Starting to see the whirlwind calm, but there’s still lots of books on the books. And movies, lots of movies. The 28th annual SF Silent Film Festival is actually in Orinda but the 8th annual SF Transgender Film Festival is at the Roxie in the Mission and everywhere on the internet. The Arab Film Festival is showing in theaters across the Bay, but come out to the New Parkway on Friday and Saturday. You can help grow a Pollinator Garden at 54th & Shattuck (with donations and hands on labor), and in Richmond, the epic Persian poem Leili & Majnun is adapted and translated into a unique fusion of Iranian Naghali and American musical theater, on stage until Thanksgiving. Start looking for ORB on poles (Have you seen this man?) and let us know if the vibes are great or weird or grooving at any of the events you go to. Call, text, DM your friends and 1) tell them to subscribe to get ORBital and 2) get them together to see and hear all the words flowing on stages, in bars, in bookstores, in Berkeley, in Richmond, in Oakland, in the hills and to the bay and even across it, sometimes.-AB & MDS
Tuesday, Nov 11
Tiger and Remaining Native, 6:30pm, Grand Lake Theatre (The Lake). Documentary short and feature; join filmmakers Loren Waters, Paige Bethmann, and short film participant Dana Tiger, and Niema Jordan. The feature is about Ku Stevens, a 17-year-old Native American runner, struggling to navigate his dream of becoming a collegiate athlete as the memory of his great-grandfather's escape from an Indian boarding school begins to connect past, present, and future. [humanitix]
Homegrown, 6:30pm, EastSide Arts Alliance (San Antonio). Director Michael Premo will present and discuss an advance screening of his documentary on radicalized Trump supporters, exploring how homegrown political violence is justified and normalized. [ESAA]
Lynne Sachs presents The Washing Society + Hand Book, 7 pm, Shapeshifters Cinema (JLS). Subtitle: A Manual on Performance, Process, and the Labor of Laundry. Coyote flagged this for you, I figure given the labor politics, Current will too, and here we are: the trifecta that gets you to click that click and buy the tickets. Think about LAUNDRY. The old rhyme of domestic labor goes like this: Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday, Bake on Wednesday, Brew on Thursday, Churn on Friday, Mend on Saturday, Meeting on Sunday. (The Mondays and Tuesdays spent on getting the fleas, the lice, the bodily stink out, jesus save us, thank your grandmothers’ hands. I’m a Thursday and Saturday queen myself, but you pick your days and we’ll all meet Sunday to discuss.) [canyon cinema]
The Beloved Senator Joe Manchin, may his crops fail and his spirit wither, oh, mourn his coming and weep at his works, 7:30pm, Paramount Theater (Downtown). For some reason? Only $479 for open seating, $590 for 1st Balcony, and $610 for Main Floor. This motherfucker. Grab your signs from last week (or make new ones) and stand outside. #enemies [speaker series]
Trivia For Good, 7:30pm, Missouri Lounge (San Pablo Corridor). Supporting OUSD Equity Fund, otherwise we wouldn’t be making you answer questions about sports. They have pop up snacky satisfiers in the back. [insta]
Also: East Bay Civic Hub Kickoff Gathering & Potluck at Groundfloor (Temescal)
Wednesday, Nov 12
Storytime for Caregivers with Ruth Whippman, 10 AM, Local Economy (College Ave). This month host Patricia will be talking with Ruth Whippman, author of Boy Mom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. Babies & toddlers welcome, but not required. Here’s an ORB tip: every literary event is one for for caregivers, just drag your kids along and show up (for everyone’s survival, bring books about dragons and coloring books and snacks). [Luma]
“The Horrors of Indigenous and Black Boundlessness in Prey and A Story of Cuba,’” 2 pm, Wheeler Hall (Cal). Explore horror’s potential to envision Black-Indigenous solidarity through reworkings of the genre’s conventions with Professor Kathryn Walkiewicz (UCSD and Cherokee Nation). If you like Stephen Graham Jones (you should, he’s a legend), this’ll be your jam. [UCB]
The Detours Symposium Series: Featuring Detours--Palestine, 2 pm, Building 554 (Cal). Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Palestine is a new book that showcases how Palestinians everywhere reshape forms of tourism to their homeland in order to lay claim to it in the midst of Israel’s settler-colonial project. Editors and some contributors ask and answer: What does a guide book to the landscape of genocide look like? [UCB]
‘Where Our Nansipu Remains’: Tewa Pueblo Maps and Meanings, 3:30p.m., Geography (Cal). Dmitri Brown (Santa Clara Pueblo) on making place-meaning in Pueblo territory, which includes Los Alamos Labs. Place-names call attention to the link between language and land. They orient communities to space and time. They hold stories. “Where” refers to the Pajarito Plateau, the mesa complex that hosts the town and laboratory of Los Alamos. “Our” refers to Santa Clara Pueblo. “Nansipu” translates to earth-mother-navel, a place of origin and emergence. “Remains” is an ambivalent provocation. [UCB]
Gather in with Mame Marieme Lô, 4pm, ARTogether (Downtown). Mame will be hosting a Mixed Media and Solarpunk workshop that imagines hopeful futures beyond capitalism and colonialism. Together, explore prompts and conversations before creating your own stories through writing or art. [insta]
Reading for Ahyoka and Abigail: Women’s and Girls’ Indian Territory Passages, 5 p.m., Maude Fife Room in Wheeler Hall (Cal). A lecture by Prof. Kathryn Walkiewicz (UCSD, Cherokee) on two archival traces: a photograph and the front page of a newspaper, to reflect on Black, Afro-Indigenous, and Indigenous women’s influence on late nineteenth-century print culture in Indian Territory (so-called eastern Oklahoma). [UCB]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Every Day, Computers are Making People Easier to Use, 6pm, Manny’s (The Mission). A conversation with the editors of In Formation, the cult favorite tech-critical magazine revived after 25 years. Join editors David Temkin, Alex Lash, Paulina Borsook, and Brian Maggi for a lively conversation about technology’s promises and pitfalls, Silicon Valley’s shifting ethos, and what it means to reclaim agency in an increasingly automated world. [eventbrite]
Writing across forms! 6:30pm, Transit HQ (Strawberry Park). A craft conversation with Alice Laplante, Mathew Clark Davison, and Lauren Markham, on how they mingle the genres. Mingle with people too, and eat Transit’s traditional pizza. [instagram]
WHB November Book Club: Wuthering Heights, 6:30 pm, Womb House (Temescal Alley). THIS IS NOT A ROMANCE NOVEL. Kate Bush it to hammer that home. RSVP and you get PDFs of critical essays to read. [eventbrite]
Public safety in Oakland: How Oaklandside reports, 7 pm, Clio’s (The Lake). The Oaklandside Senior News Editor Darwin BondGraham will moderate a conversation with Public Safety reporter Roselyn Romero and City Hall reporter Eli Wolfe to discuss how The Oaklandside reports on safety in the Town. Can we swap “If it bleeds, it leads” for “we keep each other safe” as a catchy phrase? [eventbrite].
Schmeerguntz and more, 7pm, BAMPFA (Cal). First set of films from Gunvor Nelson, “acclaimed Swedish experimental filmmaker who made the Bay Area her home for four decades” is how they describe her, but “made a film while pregnant about dirty shit around the house about five minutes after learning how to use a camera” is also true. [BAMPFA]
The Measure of Dignity, 7:30 pm, Clio’s (The Lake). Not sure how this simultaneous thing is gonna happen but the links both say Nov 12 so we believe they can do it. Philosopher Lea Ypi will discuss her latest book, Indignity: A Life Reimagined. Simultaneously a work of history, memory, and moral imagination, it is centered on Ypi’s grandmother Leman, whose life traces the fault lines of the twentieth century: the fall of empire, the rise of fascism, and the long shadows of communism in the Balkans. In conversation with political theorist Anna Stil [eventbrite]
Also: “Landscapes of Fabrics and Dyes in Early Modern South Asia” at Doe Library (Cal) / Film Screening: “Borderland: The Line Within” at The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (Cal) / Repair Advice with Fix it Clinic at Temescal Branch OPL (Temescal, unsurprisingly)
Thursday, Nov 13
Stop War on Venezuela Teach-in, 12pm, The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (Cal). Angela Marino and Ramón Grosfoguel speak on why the US is bombing Venezuelan fishermen under the pretense of a war on drugs. [CLAS]
Asian Elder Portrait Project 4:30pm, Oakland Asian Cultural Center ( Chinatown). Teen artist Luke Sera-Tacorda’s first solo exhibition [insta]
Faruk Šehić! 6 pm, Alumni House (Cal). Bosnian writer Faruk Šehić in conversation with Antje Postema and Ena Selimović. Vibes: academic, Sarajevo cult classic, anti-genocide. [Cal]
[Sold out, yay/ booo]. Muralists of Oakland, 6:30, New Parkway (Uptown). Oaklandside talks with muralists about why Oakland looks like that, and what for. Do this event again, so I can go. [eventbrite]
Backslide, 7pm, A Great Good Place for Books (The Hills). Nora Dahlia chats about her new romance novel, in which hijinks and human sexuality occur across multiple timelines. I bet they hook up in the end, though. [GGPB]
[Bonus West Bay Event] Front Street 7pm, Green Apple Books (Inner Sunset). Brian Barth will launch his narrative-changing book on unhoused communities in the shadow of big tech. This is a big one, come out. He’ll be in conversation with the activists of the Wood Street Commons, moderated by coyote Nuala Bushari. [instagram]
AIR LIGHT WATER MOON SHADOW SKY, 7:30pm, Bathers Library (Uptown). Celebrating Matt Carney’s collaborative game of poetic narrative generation inspired by experimental film, dream logic, and other omens, with game performances by Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta and others, plus live score. That’s a lot of stuff, all in an envelope. [insta]
Also: Rainbow crosswalk ribbon cutting at Lakeshore (Lakeshore) / You’re Going To Die: Poetry, Prose & Everything Goes at The Lost Church (West Bay) / Plainchant and Presence at Berkeley Institute / The Loft Hour: Xandra Ibarra + Matthew Evan Taylor at The Arts Research Center (Cal) / Sea and Sky as Media in Early Modern Chinese Fiction: A Lecture by Professor S.E. Kile at Dwinelle Hall (Cal) / Hurricane Relief Fundraiser at Calabash Restaurant (The Lake) / Sashay Through History With Kylie Minono at Vivalon Healthy Aging Campus Auditorium (San Rafael)
Friday, Nov 14
Deep East Walking Tour, 10am, 81st Ave Oakland Library (Deep East). join Communities for a Better Environment for a tour of Deep East Oakland to hear first hand about our community from people living and working in the area. [insta]
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson Reading Group, 12 pm, Berkeley Institute (Downtown Berkeley). The beloved American novel invites us to reflect on the assumptions that shape how we relate to the phenomena of daily experience and points us towards a more capacious mode of perception attentive to the mystery of life. “But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home...” Everyone is welcome to join in reading and discussing this novel together, facilitated by Dr. Monica Mikhail, every Friday all fall long. [Berkeley Institute]
Lit/oral Poetics and the Noise of Transfer with Urayoán Noel, 12 noon, Dwinelle Hall (Cal). Scholar, poet, translator, and performer of Nuyorican poetry brings his Spanglish here, “where luckless lovers stare at tiny screens / haz que el amante no muera de sueño / and poets brew old socks into psalmlets / tu borra es poema que embadurna.” [UCB]
Support the Oakland Peoples’ Arms Embargo, 5:30 pm, Grand Lake Theatre Sidewalk (Grand Ave and then moving). Join JVP Kids & Families, East Bay Families for Ceasefire, & Beyt Tikkun for this family friendly Shabbat extravaganza. Start at Grand Lake Theater for flyering and banner drop for the Oakland Peoples’ Arms Embargo, then move to a Kabbat Shabbat, with additional kid-friendly programming, and vegetarian Shabbat Potluck. [insta]
Khartoum, 6pm, New Parkway (Uptown). Five citizens of Khartoum forced to flee—a civil servant, a tea lady, a resistance committee volunteer, and two young bottle collectors—reenact their stories; they started the film before the war broke out, and after re-assembling in Nairobi, came up with a way to complete it. [arabfilm29]
Tritone Poetry! 6pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Kevin and noor curate three local poets: Laura Figa (“I self published a chapbook... I see it as a reckoning with desire, mostly”) , Jacques J. Rancourt (“We didn’t fuck / or even kiss. And through the skylight, / the light changed from chamomile / to lavender, from lavender to violet”), and ORB's own Marthine Satris will be sharing their work, up a set of stairs and fogging up the windows. Poems start on time. [insta]
Woman Life Freedom, 6pm, Pegasus Books (Downtown Berkeley). A reading and discussion with the editors of a collection of poems for the Iranian Revolution, Bänoo Zan and Cy Strom, joined by Bay Area contributors. [Pegasus]
The Holy T, 6:30pm, Junior Center of Art and Science (The Lake). Opening reception for an exhibition about transgenderism through the lens of painting and tapestry, featuring artists Gericault De La Rose and Angel Anjos. [Junior Center]
[Bonus West Bay Event]. Little Deaths All in a Row: Essays on Sex and Death, 7 pm, Fabulosa Books (The Castro). Elizabeth Earley and Nicole Roberts release their collaborative book, joined by the incomparable former West Bay author Michelle Tea, who’s launching her new book, Little F. It’s going to be an unforgettable night of queer voices, radical honesty, and luminous storytelling, they promise. [mail chimp]
Farming Is Female, 7pm, A Great Good Place for Books (The Hills). Who grew your food? Was it women? Rachel Sarah will chat about her new book on “Twenty Women Shaking Up the Field,” on how modern farmers are changing the way we think about food production. [GGPB]
Muscle Man, 7pm, Clio's (Lake). Do you even metaphysics, masculinity, and lifting, bro? Jordan Castro chats about his book about a weight-lifting English professor. [eventbrite]
Big Bryce Son 7:30 / 9pm, Rhythm Section Art Lounge (Jingletown). Bryce Savoy the Oakland premiere of his documentary on fatherhood, sonhood, grief and birth. [Luma]
Mother of Exiles, 8 pm, Berkeley Rep (Downtown Berkeley). From detention to diaspora, Mother of Exiles follows a single family’s century-and-a-half odyssey from detention to climate chaos, blending historical drama with ghosts and jokes. [Berkeley Rep]
Also: Empowering Women of Color Open Mic at La Peña (South Berkeley) / Joshua Mays: Olgaruth Advent - Opening Reception at Oakstop (Telegraph)
“When We Fight”: Film Screening & Teachers Union Panel at UC Berkeley Labor Center (Cal) / What is (a) narrative? at Wheeler Hall (Cal)
Saturday, Nov 15
Palestinian Olive Harvest Festival, 11am, Newark Library (Pretty Deep South Oakland). Crafts, fashion show, olives, and book give aways. [AC Library]
Mac Barnett & Shawn Harris' The First Cat In Space & The Baby Pirate's Revenge, 11am, The Freight (Berkeley). An immersive theatrical spectacular where you can dress up like a cat or maybe space and get a prize. You are not allowed to drop your kids off and scram. Sit down, there’s room (though Mac can sell out a house so get that ticket). [MrsDalloways]
70 Years of the Bandung Conference, 1pm, Bandung Books (San Antonio). Community, political discussion, zine making, and Indonesian snacks. [EastSideAlliance]
Heyday's Colors of California, 1pm, Local Economy (College Ave). Heyday authors Obi Kaufmann, Sara Calvosa Olson (Karuk), and Sophie Wood Brinker come together to talk color, and the roundtable will spiral from language, iridescence, and ecology into a big conversation with the 100+ people all squeezing in. Sold out, but you know how we feel about fire codes. [Luma]
From Ally to Activated: Breaking Barriers to Community Action, 1pm, Oakland Asian Cultural Center (Chinatown). How “we keep each other safe” becomes more than a nice thing to say. [insta]
Thoughts of a Large Red Woman, 3pm, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch (South Berkeley). Artist talk with Kris Urbanrezlife Longoria, an enrolled citizen of the Caddo nation, mother, writer, artist, and storyteller, who spent time on Alcatraz as a child with her family during the Occupation and has continued her work on Alcatraz for two decades. Her art show is on display at the Berkeley Central Library this month. [BPL]
Writing Against Genocide, 4pm, Clio's (Lake). Join Faruk Šehić—arguably Yugoslavia's biggest fan of Borges, Bowie, and Ginsberg—in conversation with Ena Selimović and antje postema on all things war and metaphor, in and out of translation. [eventbrite]
[Bonus West Bay Poetry] Concrete Encoded, 6pm Et al. (Mission). Laura Figa, who you met last night at Tamarack, in conversation with Nathaniel Wolfson about his book on the mid-century explosion of concrete poetry in Brazil -- and how it relates to cyber-everything. [insta]
Poetry and Chocolate, 6:30 pm, Xocolate & Confections (College Ave). Featuring chocolates and the sweet words of poets James Morehead (Poet Laureate Emeritus - Dublin, CA), Cael Dueñas-Lara (Oakland Youth Poet Laureate), and Oakland native and South Oakland professor Wendy M. Thompson (whose book of archivally-informed poems Black California Gold is wonderful). [eventbrite]
[Bonus West Bay Movie] Tell Them We Were Here, 7 pm, diRosa Center for Contemporary Art SF (“Central Waterfront” says Google Maps). A special screening of a doc about local artists for which the little man in the pink section flew out of his chair clapping. [insta]
Arise, Awake! The 125th Anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s Visit to the Bay Area and His Message for Our Times, 3 p.m, First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley (Downtown Berkeley). Theosophists, Swedenborgians, yoga, Vedanta -- this "cyclonic monk from India" was a foundational part of spiritualism in the West, especially in California. Get ready to Sanskrit. [UCB]
Also: Drag Queen Storytime with Per Sia! at Montclair Branch of OPL (The Hills) / Volunteer Appreciation Picnic at Friends of Sausal Creek Native Plant Nursery / Give old heirlooms second life at Abrams Claghorn Gallery (Albany) / How Rabbit Stole Fire, 4 and up Storytelling with Alicia Retes at West Branch Library (Berkeley) / Bay Nature Hike in the Alhambra Hills / Jewelry Sale Fundraiser for Gaza Students at Zaytoon (Albany) / Where Does San Francisco Stand? with Tim Redmond at Unitarian Universalists of San Francisco (West Bay, also Zoom) / Carmen Argote’s To Bright Disturbances at SFAC Main Gallery (West Bay) / Rework Textiles Consultation at California Copenhagen at Abrams Claghorn Gallery (Solano) / Men’s Unity Hike with From the Hood to the Woods at Joaquin Miller Park (The Hills)
Sunday, Nov 16
Queer Harlem Renaissance! Shoga Films Benefit Screening, 12:30pm, The New Parkway (Uptown). Oakland-based media non-profit is making narrative shorts about the Queer Harlem Renaissance; they’ll be showing "Congo Cabaret" and "Smoke, Lilies and Jade," adapted from queer writings from the authors of the period, and are currently crowdfunding for a third, "Bessie Shows Her Ass," about Bessie Smith (and her ass). They’ll also screen "The Queer Harlem Renaissance: A Prospectus," narrated by Daveed Diggs. [insta]
devorah major, 1pm, Marcus Books (Longfellow). The West Bay’s third Poet Laureate, her work bridges history, identity, and the rhythms of everyday life. A lot of resistance, a lot of power, come through. [insta]
Cultural Fire!, 1pm, OMCA (Lake). As part of the new OMCA exhibit on good fire and native land stewardship, an afternoon of storytelling and film screening with Margo Robbins, Elizabeth Azzuz, Roni Jo Draper, hosted by Tiśina Ta-till-ium Parker. Native fire practices from four visionary Native Californian memory keepers. [OMCA]
More Gunvor, 2pm, BAMPFA (Cal). Experimental film, part two (see Wednesday). [BAMPFA]
[Bonus North Bay Event] Heer Waris Shah 4:30, Headlands Center for the Arts (Marin Headlands). A modern adaptation of South Asia’s celebrated poetic masterpiece, performed by Bay Area artists. [insta]
[Bonus West Bay Event] Libidinal Labor, 6:30pm, Bar Part Time (The Mission). Celebrate Elaine Castillo’s new novel Moderation with the author, and the inimitable Brontez Purnell, Lisset (no last name?), Nina Shen Rastogi, and Carlee Jensen and maybe YOU (2 open mic slots left!). Castillo’s main character, Girlie, is a Filipina from Milpitas who is sharp, funny, and lives in Vegas where she both kicks abusive users out of a VR game and falls in love. “Her strengths were legion, but corporate analingus did not number among them.” [insta]
Also: Discover Your Author Voice with Renee Swindle and the California Writers Club at Gilman Brewing (West Berkeley) / Wonderland at ReLove Oakland / A Wild Love for the World -- Honoring Joanna Macy at The Swedish American Hall (The Castro)
