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Issue 318 |
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Your cultural event guide
Here's a snapshot of our favorite things to do in San Francisco this week. |
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San Francisco
Jun 3-9, 2008
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Head for the hills! San Francisco is under attack from vengeful robo-girls, gangsta vampires, and possessed hair extensions — and we're not talking about Trannyshack. We mean Another Hole in the Head, the most awesomely gory addition to this week's bonanza of film showcases. But if you prefer your flicks to have guts in the sense of chutzpah rather than entrails, maybe you should head to the Black Film Festival or the Found Footage Festival instead.
- Matt Sussman, Managing Editor
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SPECIAL FEATURE
Ralph Bakshi
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Ralph Bakshi is an alt-animation pioneer. His controversial work paved the way for incendiary illustrators from The Ren & Stimpy Show's John Kricfalusi to South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Our sister publication Boldtype spoke with the reclusive animator about his artistic motivation, what he really thinks of Walt Disney, and the creatures that haunt his imagination.
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MORE FLAVOR: Discussion
BAVC Innovation Salon: The Gaming (R)Evolution
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Tuesday June 3 (7–8:15pm)
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| where: |
Novellus Theater (701 Mission St, 415.978.2787)
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| price: |
FREE w/ RSVP
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Add your comment»
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Sure, the US military uses video games to entice new recruits. But whether or not gaming could be used to foster social change offline remains to be seen. That's the big question up for debate at today's panel examining recent developments in socially conscious gaming. Participants include Susana Ruiz, a developer of award-winning games that have tackled the ongoing genocide in Darfur and gender stereotypes; Richard Tate of HopeLab, a company that has developed a game to help teens and young adults cope with cancer; and other academics and producers working in new media.
- Matt Sussman
[Info Source]
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MORE FLAVOR: Festival
San Francisco Black Film Festival
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Wednesday June 4
More times»
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| where: |
Various locations
map
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| price: |
Various prices
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The San Francisco Black Film Festival premiered in 1998 as a one-day event. Ten years make quite a difference: this year's festival stretches over ten days, and is flush with local premieres, tributes, and awards. Highlights include documentaries about Stanley Tookie Williams and revolutionary defense attorney Charles Garry, as well as features from South Africa, Mali, and England. The festival also lassos a retrospective of films by St. Clair Bourne, a notable African-American documentary filmmaker who passed away last year. Bourne was best known for his intimate portraits of cultural icons (Paul Robeson, Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes) and his riveting behind-the-scenes look at Spike Lee's 1989 film Do the Right Thing.
- Max Goldberg
[Info Source]
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MORE FLAVOR: Discussion
[CANCELED] Errol Morris and Philip Gourevitch: Standard Operating Procedure
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Wednesday June 4 (6:30pm)
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Commonwealth Club (595 Market St, 2nd Fl, 415.597.6700)
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| price: |
$20
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Though it still struck some as sensational, Errol Morris' documentary about the Abu Ghraib scandal was a success; the book version, also titled Standard Operating Procedure, promises the same moral inquiry, without the Danny Elfman score. Even after the nonstarter controversy over the film's remunerated interviewees, Morris' lengthy conversation with the prison's "bad apple" grunts remains an essential document of the Iraq War. Those who missed the former UC Berkeley philosophy student at his recent SF International Film Festival appearance can catch him tonight with coauthor Philip Gourevitch (We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families), who helped Morris write and research the book.
- Max Goldberg
[Info Source]
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FILM
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)
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Thursday June 5 (6:30pm)
More times»
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| where: |
SFMOMA (151 3rd St, 415.357.4000)
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| price: |
$10
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As a New German Cinema progenitor obsessed with stylish reconstructions of his country's troubled 20th-century history, R.W. Fassbinder had a natural interest in Alfred Döblin's epic 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. Anticipating richly nuanced television series like The Wire, Fassbinder took advantage of the miniseries format's broad canvas to revel in the seedy underworlds of Weimar Germany. But whereas Döblin's novel is a declaration in present tense, Fassbinder's adaptation is full of the taut augur of hindsight. After the series' run in New York, Bay Area cineastes finally get a peek at the recent restoration of Fassbinder's 15-and-a-half-hour cinematic monument to a city.
- Max Goldberg
[Info Source]
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READING
Aaron Shurin: King of Shadows
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Thursday June 5 (7pm)
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| where: |
City Lights (261 Columbus Ave, 415.362.8193)
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| price: |
FREE
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Aaron Shurin is an elder statesmen of SF poetry, chronicling the vicissitudes of gay life in dense lyrical entanglements that flit between public and private registers. Having written a deeply moving memoir (Unbound: A Book of AIDS, 1997), the USF professor is no stranger to prose. His newest collection of autobiographical essays, King of Shadows, fills in much of what happened before and after the plague years: his high-school awakening to poetry and homosexuality via Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream; his awkward forays into San Francisco's pre-Stonewall bar culture; and his relationships with poetry mentors Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov.
- Matt Sussman
Note:
Shurin also reads at Moe's Books in Berkeley on Wednesday, June 18 (9pm), and at Books Inc. in San Francisco on Tuesday, June 24 (7:30pm).
[Info Source]
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PERFORMING ARTS: Dance
Joe Goode Performance Group presents Wonderboy
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Friday June 6 (8pm)
More times»
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Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (701 Mission St, 415.978.2787)
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| price: |
$25 - 40
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With an expert hand, Guggenheim Fellow Joe Goode directs and choreographs Wonderboy, which follows the travails of an unlikely superhero. Dancers move around a puppet protagonist, created and operated by award-winning puppeteer Basil Twist from New York, as Matthias Bossi and Carla Kihlstedt (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Book of Knots) perform the score. Both musicians are well acquainted with crossed genres and mixed media: Bossi is a spoken-word vet, and Kihlstedt has written music for Butoh performances.
- Tanya Feldman
Note:
A post-performance discussion with Joe Goode takes place after both Saturday performances.
[Info Source]
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MUSIC: Rock/Pop
Frog Eyes
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Friday June 6 (9:30pm)
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Cafe du Nord (2170 Market St, 415.861.5016)
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$12 / $10 advance
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Offering an uncompromising counterpoint to Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown's erratic pop exorcisms, British Columbia's Frog Eyes are an indie-rock success story that doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense. Singer Carey Mercer yelps more than croons, violently contorting his words in a series of self-inflicted seizures. Perhaps it's this embrace of unencumbered emotion — more than any kind of immediate aesthetic accessibility — that so endears the group to the straight-and-narrow scene. Drenched in echoing guitar and counterpointed with sparse drum fills, his songs are awash in the same unmitigated emotion as early Xiu Xiu; but where Xiu Xiu turn to poppy electronics to ingratiate themselves, Mercer sticks to honest, no-frills angst.
- Andrew Phillips
[Info Source]
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MORE FLAVOR: Party
Reboot and the Contemporary Jewish Museum present Dawn '08
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Saturday June 7 (8pm–3am)
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Contemporary Jewish Museum (736 Mission St, 415.655.7800)
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| price: |
$15 / $12 advance
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After months of renovations to its new home at beautiful Jessie Square, the Contemporary Jewish Museum finally throws open its doors for Dawn '08. The celebration coincides with Shavuot, a Jewish holiday with both Biblical and seasonal significance. It's customary for observant Jews to embark on marathon study sessions on Shavuot, and Dawn '08, appropriately, is an all-night affair — complete with live performances by Dengue Fever and Yossi Fine, a conversation with Jonathan Safran Foer, and various film screenings. Revelers also get an early look at the museum's premiere exhibitions, including a John Zorn installation and a retrospective for New Yorker cartoonist and Shrek author William Steig.
- Max Goldberg
[Info Source]
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MUSIC: Electronic
[KONTROL] Three-Year Anniversary feat. Radio Slave
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Saturday June 7 (10pm)
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The Endup (401 6th St, 415.646.0999)
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| price: |
$20 / FREE before 11pm
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San Francisco's leading techno party has enlisted one of electronic music's busiest producer/DJs, Matt Edwards, to help bid adieu to [KONTROL]'s terrible twos. When he's not running fidget-house label Rekids or releasing hazy lounge-disco as Quiet Village, Edwards operates as Radio Slave — the man that ingeniously matched Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out of My Head" to New Order's "Blue Monday." But Edwards' crate is more impressive than his remix roster, and hardly limited to Top-40 mash ups. Swedish jack-of-all-trades Pär Grindvik works a live PA, as well, and Monty Luke heads up [KONTROL]'s regular roster of local minimal heads.
- Matt Sussman
[Info Source]
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MORE FLAVOR: Party
Alice in Wonderland Croquet Tournament, Tea Party, and Trunk Show
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Sunday June 8 (1–6pm)
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Croquet Lawns at Stern Grove (19th Ave and Wawona St)
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$30 / $25 advance
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The event producers at Eternal Spring maintain a repertoire of innovative fashion shows that goes beyond the ordinary catwalk strut. The latest is this Alice in Wonderland-themed party, which showcases new creations from local couturiers like Allysun Dutra; her Kittinhawk label is a collection of dainty/fierce outfits constructed entirely from vintage fabrics. The event encourages whimsical and anachronistic croquet attire for attendees — think frilly petticoats, waistcoats, and bright patterns. DJs and performances from Lucid Dawn Circus and the XOX Burlesque girls help set the playful tone, and croquet lessons are offered for those among us without a practiced swing.
- Tanya Feldman
[Info Source]
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FILM: Documentary
Encounters at the End of the World
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Sunday June 8 (8pm)
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21 Grand (416 25th St, 510.444.7263)
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| price: |
FREE (pay what you can)
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A few weeks before Encounters at the End of the World opens in the Bay Area, 21 Grand throws a party built to satisfy die-hard Herzogophiles. In his latest documentary, the German director travels to Antarctica's McMurdo Station to revel in the uninhabitable continent's alien beauty and (this being a Werner Herzog film) straining effect on human relations. Tonight, some of his co-conspirators hit 21 Grand with outtakes and, most intriguing, an improvised performance by guitarist Henry Kaiser played in tandem with deleted underwater footage.
- Max Goldberg
[Info Source]
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ART
Leigh Wells
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Monday June 9 (9am–5pm)
More times»
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Gallery 16 (501 3rd St, 415.626.7495)
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| price: |
FREE
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Illustrator Leigh Wells builds collages over discarded reproductions of of great masters. Her new exhibition at Gallery 16 delights in little birds, rococo flourishes, arabesques, and silhouettes, while her daintier pieces recall the absurd delicacy of Joseph Cornell. Other works unleash the kind of relentless visual onslaught familiar to fans of Kara Walker or Lari Pittman. Gainsborough prints are fair game, but Wells isn't just making mincemeat of art history — her collages evince a great deal of poetic consideration for, and collaboration with, her raw materials.
- Isaac Amala
[Info Source]
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MUSIC: Hip-Hop
Erykah Badu
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Monday June 9 (7:30pm)
More times»
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| where: |
Paramount Theatre (2025 Broadway, 510.893.2300)
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| price: |
$45.50 - 83.50
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For the last few years, neo-soul priestess Erykah Badu has been off the pop-music grid, choosing to focus on her other passions: holistic health, astrology, energy healing, and, of course, motherhood. Through all these new-age, old-school practices, she somehow managed to record her sophisticated, futuristic new album, New Amerykah Part I: 4th World War (the first of a trilogy), which marries her signature warm 'n gritty vocal wanderings to beats from acclaimed producers like Madlib and 9th Wonder. Tonight, the maturing superstar performs with style, grace, and hard-earned spiritual gravitas — till she takes off her Afro wig, and things get really serious.
- Chloe Leichman
[Info Source]
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ART
Christopher Brown and Clare Kirkconnell
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Tuesday June 3 (9:30am–5:30pm)
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John Berggruen Gallery (228 Grant Ave, San Francisco, CA 94108, 415.781.4629)
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| price: |
FREE
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Christopher Brown and Clare Kirkconnell's concurrent exhibitions at John Berggruen Gallery have sympathetic interests: each artist makes work that quietly reinterprets quintessentially American scenes. Brown uses bold colors to cast his troupes of horse jockeys and outdoorsmen across pastoral hillsides — and occasionally up the sides of buildings. Although Kirkconnell's skyscapes are lined with treetops, powerlines, and distant, fog-clad structures, the temperamental heavens are her portraits' dominant subject. Just as eyes are said to provide insight into the soul, Kirkconnell's skies and Brown's figures are windows onto the country that inspired them.
- Isaac Amala
[Info Source]
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ART
Karla Wozniak: Road Works
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Thursday June 5 (5:30–7:30pm)
More times»
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Gregory Lind Gallery (49 Geary St, 415.296.9661)
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| price: |
FREE
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Karla Wozniak's exhibition of new paintings takes a shot at the endless string of strip malls and billboards that lines nearly every roadside in America. But the painter's caricature of sprawl and development isn't all diatribe — her striking compositions, bold palette, and Spartan skies also betray the observations of a keen diarist with a knack for highlighting the startling elements of the mundane. Although Wozniak is now based in Brooklyn, the painter originally hails from Berkeley; the change of setting is most evident in her imagery, with its vibrant, funky patchwork of small business placards and corporate logos, and in the notable absence of a natural horizon.
- Isaac Amala
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About Us |
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Cultural Partner
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Editors
MANAGING EDITOR
Matt Sussman
DEPUTY EDITOR
Max Goldberg
PRODUCTION EDITOR
Axel Anderson
SENIOR EDITORS
Anna Balkrishna
Doug Levy
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Seiji Carpenter
Connie Hwong
Annie Lo
Nicholas Nauman
Andrew Phillips
Lisa Rosman
IMAGE EDITORS
Adda Birnir
Sarah Steele
PUBLISHERS
Sascha Lewis
Mark Mangan
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Flavorpill San Francisco
All events featured on Flavorpill SF are pure editorial — we never accept paid promotions or advertisements. If you know about an upcoming event that you think should be covered in Flavorpill SF, email us a press release at sf_events at least two weeks prior to the event and we'll consider it.
To learn more about our staff and policies, see the credits and about us pages. If you'd like to respond to our editors about a listing published here, or have a general inquiry, please email sf_feedback.
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