510Arts.com Events

Art Reception

2010-09-17 Guest curator, San Francisco artist Scot Velardo brings the photography of three artists:
Jacqui Galle: Jacqui's current project involves shooting taxidermy as décor in home interiors across the country. She finds great satisfaction in examining how a room defines an individual, and in the taxidermy project endeavors to bring about a sense of surprise, surrealism and beauty. www.jacquigalle.com
Sheila Menezes: Life in the San Francisco Mission District, living above an ice cream store and kitty-corner to the "baddest bar in the city", continues to inspire her street-photography heartbeat. The urban landscapes displayed represent her travels around the States…Westside to Eastside: Las Vegas, Seattle and New York. www.sheilamenezes.com
Jen Siska: There is not an hour that goes by in her day when she is not seeing something she is inspired by and has to photograph. At times it can be the most ordinary things where she finds beauty: light, people, food, nature, laughter, the sky, telephone wires, buildings, the list is endless. This show is a collage of snapshots that give insight into a day in her life. www.jensiska.com

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Blossoms & thorns: The Legacy of Richmond's Historic Japanese American Nurseries

2010-09-25 Blossoms & Thorns is an exhibition of contemporary and historic photographs and artifacts exploring the Japanese American flower nurseries that thrived in Richmond for over 100 years. The reception will be from 3-5 on 9/25. The exhibition runs from 9/14 - 11/13.

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"Miss Nelson is Missing"

2010-10-02

Miss Nelson's rude and rowdy students won’t even sit still for story hour. Then, suddenly, their lovely, patient teacher disappears, replaced by the scariest substitute ever: Viola Swamp!!! Where is Miss Nelson? Not even the principal, a bumbling detective, or a trip to Miss Nelson’s house can solve the mystery. Families will love this zany, musical romp, based on the book by Harry Allard, as life in Room 207 gets harder and harder, and the class searches frantically for its missing teacher. (Note: no shows 10/9 or 10/23 - Go, Bears! Two shows 10/10, 10/24.)

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FAMILY EXTRAVAGANZA: Jack-O�-lantern Carving and Decorating

2010-10-23 1-4pm | $8 per child
Turn your plump pumpkin into a magical lantern or fanciful Halloween decoration using paints, spoons, and simple carving knives. Bring your own hefty squash or try one of our samplers.

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SATURDAY STORIES: How Do You Know ? by Deborah Trotter

2010-10-02 Hear author Deborah Trotter share the ways Polly learns that things are still there even though the fog hides them. Then, make your own foggy landscape where all sorts of items can be hidden in the mist. $8 per child

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Oakland Asian Cultural Center's Fall 2010 Fundraiser Extravaganza

2010-10-16

OACC'S FALL 2010 FUNDRAISING EXTRAVAGANZA

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2010

7pm-10pm

Location: 388 9th Street, Suite 290

Oakland,CA 94607

Proceeds will help keep OACC's programs and services free or low cost to the 25,000+ participants and communities we serve.

...Sponsorship opportunities and tickets are still available!

Tickets range from $25- $100.

Special $10 early bird discount on all tickets $50 and above if you purchase them online by Friday, September 3rd!

Buy tickets securely and safely online using Eventbrite,http://www.oaccfall10fundraiser.eventbrite.com

For more information about the program, visit:

http://www.oacc.cc/supportus/annualfundraisers/fall2010fundraiser.html

For more info about sponsorship opportunities and tickets contact:

OACC's Co-Director Mona Shah at (510) 637 - 0455 or visit: http://www.oacc.cc/supportus/annualfundraisers/fall2010fundraiser/sponsorpuri5.html

Program Overview

This event will feature the premiere of PURI 5: "SPoRA," a multidisciplinary new piece that will explore the themes of migration and the Asian diaspora within a context of international war.

Featuring instrumentals, vocals and spoken word by renowned Korean percussionist and vocalist Dohee Lee
with performances by local and international musicians Van-Anh Vanessa Vo (Dan Tranh and other instruments) and Hiroyuki Jimi Nakagawa (Taiko).
Special performances by Jamaesori and other artists TBD.

The premiere will include an artist talk led by Ms. Lee.

This program is made possible with the generous support from: the City of Oakland, Merilyn Wong & David McClain,

Mr. & Mrs. Nam Ly, Dr. William Kwong, D.M.D., Oakland Charter High School, Kin Chow, Robert & Anne Chu, Dr.

Lawrence Ng, Kin Chow, Sameer Siruguri, Yoshino Sushi, and other donors. Partial list as of 8/24/2010.

PURI 5: SPoRA was commissioned by OACC with grant from the East Bay Fund for Artists at the

East Bay Community Foundation.

Poster and photo credits:

Original poster image by EastSide Arts Alliance: www.eastsideartsalliance.org

Photo by Petra Cvelbar

This program is made possible with the generous support from: the City of Oakland, Merilyn Wong & David McClain, Mr. & Mrs. Nam Ly, Dr. William Kwong, D.M.D., Oakland Charter High School, Kin Chow, Robert & Anne Chu, Dr. Lawrence Ng, Kin Chow, Sameer Siruguri, Yoshino Sushi, and other donors. Partial list as of 8/24/2010.

PURI 5: SPoRA was commissioned by OACC with grant from the East Bay Fund for Artists at the East Bay Community Foundation.

Poster and photo credits:

Original poster image by EastSide Arts Alliance: www.eastsideartsalliance.org

Photo by Petra Cvelbar

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Point Richmond Music Summer Concert

2010-09-10 Free concert: Je Conte followed by Kickin' the Mule.

Kids and dogs welcome. Dancing in the streets.

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Macbeth; Orson Welles (U.S., 1948)

2010-10-29 Shakespeare on Screen (Film Series)
Macbeth
Orson Welles (U.S., 1948)
Archival Print

Welles’s ambition in Macbeth was to restore Shakespeare’s tragedy to its roots in Scottish legend; his achievement is an experimental fusion of the Bard and the B picture. The film establishes authenticity not in its settings but in its tone and mood, creating a world infused with witchcraft and portent. It includes a number of eye-opening stylistic flourishes, including a single take that occupies an entire reel of film, that were unseen by American audiences at the time of its original release. This print, painstakingly restored by UCLA, reincorporates that extraordinary missing scene, along with several minutes of overture and exit music and the original Scottish-accented soundtrack. The actors’ mock-Celtic burr was originally deemed too alien for U.S. ears, but it is “so right,” as Welles said, “for all that gooseflesh and grue.”

• Written by Welles, based on the play by William Shakespeare. Photographed by John L. Russell. With Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O’Herlihy, Edgar Barrier. (119 mins, B&W, 35mm, From UCLA Film and Television Archive, permission Paramount)

Preceded by Chronicle of Poor Lovers at 7:00 PM. Same-day second screening discount just $4!

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Chronicle of Poor Lovers; Carlo Lizzani (Italy, 1954)

2010-10-29 Days of Glory: Revisiting Italian Neorealism (Film Series)
Chronicle of Poor Lovers
Carlo Lizzani (Italy, 1954)

(Cronache di poveri amanti). Marcello Mastroianni cited this controversial film as one of his best of his early period, and Alberto Moravia praised it highly. Directed by one of the central figures of Italian neorealism, known for his mixture of Marxism and melodrama, this is the moving portrayal of the inhabitants of Via del Corno, an alley in Florence, in 1925. The struggle between Communists and Fascists following the First World War serves as a backdrop for a richly observed, intimate group portrait of the prostitutes, young lovers, servants, and masters who live on the alley. Though the film is ensemble, even choral, in its structure, Mastroianni stands out as an antifascist fruit vendor who tries to unite his neighbors against Mussolini and his Blackshirts. The government attacked the film, tried to have it banned at home and abroad, and when it was invited to the Cannes Film Festival, threatened never to send another Italian film to Cannes if it won any prizes. It won the Special Jury Award.

• Written by Lizzani, Massimo Mida, Vasco Pratolini, from the novel by Pratolini. Photographed by Gianni Di Venanzo. With Anna Maria Ferrero, Cosetta Greco, Antonella Lualdi, Marcello Mastroianni. (108 mins, In Italian with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Cinecittà Luce S.p.A., permission Movietime Srl)

Followed by Macbeth at 9:05 PM. Same-day second screening discount just $4!

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Special Events: Readings on Cinema (Safety Last; Fred Newmeyer, Sam Taylor (U.S., 1923))

2010-10-28 Special Events: Readings on Cinema
Safety Last
Fred Newmeyer, Sam Taylor (U.S., 1923)

Judith Rosenberg on Piano

Introduced by Merrill Schleier, author, Skyscraper Cinema: Architecture and Gender in American Film

Safety Last contains the classic Harold Lloyd image, the comedian hanging precariously from the arms of a clock ten stories off the ground. Shot without trick photography (though there was a safety platform out of camera range), the sequence established Lloyd as the comedian who would go to any lengths—or heights—to get a laugh. In addition to being Lloyd’s quintessential “thrill picture” (as he called them), Safety Last was also a vehicle for Lloyd’s continuing study of ambition in America. As The Young Man Out to Make His Name in the World, Harold lands a job as a department store clerk. He sends to The Girl Back Home glowing letters and “lavish” gifts, leading her to think him suddenly wealthy and in need of financial advice. Upon her unexpected arrival, Harold enters into an elaborate ruse to impress the girl.

• Written by Hal Roach, Sam Taylor, Tim Whelan. Photographed by Walter Lundin. With Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother, Noah Young. (75 mins, Silent, B&W, 35mm)

Preceded by short:
Never Weaken (Fred Newmeyer, U.S., 1921). Unlucky-in-love Harold unsuccessfully tries suicide, then has it thrust upon him aboard a hanging girder. (29 mins, Silent, B&W, 35mm)

• (Total running time: 104 mins, From Harold Lloyd Entertainment)

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Photographic Memory: Bay Area Student Experimental Film Festival 2010 (U.S., 2009�10)

2010-10-27 Alternative Visions (Film Series)
Photographic Memory: Bay Area Student Experimental Film Festival 2010
(U.S., 2009–10)

Artists in Person

Ranging from the retro apocalyptics of The Eternal Recurrence, the fractured performance of Dance of Days, and the spare, elegiac video distortion of Portrait of Bonnie, each film in tonight’s program of recent Bay Area student experimental works offers its own particular texturally haunting tone. A persistent sense of mortality and memory suffuses many of the films, and is perhaps most apparent in the “slice of death” documentary observation of The Final Chapter and the meditations on place composing Romance Standard Time and 131 Russ. Grainy, color-saturated rows of cotton candy, stuffed animals, and neon luminescence create a somnambulant impressionism in I Had A Dream I Went To Coney Island. Other formal explorations are interspersed throughout the program, including the striking Gradients, Reflect, and Frontier, while in the rotoscoped sci-fi synaesthesia of Reduction, rough-hewn geometric shapes become implanted mental pictures. However varied in manner and approach, these shorts share a mutual ability to channel and discuss the otherwise ineffable.—Stanley Lamontagne

Alternative Requirements: Bay Area Student Experimental Film Festival 2010 is curated by UC Berkeley students Christopher Deetz, Daniel Dufficy, Chelsea Gonzalez, Stanley Lamontagne, and Laura Van Alstine, as part of an internship offered by the Film Studies Department and the Pacific Film Archive, under the guidance of Kathy Geritz with the assistance of Jonathan Knapp and Garbiñe Ortega. Presented with support from the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Endowment.

• Gradients (Nick Logan, San Francisco State University, 2010, 2 mins, B&W). Reduction (Sam Barnett, Berkeley City College, 2009, 6 mins). Romance Standard Time (Simone Bailey, California College of the Arts, 2009, 3 mins, B&W). Reflect (Tsen-Chu Hsu, San Francisco Art Institute, 2010, 3.5 mins, 16mm). Dance of Days (Robert Machoian, UC Davis, 2010, 4 mins). The Final Chapter (Mina T. Son, Stanford University, 2009, 4.5 mins, B&W). 131 Russ (Silvia Turchin, SFSU, 2010, 5 mins). The Eternal Recurrence (Charles Chadwick, SFAI, 2010, 9 mins, B&W). I Had A Dream I Went To Coney Island (Sherwin Akbarzadeh, UC Berkeley, 2009, 4 mins). Portrait of Bonnie (Jason Fritz Michael, SFSU, 2009, 4 mins). Frontier (Frederick Kolouch, CCA, 2010, 8 mins).

• (Total running time: c. 55 mins, Color, Digital video, From the artists, unless otherwise indicated)

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The Hips of J.W.; Jo�o C�sar Monteiro (Portugal, 1997)

2010-10-24 Elegant Perversions: The Cinema of João César Monteiro (Film Series)
The Hips of J.W.
João César Monteiro (Portugal, 1997)

(Le Bassin de J.W.) Inspired by a postcard that French critic Serge Daney sent Monteiro (“I dreamt that John Wayne had a wonderful way of swinging his hips at the North Pole”), The Hips of J.W. tackles classic Hollywood cinema, religion, sexuality, the madness of August Strindberg, quotes from Pasolini and Breton, a failed sexual encounter involving the presence of small children, and more in Monteiro’s simultaneously rigorous and insane style. Operating on several levels of “reality” and “fiction,” the film finds some grounding in the friendship between theater director Monteiro and his actor (Pierre Clementi), and one’s desire to leave society behind for good. “It wasn’t God, but John Wayne’s hips that inspired him,” says a character, while a dream of “no more homelands” quotes Samuel Beckett. Indescribable, as rigorously framed as it is utterly mad, The Hips of J.W. is, for Film Comment, “a kind of cinephile transubstantiation orgy in which thought becomes flesh becomes celluloid.”—Jason Sanders

• Written by Monteiro. Photographed by Mário Barroso. With Monteiro, Hugues Quester, Pierre Clémenti, Joana Azevedo. (128 mins, In Portuguese with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Lusomondo)

Preceded by Antony and Cleopatra at 4:00 PM. Same-day second screening discount just $4!

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Antony and Cleopatra; Charlton Heston (U.K./Spain/Switzerland, 1972)

2010-10-24 Shakespeare on Screen (Film Series)
Antony and Cleopatra
Charlton Heston (U.K./Spain/Switzerland, 1972)

Years of starring roles and acting-for-hire had enabled Charlton Heston to finally direct his own film, and for his debut he chose to adapt Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, a surprising choice only if one isn’t aware of Heston’s love of all things Shakespeare (which reached back to college days in Chicago, according to a 1972 Variety review). This epic retelling of Shakespeare’s Roman tragedy features Heston as Antony, the Roman conqueror brought down by Eros. A true labor of love (in addition to starring in and directing, Heston also wrote the script), the film was, for Variety, “impressively mounted and well played . . . a neat balance of closeup portraiture and panoramic action.” Filmed in Spain (though as a cost-cutting measure Heston even re-incorporated old scenes from Ben Hur!) and exceedingly rare, Antony and Cleopatra offers up both Hollywood-style epic filmmaking and a more intimate, heartfelt, and wonderfully acted examination of passion and power.—Jason Sanders

• Written by Heston, based on the play by William Shakespeare. Photographed by Rafael Pacheco. With Heston, Hildegard Neil, Eric Porter, Fernando Rey. (160 mins, Color, 35mm transfer to DigiBeta, From Agamemnon Films)

Followed by The Hips of J.W. at 7:00 PM. Same-day second screening discount just $4!

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King Lear; Grigori Kozintsev (U.S.S.R., 1970)

2010-10-23 Shakespeare on Screen (Film Series)
King Lear
Grigori Kozintsev (U.S.S.R., 1970)

(Korol Lir). Russian director Grigori Kozintsev, whose career began with the eccentric 1920s filmmaking collaborative FEKS (New Babylon; The Devil’s Wheel), earned international acclaim for his two epic Shakespeare adaptations, Hamlet and King Lear. Avoiding the staged sets and respectful hush of the usual adaptations, his King Lear returns the play to the elements—a rocky, barren, and utterly hostile natural world. Winds howl, mad dogs roam, and countless ragged peasants crawl across the vast CinemaScope frame as King Lear (a Klaus Kinski–like Yuri Yarvet) raves and slips into madness. One critic wrote, “Of all Shakespeare’s tragedies, King Lear is perhaps the best suited to Russian adaptation, being the longest, wildest, starkest, and most replete with pain and suffering at all levels.” Indeed, Kozintsev—aided by some astonishing black-and-white ’Scope cinematography, music by Shostakovich, and Boris Pasternak’s brilliant adaptation—underlines all of those qualities. He also, wrote Alexander Walker, “restores what Shakespeare left out: the chorus of the common people.”—Jason Sanders

• Written by Grigori Kozintsev, based on the play by William Shakespeare, adapted by Boris Pasternak. Photographed by Jonas Gricius. Music by Dmitri Shostakovich. With Yuri Yarvet, Galina Volchek, Elsa Radzin, Valentina Shendrikova. (140 mins, In Russian with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, ’Scope, From Corinth Films)

Preceded by The Bicycle Thief at 6:30 PM. Same-day second screening discount just $4!

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The Bicycle Thief Vittorio De Sica (Italy, 1948)

2010-10-23 Days of Glory: Revisiting Italian Neorealism (Film Series)
The Bicycle Thief
Vittorio De Sica (Italy, 1948)
New Print!

(Ladri di biciclette, a.k.a. The Bicycle Thieves). Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist tale finds the despair of postwar Italy evident in the faces of its men. Though the film also explores how women cope with poverty, it devotes most of its energy to documenting Rome’s streets and the depressed, unemployed men who populate them, anxiously waiting for work. One such man is Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani), who miraculously lands a job hanging movie posters around town. Things go awry after Antonio’s bicycle is stolen, forcing him and his young son Bruno to scour the city. For De Sica, the severity of Antonio’s ordeal is as much a crisis of masculinity as it is one of economics; Maggiorani’s melancholy eyes and hardened face express the hardship of a generation of men beaten by hunger and dim prospects. Youthful Bruno tries to keep them upbeat, but as father and son soon learn firsthand, a desperate man can sink to great depths.—Jonathan L. Knapp

• Written by Cesare Zavattini, based on a novel by Luigi Bartolini. Photographed by Carlo Montouri. With Lamberto Maggiorani, Lianella Carnel, Enzo Staiola. (93 mins, In Italian with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Corinth Films)

Followed by King Lear at 8:30 PM. Same-day second screening discount just $4!

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