Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, March 30–April 5
You might have noticed our new prettied-up website with a big slate of commissioned pieces this week. Well, a new thing we're doing for paid ORB members, from now on, is sending them this very calendar yesterday and all yesterdays to come: in direct contravention of our otherwise ironclad and impervious rule that Mondays Do Not Exist, there is now a Monday version of the calendar for those who pay. (It's sad what people will do for a little bit of money, isn't it?). Send us some coins if you want that.
Luckily for you rest of you salt-of-the-earth peasants, nothing will change, and the calendar will still drop on Tuesdays per usual, as indeed it just has.
The deadline to submit your entry to the Berkeley Mayor’s art contest (poetry counts as art, start writing) on regeneration isn’t until the last day of March, which is Tuesday. If you live in Adams Point, y’all have a neighborhood zine and they’re looking for help with issue 3—jump in. And just to lift up one of our favorite spots a little harder, a reminder that Tamarack does more than Friday poems (though they do great at that): Look at the bread-making and organizing and reading hangs you could do! The flowers are wilting, the heatwave is making us all have night sweats, the year is in a midlife crisis and we’re barely a quarter way in, but luckily our opera critic went to a rave in the redwoods for the equinox so at least some folks are enjoying their forties the way God and EDM intended. Since ORB, like Jesus, is resurrected this week, we hope you like what you see and tell your friends that Mondays now come cheap and easy.—MS, XL, AB
Monday, March 30
Blú Honey Screening/Poetry Workshop With Donté Clark , 12 noon, Social Sciences Building (Cal). Former Richmond Poet Laureate, Donté Clark uses language and the body to communicate and perform the stories of Black East Bay life. Today that's happening in a screening of his s1hort film, Blù Honey, on themes of "gun violence, gentrification, grief, and alternative kinship networks" with the In Defense of BlackStudies Story-telling Project.[UCB]
Thawing Ice, Rising Tensions: Canada’s Arctic Security Challenge, 1pm, Philosophy Hall (Cal). There's a Canadian Studies Program at our local university and I hope they're researching how our northerly neighbors might annex the whole West Coast into a Chile-like fuck-you finger to the American right. But today they're more concerned with climate change and the loss of polar ice leading to another Great Game style resource rush for everything Santa's been making with his elves in the ice caves. [UCB]
Louise Mozingo | Public Land, Public Space, Public Discourse, 6pm, College of Environmental Design (Cal). Prof. Louise Mozingo, author of Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes (from my ever-beloved MIT Press), on reimagining the collective public landscape from plazas to creeks, bus-stops to wildlife corridors. I despise the engineering-rooted design-thinking approach to managing place, but if it's rooted in observing the desire lines and working with them, there's hope for the field yet. [Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning]
Tuesday, March 31
[Cancelled it looks like?] Listening to Our Animal Kin: The Promise and Peril of Animal Communication Technologies, 12:45pm, Berkeley Law (Cal). Speakers from the More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) Program and Cal's Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences share how they're listening in on whalesong and honeybee buzzing and the ethics of learning to communicate with nonhuman animals. AI-assisted, so I am looking forward to reading the first cli-fi novel in Dolphin as the ocean heats up and the flowers bloom out of whack with the seasons to feed the data centers more energy. [UCB – broken link! worked Monday!]
Slowkland, 5:30pm, Lake Merritt BART (Lake Merritt). Go slowly on a bike around Lake Merritt with Robert, Bike East Bay's Advocacy Director, looking at completed and in-progress protected bikeways. [Bike East Bay]
Press Freedom in Peril, 6:30pm, North Gate Hall Logan Multimedia Center (Berkeley). The 2026 Herb Caen lecture—established in his honor, when he was dying—but look, let’s be honest, Herb Caen would be getting drunk at Trader Vic's rather than go to this conversation between journalistic mucketies (Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive officer of the Committee to Protect Journalists; Jason Rezaian, director of Press Freedom Initiatives for the Washington Post; San Francisco Chronicle EIC Emilio Garcia-Ruiz). But we can’t all be Herb Caen, thank god. [UC Berkeley Journalism]
Erotic Ecology: Embodiment and Practice with Dr. Lindsay Branham, 6:30pm, The Alembic (Extremely West Berkeley). Have a love affair with the earth! Be an environmentalist...but horny! This workshop will "help participants slow down, tune in, and explore how sensory awareness can support vitality, relationship, and a felt sense of connection with the natural world," and I can't decide whether to make a joke about the title of the book you'll get as part of the ticket price, Dr. Lindsay Branham's Heartwood. Better not, though: This is serious stuff. As Walt Whitman would remind us, there is nothing sexier than trees, grass, flowers, and pent-up aching rivers ("Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves, Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land"). [Berkeley Alembic]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Judith A. Peraino and Tom McEnaney / Punk Archives for the Present, 7pm, City Lights Bookstore (North Beach). New book We’re Having Much More Fun: Punk Archives for the Present from CBGB to Gilman and Beyond. A mix of ephemera, interviews, and essays about the wild musical subculture and their aesthetic and cultural impact, but most interesting to us, the different regional scenes, and specifically, ours. Stick a safety pin through your ear and flop down at an Oakland punk house to find out more. [City Lights Bookstore]
Lamarck's revenge, 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's (Elmwood). Lamarck was right! Or so Jessica Riskin will argue, presenting her new book The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology & the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in conversation with Tom Laqueur. Despite proposing the first evolutionary theory of life (and coining the term "biology"), Lamarck's idea that life transforms itself, and animals play an active role in shaping their own evolution, has been treated as a dead-end by evil stinky Darwinians, and has informed "two centuries of eugenic policies and environmental destruction, allowing people to regard the living world as so much raw material to shape and exploit for economic, industrial, and imperial gain." OK, I'm into this. [Mrs. Dalloway's]
The Curse of Hester Gardens Book Launch, 7:15pm, Chapter 510 and The Dept. of Make/Believe (Old Oakland). It's publication day for Bay Area writer Tamika Thompson's horror novel about a Black mother dealing with one son's death by gun violence, another's secret transformation, affairs, prison, and supernatural spookiness. In conversation with Oakland author Angela Dalton. For all the teens to read in secret. [eventbrite]
Wednesday, April 1
Brian Barth on Front Street, 12:50pm, 105 Law Building (Cal). Barth will chat with members of the Wood Street Commons (and protagonists of his book, Front Street: Resistance and Rebirth in the Tent Cities of Techlandia) as well as chat with Osha Neumann. Presumably as an April Fool's joke, the event time is listed as 12:50am; we wouldn't recommend taking that literally. He's almost to Oakland, still hasn't crossed the border to do an actual event in the place the book is about though, not that we’re sour about it. [UCB Law]
Frank Lloyd Wright at the Movies @ Central, 3:30pm, Central Berkeley Library (Downtown Berkeley). The camera loves the circles and curves of North Bay's Civic Center and the Minecraftish "Mayan Revival" of Greater Very Deep South Oakland's Ennis House, they were both in lots of movies and now there's a book about those and in prep for Mark Anthony Wilson's talk on the matter, you can watch Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings play the future at the library in a few of said films. California is always in the future anyway. [BPL]
Layli Long Soldier: Poetry Reading, 5pm, Maude Fife (Cal). Winner-of-many-really-impressive-awards and IAIA grad Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota Nation) reads her formally experimental, politically fierce poems to kick off National Poetry Month—just a sample: "If I’m transformed by language, I am often / crouched in footnote or blazing in title. / Where in the body do I begin." [UCB]
The Tree of Authenticity, 7pm, BAMPFA (Cal). Poetic, cinematic, deep historical layers of colonial time up to the present, and narrated by a tree. Sammy Baloji’s gripping documentary tells the story of how the Yangambi INERA Research Station went from a booming scientific center to jungle ruin, legacies of colonial modernity and the origins of today’s environmental injustice. [BAMPFA]
Commodified Journeys (Poetics and Plant Medicine), 7pm, Bathers Library (Telegraph). Neşe Devenot, Patricia Kubala, and Sarah Cool Ass Miller are talking about what happens when magic meets money, and you open your mind so big you see that relational transformation is the only way forward and you just paid $2k to realize it. Third of the four part series of writerly, artistic, aesthetic engagements with psychedelics (there's also a reading group, also at Bathers). [insta]
Also: Opening Reception: Rage Against The Dying Light and Catching Falling Fruit at Worth Ryder Art Gallery (Cal)
Thursday, April 2
Lunch Poems: Tonya Foster, 12:10pm, Morrison Library inside Doe like a womb full of Bambi (Cal). Louisiana emigrant poet residing in the flats and teaching in the West Bay, Tonya Foster comes uphill to bring some poems for lunch. Listen in at PennSound for a preview of the Black Womanist writer's performances. [UCB]
Kids Making Stories, 3:30pm, Rockridge OPL (Rockridge). For our babies! Kids ages 8 to 12 meet to write, illustrate, make, and tell their own stories, alone, in pairs, or in small groups. If you are a youth, you can do a fun writing or drawing exercise or free write, and eventually get a job prompting chatGPT to do the same. [OPL]
Daniel Markovits on the Good Life after the Age of Growth, 4pm, Berkeley Law (Cal). Daniel Markovits says there is a Third Way between Greed is Good and Degrowth Now, but says in any case, growth as a value is coming to an end (woot) and speculates on what will replace it in our goals as a civilization. [UCB]
Robert Habeck and Andrea Paluch | Writing Together—How We Did It, 5pm, Dwinelle (Cal). OK this puzzled me: how did a German politician and a translator of English poetry end up writing novels together? Then it turns out the "How we did it" is by being married, which is exactly how most writers and translators make art and a living. [UCB]
What's This Got To Do With Me?: International Solidarity and the TOWN, 5:30pm, East Side Arts Alliance (Deep East). The launch of the Scholars for Social Justice: Open University, with childcare and dinner provided, which is how you democratize learning. In the tradition of Black Freedom Schools, creating "independent political spaces where organizers, scholars, and community members can study, collaborate, and strategize amid intensifying authoritarianism." [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event] LitLounge with author Jessica Riskin, 6pm, Mechanics' Institute (FiDi). First read a book from the Mech Inst Lib or bring your own. Then once you've gotten your fill of silence, hear Dr. Jessica Riskin on Lamarck, again, or for the first time if you missed her in the East Bay—but this time with science journalist Laura Klivans. [eventbrite]
Utopia Book Club, No. 2: Everyday Utopia by Kristen Ghodsee, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). Writer Tracy Clark Flory (did you preorder her memoir yet? Clock's ticking!) and Local Economy showrunner Sarah Rich lead a discussion about Penn historian Kristen Ghodsee's book, Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Bold Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life. Relevantly, Ghodsee is also the author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism—utopianism can be so hot. [Luma]
Black Film: Unscreened & Unstreamed, BaddDDD SONIA SANCHEZ, 6:30pm, Oakstop (Downtown). BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez—a documentary by Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater about the poet and spoken word artist Sonia Sanchez, who has been a voice in the scene since the Black Arts Movement and still continues to be as she calls herself, "a woman with razor blades between my teeth," even though she's past 90. [eventbrite]
The Return of Ancient Epic: Genesis, 7pm, Clio’s Books (Oakland). Bible study is in session with a professor who really knows his YHWH. Final episode of the epic epics series. [eventbrite]
The Passion of Joan of Arc, 7pm, BAMPFA (Cal). Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent masterpiece, one of those "if you know, you know" movies, that people who think movies without sound are good (?) will be like "Watch this one, you Philistine," and you'll watch it and be like "OK, fair point." Same with people who think God and Cinema are good. It's part of the "Sentimental Education" series on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, though you can also just watch it if you're interested in "movies that would be called German Impressionism if the filmmaker weren't Danish." [BAMPFA]
Sex and Love in Utopia with Kurt Wallace, 7:30pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). "In sex and love, is there always a giver and a taker?” asks this "Literary Salon for the Brave & the Righteous in a Troubled World"—more on utopias and literature if you didn't get enough earlier. A possible dance party at the end, which is really how all gatherings in bookstores should climax. [square]
Also: Zahi Zalloua, “Anti-Zionism Is Not a Luxury” at Doe Library (Oakland Part of Cal) / The Nature Show at Rosebud Gallery (West Bay)
Friday, April 3
Drive-Thru USA: Spatial Analysis, Car-Centricity, and Sprawl Design in America, 3pm, Institute of Transportation Studies (Cal). "Drive-thru" seems to be the official spelling for these business that assume you are attached to your car at the butt. Thesis: They're bad for society, which I agree with unless they're the daiquiri drive-thrus in NOLA. Come early for cookies! [UCB]
Mohka House guy explains why there are so many Yemeni cafes now, 3:30pm, 81st Avenue Branch OPL (81st Avenue). There are so many Yemeni cafes in the bay area! What's up with that? A conversation with Yasir, the owner of the Dimond's new Mohka House, who will talk about the history of coffee and tea in Yemen and how it inspired the creation of Mohka House, and maybe explain what's up with that. One of five OPL confabs, apparently. [OPL]
Yumi and Monster, 4pm, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch (Berkeley). Kam Redlawsk uses the avant-garde book genre that is the picture book to explore disability justice and self-love in her new book Yumi and Monster. After the read aloud, a conversation for big kids and grown ups about making a world that's for everyone. [BPL]
Yesterday Girl, 4:30pm, BAMPFA (Oakland). An extremely 1966 West German film about 1966 and West Germany. Aurora ꨄ on Letterboxd said, “this feels like it was written by ottessa moshfegh,” which, ok, you have my attention. It won lots of prizes at the time, and “helped establish New German Cinema internationally,” I’m told, but let’s not hold that against it. [BAMPFA]
All the Farm's a Stage, 4:30pm, The Cloud Farm (The Internet). Breaking our insistence that you show up in person to point you toward an online celebration of creative expression by farmworkers on Farmworkers Day in this final performance/exhibition by eleven fellows with Not Our Farm—an organization of solidarity by those who grow our food.[eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Poetry in Kerouac Alley, 4:45pm, Kerouac Alley (North Beach). Join Marthine and a cluster of other poetry lovers around a table for the smallest reading ever, on purpose. Share an original poem, share someone else's poem, come to listen, to start First Friday's poetry readings off right. [insta]
Friday Nights at OMCA is BACK!!!! (with Yeny Valdés & TeamBahia), 5pm, OMCA (OMCA part of Lake). At some point, OMCA realized that their Friday Night thing (music, food trucks, staying open late, etc) was a really great thing for families with kids and started leaning into it, and there is nothing more wholesome (the natural history section of the museum also has a GREAT space for young kids). Anyway, I started taking my twins almost every Friday last summer and watched them suddenly understand music as a thing that people make, in space and time, and how to dance to it; all winter, I've been counting the weeks until OMCA's Friday night comes back. And Yeny Valdés & TeamBahia are such a fun Latin fusion group (here's what the space will look like on Friday). [OMCA]
Layli Long Soldier & Solmaz Sharif: A Conversation, 5pm, Maude Fife Room 315, Wheeler Hall (Cal). Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota Nation) is still here! Now in conversation with fellow Graywolf poet Solmaz Sharif ("To walk cemetery after cemetery in these States and nary a gravestone reading Solmaz / To know no nation will be home until one does"), in a conversation that will surely dwell with a lot of emphasis on American colonial habits and ambitions. [UCB]
[West Bay Bonus Event The Second] Reading celebrating Will Brewer’s new collection, NOCTURAMA, 6pm, Golden Sardine (North Beach). Jesus, this launch of Poetry Month is going very hard. Oakland poet Will Brewer reads from his new book published by Milkweed, with South Bay poet Adrienne Chung (Organs of Little Importance from Penguin, selected by Solmaz Sharif [who you just heard in conversation over at Cal earlier today] for the National Poetry Series), & Brian Tierney (Rise and Float, also from Milkweed Editions). See you there. [insta]
Palestine 36 Screening and Discussion, 6pm, New Parkway (Uptown). The only feature to shoot in Palestine in the last two years, it's been banned in Israel, has gotten some awards and uniform praise from critics (except the Zionist ones, who hate it), it's a historical epic telling the story of the 1936 revolt against the British by the people of Palestine that didn't result in a nation (except insofar as it did). Reminds me that I need to read Isabella Hammad's The Parisian, which is also set in mandatory Palestine; her Enter Ghost was incredible. Screening followed by a discussion led by Palestinian Youth Movement. [New Parkway]
Visible Labor opening reception, 6pm, Oakland Photo Workshop (Chinatown). Our friend Liam of East Bay Yesterday has curated an exhibit of photography of the labor in the East Bay that's usually all too invisible, so come through for the reception and gaze thoughtfully at the artists' work depicting work, visibly. [East Bay Photo Collective]
Poetry! 6pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Readers: Aubrey King (West Bay Poet with an MFA from the school with the best name: Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics), Peter Myers (visiting from Brooklyn, aka Far East Oakland Exurbs, “ Look / I’m post-look, but still my look / gets to it."), and Nina Ruth Mir (An Iranian West Bay poet, “Microplastics are to men what Norway is to whales”). [Tamarack Poetry Schedule]
[North Bay Bonus Event] Suzanne Simard | When the Forest Breathes, 6:30pm, Dance Palace (Point Reyes Station). More trees, this time with Suzanne Simard, if you missed the ecological erotic earlier this week and were heading out to the coast anyway. Go breathe with the Douglas firs (which are not true firs, the goddamn lies that common names tell us), and learn from Simard how forests regenerate in cycles with interrelationships of care that include the human, too. [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event Part Three] Photoworks X Pamplemousse: Zine Fair, 7pm, Photoworks SF (The Castro). Buy things printed on paper from tiny local presses, namely photo things in books, booklets, zines and posters. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event Cuid a Ceathair] Meet Bestselling Author Colm Tóibín, 7pm, United Irish Cultural Center (Way West Bay). I took a half year of classes in Irish at University College Dublin just so I can to tell you how to pronounce COLL-um Toe-BEAN's name twenty years later. Enjoy his new book of short stories! (h/t to Same Page SF for the highlight). [eventbrite]
Kitchen Table: National Poetry Month, 7pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). The Kitchen Table Reading series, which brings together chefs, food writers, and the literary community, is landing in the East Bay with Micheal Foulk (vibe reported and heartily ORB recommended), Oakland performance poet Audrey T. Williams, Big Bad Wolf chef Haejin Chun (and author of The Official Hightimes Cookbook), and rapper-turned-slam-poet Christian Perfas. This is Kitchen Table's first East Bay show, but they'll get hooked; Oakland is the greatest food city in the country, we hear, taste, and believe. [insta]
Poetry Reading, 7pm, 2727 California Street (Berkeley). Ohhhh damn, and here's another one, must really be poetry month getting underway now. Here we're in the more straight literary with some weird and wonderful experimental veins but not forgetting our performance-focused poets. Readers are: Brian Ang (Totality Cantos from Atelos), MK Chavez (Dear Animal from Black Lawrence), Tiff Dressen (Of Mineral from Nightboat), Lourdes Figueroa (Vuelta, Black Lawrence), Kelly Egan (Millennial from White Stag Publishing), and the organizer, Adam Stutz (The Sham Tapestry, White Stag). [insta]
Abigail Child: Foreign Film Series, 7pm, Shapeshifters Cinema (JLS). SUPER fun—doing the equivalent of collage and erasure poetics but with others' films instead of words. Montage, sampling, fragments, a heady rush of sound and visuals make new art out of old movies in Child's experimental films; with the filmmaker present, in her first appearance in the Oakland Bay Area in more than ten years. [San Francisco Cinematheque]
A Scanner Darkly, 7pm, BMPFA (Berkeley). We love Linklater and Philip K. Dick and future 1994 was just as bad in 2006 as it was in 1977, and just as “just say no to drugs” as you think a movie from twenty years ago is likely to be (very). The rotoscoping thing blew my mind when I saw it in theaters and I have never re-visited it, dunno. Someone go see this and tell us how it holds up. [BAMPFA]
Jesus Christ Superstar—Ted Neeley Farewell Tour, 7pm, Orinda Theater (Hot Side of the Hills). A very holy screening of the 1973 film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical on Good Friday, with a special appearance by the star, Ted Neeley, who rose from the cave and showed up in Orinda, with Mary M. as his witness. [Orinda Movies]
TCB: The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing Screening & Live Q&A, 7:30pm, Eastside Arts Alliance (Deep East). I think Toni Cade Bambara is due a revival, and this documentary will hopefully start the parade. Doc director Louis Massiah will be present, as will be snacks. [insta]
2001: A Space Odyssey, 10:30pm, Piedmont Landmark Theater (Oakland's Piedmont). You know what this is, and why watching it on a Friday night would rule. [Landmark]
Also: Policymaking for Realists Book Talk w/ Matt Grossmann at Institute of Governmental Studies (Cal) / Get-Hype Open-Mic Poetry Showcase at Clarion SF Performing Arts Center (West Bay)
Saturday, April 4
Sick Plant Clinic, 9:30am, UC Botanical Garden (Strawberry Canyon). Bag up your wilty, fuzzed plants and bring them to the doctor for free medi-botanical advice. If you want to go look at healthy plants in the garden though, you need to buy a ticket. [UCB]
[North Bay Bonus Event] Open Land Day at Shelterwood, 10am, Shelterwood (Cazadero). The queer desire to start a commune in the woods has created the beautiful land-stewarding place that is Shelterwood, and today they're letting everyone go and be with trees and each other. Plus a short movie, and snacks. [insta]
Celebrating Illustoria, the brilliant magazine for creative kids, 1pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). Get creative with kids under the auspices of a celebration of Illustoria, one of the McSweeney's stable of great magazines. Get kids into print early, for the sake of everyone's sanity and to spare the data centers. [Local Economy]
An Afternoon with Poets and Writers Honoring Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, 1:30pm, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley). Cathy Park Hong rolls down from campus, City Lights poet Brandon Shimoda comes in from Colorado, the utterly fabulous Divya Victor ("The Angelical Salutation of Every Girl in History"—listen and find joy in this litany) appears out of nowhere to talk about their work in relationship with Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's play with language as it sounds and feels and looks, and their shared interest in migration, identity, displacement, and colonialism. THIS is a constellation of stars. [BAMPFA]
Mohka House: Coffee, Tea & Yemeni Culture, 2pm, Dimond Branch (Oakland). Same event as the Friday one, different library. [OPL]
Ready Together, 3pm, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch BPL (Berkeley). Be Prepared, but together at the library, not like those bunker people. More climate emergencies means get a Go Bag together and a radio, and make a plan, because we're living in the when, not if. [BPL]
Floreciendo with this Magic book launch and celebration, 3:30pm, Aspire Lionel Wilson College Preparatory Academy (Deep East). Music, poetry, braids not raids. Author Deyci Carrillo López in celebration of Oakland's diversity and all sorts of town magic, releasing her second book of poetry (hear an interview with her here). [insta]
Frank Lloyd Wright at the Movies Again, 3:30pm, Central BPL (Berkeley). Another movie with some FLW buildings! This time: Gattaca, so we're going with curves and round windows and a beautiful blue roof (it's beautiful but honestly the constant curvature is slightly nauseating when you're there for too long) [BPL]
D.E.A.R (Drop Everything And READ) Family Reading Event, 4pm, Chapter 510 (Old Oakland). A family reading event centering Black girls & their families, whether already book-lovers or just book-curious—here there will be books here, of all kinds! Check out the Sistah Sci Fi book vending machine! Reading, snacks, and conversation shall abound. [insta]
Furu, 4pm, BAMPFA (Cal). Not to generalize too much, but social dramas like this one—about the toll of obligatory arranged marriages, misogyny, tradition, etc.—can sometimes feel like taking your vitamins, and a lot of African cinema is social dramas like this one. ISSUES. THEMES. That is what it is, and you can like it or not like it; sometimes it’s exactly what you want, and sometimes you’re in more of a mood for Art that doesn’t moralize. But also the trick is execution, and this is a well-executed one; check out this interview with the director, who is Malian filmmaker royalty. [BAMPFA]
Our Language, Our Story, 4pm, Oakland Asian Cultural Center (Chinatown). Register for free attendance at the reception for Our Language, Our Story. Photographer Joyce Xi brings the camera to Bay Area immigrants' experience of language, which is an interesting medium to choose—go ask the artist why. Her celebration of 10+ languages spoken by the 20ish people photographed was done in concert with several local community orgs, and features the subjects' own words alongside the images. [OACC]
La ciénaga, 6:30pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley). The most haunting and unsettling broken and bloody wineglass in cinema, the weirdest swimming pool in the jungle, the most "oh now I understand why Class must be abolished" portrayal of the bourgeois in Argentina, and why the Deluge needs to come as soon as possible. Lucrecia Martel’s first film, worth coming back to after seeing her recent Zama, or worth watching first and THEN seeing Zama, or just worth watching on its own (as is Zama). [BAMPFA]
Freaky Tales Anniversary Screening w/ Director Ryan Fleck!, 7pm, La Peña Cultural Center (The Freaky part of Berkeley ). On the one-year anniversary of a glorious love-letter to Oakland—about which ORB will soon publish the longest essay anyone will ever write—writer/director Ryan Fleck ("along with members of the cast") will be by to watch the movie and chat about art against fascism. All proceeds support La Peña’s decolonial and anti-imperialist arts and culture programming, so dig deep if you can. [La Peña Cultural Center]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Free screening of Teddy, Out of Tune!, 7pm, Clarion Performing Arts Center (West Bay Chinatown). With a live score by Nobozos (and after some animated shorts), this is the FIRST time you can see a 2020 movie that got chunked by pandemic the way it was supposed to be seen, and for free. The story of an itinerant musician, his piano in his flatbed, doing a big drive full of mom-feelings and life. [insta]
Benefit for the Prairieland Defendants, 7pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Read about the Prairieland case, or here, and spend International Day of Solidarity in solidarity with the defendants: vegan meal (with outdoor seating) at 7 pm, presentation on the case at 8. Materials and guidance for letter writing, as well as raising funds for the defendants commissary and lawyers. [ghostownprisonerssupport]
Also: Tatreez (Palestinian Embroidery) Workshop with Amanne Sharif at Lakeview Branch OPL (The Lake) / Spring Planting and Wildflower Seed Bombs at Elmhurst Branch OPL (Deep East) / Oakland Bloom Presents: Michoacán Cooking with Tsiri at Golden Gate Branch OPL (Golden Gate)
Sunday, April 5
[West Bay Bonus Event] Hunky Jesus & Foxy Mary Contest 2026, 10am, Dolores Park (The Mission). Crack your egg with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and enjoy the easter egg hunt with kids and then the show at noon. [Do The Bay]
Writing Day, 10am, Winslow House Project (The Oakland Part of Vallejo). Write and then break bread together, then go back to stretching out new leaves, and watching clouds drift over the pepper tree. [insta]
Crafting a Black Feminist Poetic, 11:30am, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). The first day in a four-week workshop series with poet, performer, and facilitator Nnenna Loveth, exploring the craft of (primarily queer) Black Feminist Poets—Nikky Finney, Ntozake Shange, Briona Simone Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, m. mick powell and others--and applying their tools to our own writing. Capped at 20 participants. $50 for all of it, but also, NOTAFLOF. [Nomadic]
Communicating Vessels, 1pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley). What if psychedelics were feminist? Annie (“I spent about five years making many works around psychedelics, always using it as a metaphor for how we can escape the chokehold capitalism has on our sense of ourselves and what is possible in the world”) MacDonell will be in person, screening a couple of her own films along with: Lillian Schwartz’s abstract Enigma, Ben Russell’s Trypps #7 (Badlands), and Gunvor Nelson’s My Name Is Oona. [BAMPFA]
Chinese Roulette, 4pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley—that's what the B's for). How much Fassbinder is enough / too much? BAMPFA continues to find out, with this cruel masterpiece of hating to be alive, in a relationship, feeling love, etc. A movie you'll be like "that was great!" and never want to watch again (unless you're into the "is everyone in this movie secretly in hell?" genre). [BAMPFA]
Also: AAMLO Kids Club at African American Museum and Library (Old Oakland) / Boycott Chevron Picket at Chevron Corporate Station (North Oakland) / Tenants Rights Clinic at Main Library (Lake-ish)