforgettable. Hawkes conveys complicated emotions and captures O’Brien’s soft-spoken syntax without ever slipping into pretension. William H. Macy throws in some very needed humor as an understanding, catch-22’d priest, and Helen Hunt gives the film that certain extra sense of surprise and understanding. It’s a cliché to say so, but it’s true: the film left nary a dry eye in the house. The Surrogate will be “the little film that could” for 2012 and for years after.

Up next: night owl Jesse Hawthorne Ficks tackles more Park City at Midnight movies.

Live Shots: Precious Drop

Andrew Lam

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February 6, 2012

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The evening’s “Precious Drop” dance performance at CounterPulse on Saturday, February 4 was centered around the theme of water — which is becoming a controversial topic as issues of water rights become more muddled. Most of the dances, performed by Mohamed Lamine Bangoura, the Jaara Dance Project, and Bu Falle African Drum and Dance, focused on celebrating Mami Wata and her fickle ability to pour down from the sky to provide precious drops of life. The choreography onstage mixed traditional and modern moves, performed by talented dancers from across the globe whose smiles filled the space with a joy that you could feel, even sitting in the audience.

Live musicians provided a background of fertile beats on a variety of drums and marimbas, and they also sang, making for a wonderful show. Their efforts were rewarded — both nights were sold out the space, with happy dance fans sitting on the floor and standing in the hallway to get a glimpse of the wetness onstage. The piece was a work-in-progress, so keep your ears perked (follow the drum beat!) for future performances.

A 2011 Jaara dance performance