Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, March 24-29
There are six poetry events on Thursday evening, and we haven’t even gotten to poetry month! How many do you think we can stack up if we start at OMCA at 5pm and Jengafy them? Or skip em and hang with ORB at our monthly happy hour, also Thursday at 5pm, but at Beeryland – we can promise no one will read poetry at you there. Also, ORB went to plays last week and liked ‘em – Assassins, which you can see this week, and Fever, which is sold out, so you can’t. Despite that bastard putting his face on a gold coin, there are still #NoKings in the US of A, and we’ll march about it Saturday. Then at some point, rest, you deserve it; we all made it through a heatwave and the tortures that puts a soul through, and now it’s just pleasant near the lake in the evenings, so bring a book outside and enjoy the birds and the trees and the people passing by, maybe before you wander over to see if Sinners is STILL playing at Grand Lake. -XL, TC, AB, MS
Tuesday, March 24
[West Bay Bonus Event The Beatiest] Ferlinghetti Day 2026, 7:06am, The Coney Island of the Mind (North Beach). Walk around the West Bay all day and declaim the words of the poet and publisher whose paperback vision shaped the American literary scene. [insta]
Free Dental Services at Oakland Main Library, 10am, Oakland Main Library (Lake-ish). They added another day of free dental services for the bones in your face, from Alameda Health System's mobile clinic. This is a literary event because writers and readers also need face-bones that work. [bluesky]
Mark Twain Papers and Project Open House, 11am, The Bancroft Library (Cal). Mark Twain didn't have a lot to say about Oakland, but even so, an interesting guy who had bars. The Mark Twain Papers & Project lives up at Cal, and this is a rare opportunity to take a look at some of the ephemera they've got on him. [UCB]
OEA Rapid Response Team fundraiser, poetry and silent auction, 5:30pm, Kinfolx (Uptown). Support Oakland students and families threatened by deportation by listening to poems! Specifically, to Román Lujan (lee algunos poemas aquí), Truong Tran ("our lips did not touch. this was not a / kiss. a kiss would not have led me here. you / woke me from sleep by quenching my thirst."), and the incredible Sam Sax, whose poetry I was reading again this weekend because they are always sounding out the depths of monstrous desire, and how we use our bodies to hurt and love ourselves and each other. The silent auction will raise money to hire immigration attorneys and pay for work permits, the poetry will turn a cafe into a ceremony. [insta]
Berkeley City Council meeting: Fluck Flock, 6pm, Berkeley City Council (Berkeley). Berkeley City Council will vote on whether extend its contract with Flock, for something like 2 million dollars, and I'll be honest, none of us are feeling tremendously optimistic. City councils love throwing money at surveillance, but Berkeley Copwatch will be there to say no, and you can too. [Berkeley Copwatch]
Parents Against the Future, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). You've painted pigeons and dipped your brush in oxalis ink, now join community-building artist Evan Bissell (say hi from Marthine -- they've known each other since high school) and Alykhan Boolani to paint through your feelings about the future of parenting under climate whiplash. Be like a redwood and get ready to germinate under the smoky skies. [Luma]
Maggie Tokuda-Hall, 6pm, North Branch Berkeley Public Library (Uh, Northbrae? Is That a Real Place?). The ORB city hall viber will be moderated by teens, specifically student reporters from the Berkeley High Jacket, for a discussion of all her books written with exactly them in mind, and probably censorship since she's the president of Authors Against Book Bans. [BPL]
Lindsay Branham: Heartwood: The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees, 6:30pm, Pegasus Books (Downtown Berkeley). Hear the story of falling in love with a grove of aspens while you stroke the book's wood-pulp pages. Branham will be joined in conversation by Dr. Sylver Quevedo, a psychedelics researcher, because earth-loving is trippy. [Pegasus Books]
The Invention of Solitude Book Club Reads Nightbitch , 6:30pm, Books Inc. (The Alameda Island of the Mind). This fiction-focused book club reads the hallucinatory novel Nightbitch by Rachel Yonder -- for all the mothers out there who are ready to howl with transformative rage, laughter, and recognition. [Books Inc.]
Caroline Tracey's SALT LAKES, 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Elmwood). Caroline Tracey is a geographer and a writer of the queer places that delicately survive in their strange wonder: salt lakes around the world, and her own body and its relationship to other bodies, of water and flesh. Come sit next to Marthine and Xander, who follow geographers wherever they go. [Mrs. Dalloway's ]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Paradiso 17: Hannah Lillith Assadi with Ingrid Rojas Contreras, 7pm, City Lights Booksellers & Publishers (North Beach). Assadi's new novel is based on the life of her father, who was born in Palestine on the eve of the 1948 Nakba. Questions of exile and home swirl, as does "the stubborn fact that your past, however aestheticized, refuses to remain background. It might just kill you," per Zain Khalid in the last east coast book review standing. [Litquake]
The Many Names of Anonymity, 7pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). Winnie Wong and Marci Kwon have names, but the names of "anonymous Chinese artists working in port cities like Canton, London, Madras, Hong Kong, and San Francisco" that Wong's book is about have been lost to time. But why do names of artists matter so much? Along with naming practices among painters working in the 18th and early 19th centuries, they'll talk about Kwon's current research on artists in San Francisco's Chinatown. [eventbrite]
Wednesday, March 25
Shanita Perdomo Author Talk, 5pm, MLK Branch OPL (Looking Down at the Coliseum). Shanita Perdomo's self-published Oakland Girl is, as she puts it, "a slice of my life told through vignettes from my middle school years," much of which she took from her journals written at the time. A reading, discussion, book-signing etc. "I love Oakland so much, I wrote a book about her." [Oakland Public Library]
An Evening with Kija Lucas, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). How do artists make it work in the Bay and what can we all do to support them? (Buy more art for starters.) So many of our best artists work outside the gallery system, like Kija Lucas, a photographer, teacher, working artist, Bay Area local, and thinker of how we relate to place and each other through plants, memories, archives, and art. For a taste of her brilliance, listen in on this conversation in which she discusses human relationships to plants and cities, and making art from the glitch. [luma]
Sultry Sessions Open Mic: Tools and Toys, 6:30pm, Zanzi (Uptown). Join hosts Melanie and Ada for a BIPOC-centering evening of erotic and romantic stories, song, dance, and poetry at the open mic (check out their reels for a taste of what might be coming). Queerness, kink, and curiosity about sex and bodies warmly welcomed. With a special guest: movement artist ZahZah Love! [eventbrite]
Book Club: Assata, An Autobiography, 6:30pm, Womb House Books (Temescal Alley). If you "have some questions about how white male film-makers depict revolutionary Black women" or were in any way nonplussed by the way One Battle After Another took Assata Shakur's life story and made her into a child-abandoning traitor to the revolution, then you might enjoy discussing her autobiography in the Womb House Books March book club. [eventbrite]
BIMBO Book Club!, 6:30pm, Tamarack (Downtown). A new regular reading and discussion group, this time about the article "Why Misogynists Make Great Informants" by Courtney Desiree Morris. Calling in all who want to create liberation and sniff out narcs together. [insta]
Marion Seidemann Fredman's A Time To Hide, 6:30pm, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Elmwood). Born when her Jewish parents were in hiding from the Nazis, Fredman shares her story in this book for young readers and reminds us why good neighbors, whether in the Netherlands in the '40s or Minneapolis last month or Oakland now, protect those being hunted by the state forces of fascism. [Mrs. Dalloway's ]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Crystal Simone Smith with Tongo Eisen-Martin, 7pm, City Lights Bookstore (North Beach). T E-M and Crystal Simone Smith on Common Sense (1776) Addressed to Today’s Citizens of America: An Erasure. Erasure plays with found texts, destabilizing, reclaiming, and twisting the often canonical words we've inherited to remake them in our own image. Smith has been writing erasure poems for a while, (including from my and everyone else's favorite George Saunders' novel, Lincoln in the Bardo [he loved it and blurbed her book!]), so go and explore the politics of Black poets rewriting history. [City Lights]
Transgender History, 7pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). Susan Stryker is a founding historian of transgender studies and shares her work today in discussion with Clio's founder Timothy Don, on the history of transness. Gender Is Drag and Always Historicize are two unofficial ORB mottos because we read Butler and Jameson at impressionable ages and you should too. [eventbrite]
SOLD OUT: The Holy Mountain, 7pm, BAMPFA (Cal). All the tickets are gone, so, I don't know, stay home and do the kind of drugs that make it unnecessary to actually trek into Berkeley for one of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s most Jodorowsky movies as part of BAMPFA's Psychedelia & Cinema series. It's coming back May 10th, though. There were some "controversies" around this film--as with El Topo--because Jodorowsky was a real "70s director" in the sense of "they'd arrest you for this, now." [BAMPFA]
Also: Hands-On Tasting Workshop with Café con Cariño at Martin Luther King Jr. Branch OPL (Deep East) / Lake Merritt Plant Walk Pop Up at Rotary Nature Center (The Lake) / Women's Wednesdays at Dear John (The Laurel)
Thursday, March 26
ThursDates at OMCA with The Bay Area Book Festival, 5pm, OMCA (The Lake). Maw Shein Win leads a drop-in writing workshop and you can nibble on snacks, listen to music, and then come to the cafe for an open mic. Date your creative self or chat up a writer whose lines give you the shivers. [OMCA]
ORB Happy Hour, 5pm, Beeryland (Telegraph). Buy us a beer and we might review something you wrote. [ORB \O/ ORB]
Book of Light Poetry Series: Nina Serrano, 5:30pm, Books Inc. (Alameda, the Temporarily Embarrassed Peninsula). Nina Serrano is a 91 year old Colombian-American poet from Vallejo. Listen to your elders, and may we all make our life into art for so long. [eventbrite]
Sundial Reading Series Part Two: Camp Indigo edition, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). Poet Ben Gucciardi hosts the second edition of a series in which poets serve the civitas! Sam Sax (did you miss them on Tuesday? Don’t make that mistake again: "before science/ could peer inside / the body nothing / was fixed. all our / organs floated & / changed form."), Kar Johnson who loves to genre-bend, Randall Mann (West Bay poet who got to hang out with Thom Gunn), and Lee Trumpfheller ("This time, I’ll be a girl & you can be anything / alive. Take the rope off your wrists."). Support Camp Indigo, a camp for trans and nonbinary kids in Oakland, and enjoy poetry and prose by grownups who love their theirness. [luma]
[North Bay Bonus Event] Public Dinner: Supper at Headlands, 6pm, Headlands Center for the Arts (The Headlands, Unsurprisingly). Eat good food and check out the art of the artists in residence Colleen Blackard (prints, painting, ballpoint pen) and Virginia Montgomery (so cool I can't even -- multimedia, butterflies, site-specific, whee!). Bring a friend, or make a new one over family-style dinner. [eventbrite]
Readings from Kevin Killian, 7pm, Tally Ho Books (Oakland’s Piedmont). The late Kevin Killian can't be here, but his "fabulous, permissive body of work, charming, filthy and smarmy" will be, collected in the mouths of some of the readers in his community: Owen Hill, Andrew Kenower, Sara Larsen, Jason Morris, Steve Orth, Camille Roy, Syd Staiti, and even you too, if you get there early and sign up to read. [Tally Ho Books]
Poetry Showcase + Zine Release, 7pm, Kinfolx (Uptown). When the Smoke Comes is a monthly poetry writing workshop facilitated by Kevin Madrigal Galindo and Darius Simpson that takes writing-as-politics seriously. Come listen to poets who've been part of the workshop and grab a zine full of their poems: some of the folks at the mic include the hosts and Sarah O'Neal, Isa Borgeson, Jazmin Fortes, Sara Borjas, Zara Jamshed, and Ice City Maroon. [insta]
Influence, Reinvention, and Work that Endures, 7pm, Clio's (The Lake). Three Bay Area poets— Lenore Weiss, Lee Rossi, and Paul Corman-Roberts—will read their work and reflect on the writing life and shifting voices over the course of decades. [Clio's Books]
Josie Iselin & Ellen Litwiller THE MYSTERIOUS WORLD OF THE BULL KELP FOREST, 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Elmwood). In a book so beautiful that it made a local bookseller softly whisper "wow" and write me an email to tell me so, the ecology of the kelp forest flourishes, for now. Hear the two artist-scientists who made this book talk about the fundamental and threatened ecosystem in the Pacific intertidal, and how climate change and otter extirpation has thrown this system deeply out of whack. [Mrs. Dalloway's]
Hostage: A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience — Mimi Nichter In Conversation With Charles Briggs, 7pm, A Great Good Place for Books (The Hills). If you polled the hills versus the flats on Israel-Palestine, I don't think the results would surprise any of us. The hills today are going to feature the story of when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine crash-landed a plane, took hostages, and nobody died. [A Great Good Place for Books]
Girl Swallows Nightingale presents Moonlight Sessions, 7:15pm, Shapeshifters Cinema (JLS). Confront the chimeric Japanese night-spirit Nue through Oakland artist Marica Petrey's multi-media "mythic art-pop universe" Girl Swallows Nightingale. Everyone in the audience will receive "a tangible piece of the world to carry home," and while that could mean essentially anything I am extremely into this. More art should have souvenirs! Even souvenirs that make you feel sad and vaguely guilty, like the candy in that Felix Gonzalez-Torres piece. [eventbrite]
Also: Repulsive Reads: Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice at North Branch BPL (North Berkeley) / The Poet's Bookshelf: Tracy K. Smith's "Wade In The Water" at Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown) / Two Poets: Dean Rader with Matthew Zapruder at City Lights Bookstore (North Beach) / Radio for Emergencies Workshop at Bathers Library (Telegraph) / Drag Disasters: A Climate Show at The Commons at KQED (West Bay)
Friday, March 27
Community Discussion: Shift from Rapid Response to Permanent Organization, 5pm, Omni Commons (Temescal). How do we build community resilience not reactively but proactively? Anticipate the worst that is to come and maybe read a book about how others are doing community preparedness with love, compassion, and without the state, then go make a plan with your neighbors. [insta]
PHENOMENAL WOMEN, 6pm, Studio 11 (Jack London). Name a woman! ANY WOMAN! Kind of a mix between a Judy Chicago show and an open mic night, this "spoken word and reading extravaganza" invites women to speak about themselves or read something about a woman they admire, over dinner. [KPFA]
NIGHT MC, 6pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). A queer open mic night for poets, storytellers, and musicians. Remember the rules: no comedians. [insta]
Poetry! 6pm, Tamarack (Downtown). The series is still going! We haven’t yet run out of poets! Tonight: stevie redwood (who is reclaiming “Frisco”), Zack Haber (local journalist), Lixxie Morningstar (determinedly offline despite a very googleable name), marronage (ungoogleable, enjoy your anonymity). Be surprised. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event] FARMER TALK: a California Grain Discussion, 7pm, The Mill (Divisidero). You've read Frank Norris's The Octopus and know already about the ecologically devastating history of wheat growing in California, and you’ve read about the uphill battles of contemporary organic wheat smallholders in the Golden State that Jaclyn Moyer chronicled in On Gold Hill. But you're an optimist, so come hear from grain farmers Mai Nguyen, Fritz Durst, Paul Muller, and Elizabeth DeRuff, who think that for real for real we can have local wheat and bread so fresh it chirps. [Josey Baker Bread]
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). New German Cinema titans Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum) and Margarethe von Trotta (Rosa Luxemburg) adapt Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll's classic novel of tabloid-fueled paranoia and exploitation during the heyday of the Red Army Faction in West Germany. In her breakout role, Angela Winkler (Susperia) plays the eponymous Blum, a young housekeeper who is drawn into the hurricane of public notoriety when she unwittingly falls in love with an anarchist fugitive. Damn girl, relatable! [BAMPFA]
[West Bay Bonus Event The Car Wreckiest] An evening with Lindy West in conversation with Carvell Wallace, 7:30pm, Sydney Goldstein Theater (Civic Center). SOLD OUT even though the internet hates this memoir (well, mostly the husband) so much, but honestly, it just all makes us wish West had stopped and chatted with the polyamory tabler (seen at the Bolinas 4th of July parade and also at an Oakland dog park) and learned about the E part of ENM before everything shook out. Let's hope City Arts and Lectures stocked up on popcorn for the crowd. [City Arts]
Also: ERCIVAN MARTIN: BLOOD BORDERS at Books Inc. (Alameda) / Sabroso – KPFA’s 77th Birthday at La Peña Cultural Center (Berkeley)
Saturday, March 28
SOLD OUT Deer Valley Landbank Tour, 10am, Deer Valley (Greater Northeast Inland Oakland ). Sorry you can’t go on this naturalist-led tour about the ecological transformation of the former Roddy Ranch Golf Course out near Brentwood. I did put my copy of Make the Golf Course a Public Sex Forest in a lucky LFL somewhere in Oakland, so if you can find it, enjoy the pornographic possibilities of public reclamation of land for forests and fornication! I bought it out of a pure and wholesome interest in communal access to trees, of course, and I am sure the EBRP tour will be strictly G rated, despite the trees all having sex around us right now and pollinating our face holes. Maybe if we just had a more erotic relationship with trees a la Branham's recommendations in Heartwood, that would solve spring allergies. [East Bay Regional Park District]
Fern Ravine Walk and Talk, 10am, Redwood Glen Trailhead (The Hills). A bat expert, a botanist, and Creek People walk into the forest ... now click "yes I am over 18" to see what happens next. [boomte.ch]
Olfactory Playground: Experimental Scent Lab w/ Arianna Khmelniuk, 11am, Two Two (Grand Lake). You're an ORB reader, so of course you're interested in "material thinking, sensory awareness, memory, and sustained attention," which olfactory artist Arianna Khmelniuk will guide you into by the nose. Comes with an artist's book full of language about scent quoted from visual media. ORB wants to know: what does Oakland smell like? [Two Two]
Family Movie Matinee Pop-Up, 11am, Lakeview Branch (The Lake). They're showing a movie at the Lakeview Library! The library is keeping the actual movie a secret, but it's family friendly so probably not Saw III. [OPL]
Storytime with Nikoo Yahyazadeh , 11am, North Branch (Berkeley). Teach the kids about Iran through a picture book of pomegranates, war, bombing, and exile. [BPL]
Palestine Solidarity contingent at No Kings Day Oakland, noon, Oscar Grant Plaza (Downtown). Solidarity looks like going to the No Kings Day March and supporting the Oakland People’s Arms Embargo Campaign. Make a good sign, wear your anti-fascist and anti-genocide regalia, and make some friends along the way. [insta]
California Writers Club, 12:30pm, Rockridge Branch OPL (Rockridge). Twenty five years of writers getting together to get words on the page and share them aloud. Do they remember when Rockridge was Shafter? [Oakland Public Library]
On the Record: Women of the World Take Over, 1pm, Central Library (Downtown Berkeley). The library turns into a consciousness raising craft fair, at least on the fifth floor. Buy some feminist books from Womb House Books, meet local artists, and listen to music because no-one is shushing women today. [BPL]
Gail Carriger: Soulless The Complete Omnibus, 2:30pm, Books Inc. (Alameda, Temporarily An Island). Take the water shuttle to a mash up of fantasy, horror, steampunk, romance, and comedy. It's light-hearted, escapist, and whimsical, and we could all use that right now. (The fun thing about growing up in a town populated mostly by avant-garde poets and artists is that their kids rebel by becoming nom de plumed genre novelists.) [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Book Launch: Keep Going with Ellen David Friedman, 4pm, Bay Area Longshore Memorial Association (Fisherman's Wharf-ish). Labor Notes board member Ellen David Friedman on her book Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It’s Hard -- a starter kit and field guide for workplace organizers. Raise funds for the movement and start a union. [insta]
From Idea to Book to Film, 4pm, Clio's (The Lake). Holly Brickley and Cari Borja discuss the lives of a book -- from within the heart and mind of a writer out into the hearts and minds of readers, and into the machine of Hollywood if you want to make your advance back. With specific reference to Brickley's novel Deep Cuts, which seems to be premised on people talking about and making music, which makes it my least favorite kind of novel. [eventbrite]
Grains of Perception, 4pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Grains of Perception is actually a package of two classic short films: Nathaniel Dorsky's Pneuma and Bruce Baillie's Quick Billy. One of the most versatile figures in American cinema, Dorsky (who will be attending in person) is an important West Bay fixture and one of the small handful of avant-garde filmmakers to have won an Emmy. Baillie (who was transferred to the great big film lab in the sky in 2020) was a UC Berkeley alum, local longshoreman, and co-founder of the San Francisco Cinematheque, a mainstay of West Coast experimental film that began in the East Bay. Both are beautiful but challenging non-narrative watches, so consider stopping by a dispensary beforehand. BAMPFA scheduled these as part of their "Psychedelia & Cinema" program for a reason. Look for Xander in the audience if you need a trip-sitter. [BAMPFA]
Writer's Circle, 6:30pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). Writing: the ultimate in parallel play; deepen your practice and friendships with other writers, surrounded by books your work may be next to one day. [Nomadic Bookshop]
Fear of Fear, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). More Fassbinder? My god, haven’t we all suffered enough? It’s as if BAMPFA, by inflicting so many Fassbinder movies on us, were engaging in a metacommentary on the German filmmaker’s sadism. This one from 1975 was a made-for-TV movie and features the director at his Douglas Sirkiest. [BAMPFA]
Also: Women Making History In Entertainment at African American Museum and Library at Oakland (Old Oakland) / The Movement Book Club: We Do This Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba at North Branch BPL (Berkeley)
Sunday, March 29
Birds of Jewel Lake, 9am, Tilden Nature Area (Berkeley Hills). EBRPD is getting existential: "A brief walk in search of birds and the meaning of life." [East Bay Regional Park District]
Bashu, the Little Stranger, 1pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Many people who know things about movies say this is the greatest Iranian film of all time. They could be right; won't know until you go! [BAMPFA]
District 2 General Plan Update Community Workshop, 1:30pm, Clinton Park Rec Center (Clinton). What is a city for? Sometimes, the work of making a place with its citizens, instead of creating profits for corporations. Today's a good day for the former: come comment on Oakland's General Plan Update’s Draft Land Use Framework. [City of Oakland]
Project Hope Palestine: Photo Exhibit & Zoom with Photojournalists in Gaza, 1:30pm, UC Gill Tract Community Farm (The Oakland Part of Albany). Bear witness with your eyes and ears. Gaza photojournalists Aziz Afifi, Fadi Thabet, and Wael Al-Halabi will speak from the occupied territory, and there will be live music and a poetry reading by Amina, a mother living in a Gazan refugee camp. [indybay]
Assassins, 2pm, Oakland Theater Project (Downtown). The Oakland Theater Project has pulled off a small miracle with this one-person staging of Assassins, directed by Weston Scott. You've gotta see it—and not just because it’s a Sondheim in Oakland, though that should be reason enough. See it because Adam KuveNiemann, who plays every part, from John Wilkes Booth to Sara Jane Moore, delivers maybe the greatest individual physical performance The Town has hosted since Steph Curry was playing at the Arena. The “duet” between John Hinckley and Squeaky Fromme is not to be missed. [Oakland Theater Project]
Oakland Says No to Apartheid, From South Africa to Palestine!, 3pm, First Unitarian Church (Old Oakland). There are so many Gaza-oriented events this weekend (but not in the hills), and for good reason! Political struggle in South Africa and Palestine have long been linked, and this panel aims to chart a course from the anti-apartheid movement to the ongoing fight for peace and freedom in Gaza and the West Bank. The Oakland People's Arms Embargo Coalition brings together veterans of both movement (David Canham, Nesbit Crutchfield, Andrea Pritchett, Pastor Michael McBride, and Clarence Thomas... no, not that Clarence Thomas, the other, better one: Ryan Coogler's uncle and erstwhile Oakland Port longshoreman) alongside a musical performance by the Vukani Mawethu Choir. [jotform]
Paris Belongs to Us, 4pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). A classic of political paranoiac cinema from 1960, bridging the days of everything-go-boom movies like Kiss Me Deadly and the era of conspiracy thrillers in which Robert Redford wears pea coats and runs around a lot. There’s a theater troupe and a global conspiracy, and there are some cool shots on Parisian rooftops, and Jean-Luc Godard shows up to do a bit of cigarette acting. Jacques Rivette directs, Frenchily. [BAMPFA]
Printing Without The Boss: Triple Benefit Show, 5:30pm, Oakland Secret (JLS). Log off, wayward soul, for the siren song of DIY print culture is calling you home. This zine fair, art sale, and dance party doubles as a benefit for three Oakland institutions: reprographixxx, the Oakland Print Shop, and Brown Recluse Zine distro. [insta]
Also: Community Day & Farm Planting Day at 2240 47th Ave (Melrose) / Unstitched: A Celebration of the Saree at Asian Art Museum (West Bay) / The Poetry of Nature Journaling at Big Break Visitor Center at the Delta (Oakley) / Blended Reads Book Club: "There There" Discussion at Soul Blends Coffee (West Oakland) / ROMANTASY BOOK CLUB: LIBRARY OF AMORLIN at Books Inc. (Alameda)
