Flavorpill San Francisco Events

Then and Now: Photographs by Sebastião Salgado

2009-07-10T16:00:00Z

Opens Thursday May 14 (6–9pm)

May 15 – Jan 29, 2010

Mondays–Fridays (9am–5pm)

@ The David Brower Center

Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado's work is saturated with a deep affection and empathy for his subjects, who comprise the world's dispossessed — the hungry, the cheated, and the all-too-often ignored citizens of the so-called "third world." The former economist has traveled the globe since 1973 with two beautifully clear purposes: to highlight the dignity of the global poor's struggle, and to ingrain in all of us a sense of responsibility for their plight. The newly opened Brower Center — a facility that houses nonprofits dealing with environmental and social-justice causes — anoints its gallery space with a selection of Salgado's photographs that wrestle with environmental issues raised by the dirty effects of globalization.

Conservatory of Flowers presents Edible Expeditions

2009-07-10T16:00:00Z

May 7 – Nov 1

Tuesdays–Sundays (9am–4:30pm)

@ Conservatory of Flowers

Ever wonder how vanilla extract gets from the bean to the bottle? Or maybe how curries are flavored, from plant to plate? The Conservatory of Flowers has all the answers in this unique exhibit devoted to edible plants. Arranged in gardens by locale, Edible Expeditions brings together tasty wonders from all over the world, including rarities such as the North American chocolate-pudding tree, South America's irresistible ice-cream bean, and the Asian jackfruit (the world's largest fruit tree). The exhibit also features video demonstrations of food processing and examples of packaged foods from around the globe, making it a truly well-rounded delectable display.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs

2009-07-10T16:00:00Z

June 27 – Mar 28, 2010

Daily (9am–9pm)

@ de Young Museum

"Wonderful things." So said Howard Carter when the archaeologist was asked what he saw upon peeking into the just-opened tomb of boy-king Tutankhamun. Almost a century later and many world tours over, King Tut's wonderful things — enough beautifully crafted, jewel-encrusted, and gilded loot to last a dynastic ruler through the afterlife and beyond —still hold their allure. Perhaps, in these tough economic times, nothing seems simultaneously more fantastically alien, or more apropos a reminder of our last gilded age, than the glittering horde on display at the de Young. Get ready to gawk and awe.

This Town

2009-07-10T18:00:00Z

Opens Friday July 3 (7–10pm)

July 4 – Aug 16

Tuesdays–Thursdays (noon–7pm)

Fridays–Saturdays (11am–7pm)

Sundays (noon–5pm)

@ Eclectix Gallery

New York City has its skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty. Los Angeles has its vericose freeway interchanges, the Hollywood sign, and endless palm trees. But we Northern Californians, particularly those in the San Francisco Bay Area, have enough landmarks of our own. Such is the collective statement put forward by Eclectix Gallery's charming group show This Town, in which a bevy of local artists pay homage to and take inspiration from our regions' abundance of historic landmarks, colorful characters, off-the-beaten-path oddities, tourist traps, and natural features. There's even some love for the Bay's largest landfill. Now that's pride.

Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans

2009-07-10T18:00:00Z

May 16 – Aug 23

Mondays–Tuesdays (11am–5:45pm)

Thursdays (11am–8:45pm)

Fridays–Sundays (11am–5:45pm)

@ SFMOMA

In his introduction to The Americans, photographer Robert Frank's monumental, mid-century portrait of his adopted country, Beat poet Jack Kerouac wrote, "Frank […] sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world." That sad poem — related in hollow political rituals, weathered faces, and expressive hands — spans 83 photos, chosen from more than 20,000 Frank took in 1955 and 1956 while crisscrossing the country. America didn't like what Frank chose to reflect back at it then (initial reviews of the book were scathing), but 50 years on — and with a new Frank-approved edition, which this exhibit celebrates — his images still unsettle, disorient, discomfort, and surprise with not only their sadness, but also their strange beauty.

Safe Word

2009-07-10T18:00:00Z

June 26 – Aug 8

Wednesdays–Saturdays (11am–6pm)

@ Ratio 3

Ratio3 Gallery's new exhibition Safe Word helps puts to rest that age-old question: What will the neighbors think? In this case, Kink.com is the neighbor just across the way. For the past few years, the Internet BDSM juggernaut has made curiously appropriate use of the Mission's previously empty Armory building and its ready arsenal of dungeons and chains. For Safe Word, artists Danny Keith, Amanda Kirkhuff, Takeshi Murata, Francine Spiegel, and Anthony Viti were invited to respond to everything from the production and representation of extreme kink to the company's unique locale. Highlights include Keith's exquisite paintings of screen captures from "NakedKombat," as well as Murata's unforgettable, hilarious video merging bondage visuals with a serene meditation tape.

Passionate Struggle: Dynamics of San Francisco's GLBT History

2009-07-10T18:00:00Z

Dec 7, 2008 – Dec 10

Daily (11am–7pm)

@ 499 Castro St

One of the many transformations that occurs in Gus van Sant's Milk is that of the Castro from a sleepy, working-class Irish neighborhood into an epicenter of post-Stonewall gay life. But, as the GLBT Historical Society's exhibit Passionate Struggle reminds us, the fluorescence of the Castro in the '70s was but one chapter of San Francisco's very queer past. Fittingly housed at the address of Harvey Milk's old camera shop, Passionate Struggle presents many of the Society's rarely exhibited holdings through four lenses: People, Politics, Places, and Pleasures. From intimate snapshots to protest placards, and from pulp-fiction covers to the suit Milk was shot in, the objects in Passionate Struggle not only tell the stories of SF's GLBT folk, but that of the city, as well.

Galaxy: A Hundred or So Stars Visible to the Naked Eye

2009-07-10T18:00:00Z

Feb 25 – Aug 30

Wednesdays–Sundays (11am–5pm)

@ Berkeley Art Museum

With the financial crisis affecting all spheres of the market, including the art world, it's not surprising that museums are looking inward for inspiration. Berkeley Art Museum executive director Lawrence Rinder has turned his practised curatorial eye to the institution's archives and assembled, as this massive show's titles suggests, an exhibit of celestial proportions. Rinder's selections encompass the breadth of BAM's impressive holdings — Blake, Klee, and Rembrandt are here, as are Louise Bourgeois, D.A. Alvarez, and Barry McGee — while their display reveals his talented eye for coaxing new constellations of resonance from across mediums and, sometimes, centuries.

Warren MacKenzie: Legacy of an American Potter

2009-07-10T18:00:00Z

Opens Thursday June 11 (5–7pm)

June 12 – Sep 13

Mondays–Tuesdays (11am–6pm)

Thursdays–Fridays (11am–6pm)

Saturdays–Sundays (11am–5pm)

@ Museum of Craft and Folk Art

Trading in glitz and gloss for elegant understatement, American pottery master Warren MacKenzie has spent half a century crafting simple, eminently usable vessels that have set the national standard for practical ceramic art. This MOCFA retrospective traces his development through a variety of wheel-thrown styles, specifically concentrating on his life-long association with the Mingei aesthetic — a Japanese folk-art style from the 1920s whose utilitarian focus the potter embraced and reworked while developing the nascent studio-pottery movement of the early 1950s.

OCEAN + BEACH

2009-07-10T19:00:00Z

Opens Thursday July 2 (6–9pm)

July 2–31

Daily (noon–7pm)

@ Needles & Pens

Sun, surf, and sand are the guests of honor at Needles and Pens' OCEAN + BEACH. The exhibit brings together 20 artists from up and down the coast (including more than a few locals), and features a wide range of talent celebrating summertime's favorite destination. New work on display includes Amy Jo Diaz's whimsical pen-and-ink drawings, Alberto Cuadros' colorful surfer-inspired typography pieces, and Lana Porcello's meticulous pencil illustrations.

Hilary Pecis and Elyse Mallouk

2009-07-10T19:00:00Z

May 15 – July 26

Thursdays–Sundays (noon–5pm)

@ Triple Base

All that glitters isn't gold in Hilary Pecis and Elyse Mallouk's complementary exhibitions at Triple Base — but what shines is certainly enticing. Mallouk's video installation Trickle-Down: Yours for the Mining transforms the gallery's tiny basement into a diamante-studded mirror ball, which cannily reflects the emotional and material investments we make in artifice — art, itself, notwithstanding. Meanwhile, diamonds are a girl's best friend in Pecis' Spring Series of untitled ink, collage, and acrylic panels, in which black and white geometric patterns, gems, and cut-out twists of metal and hair explode into eye-shredding nebulae. Although her aesthetic covers similar ground to earlier Mission School artists, such as Alicia McCarthy, a keen sense of placement and color emerges through all the busyness.

Pae White: In Between the Outside-In

2009-07-10T19:00:00Z

May 5 – July 18

Tuesdays–Saturdays (noon–6pm)

@ New Langton Arts

Entering Pae White's exhibit is a bit like walking into a different time, in another place and culture altogether. This is, incidentally, exactly what White intended with her mixed-media installation. As part of her work with the For-Site Foundation, White explored the Sierra Foothills, where she culled the materials used for In Between the Outside-In: scans of ancient trees and other native foliage, plus an eclectic smattering of ceramic art. The scans are transformed with lighting and animation, and the ceramics provide the three-dimensional context of cultural objects. Placed together in a trapezoidal exhibit space, the result is a fascinating amalgam of opposites: displacement and belonging, stillness and movement.

The Cresting Wave: San Francisco Underground Comix Experience

2009-07-11T01:00:00Z

Opens Friday July 10 (6–8pm)

July 11 – Aug 22

Tuesdays–Fridays (11am–6pm)

Saturdays (11am–5pm)

@ Electric Works

Along with the Grateful Dead, the Cockettes, and Augustus Owsley Stanley III, underground comix were one of the freakiest things to emerge from San Francisco's free-love years. During the '60s, comic artists such as Robert Crumb and Spain Rodriguez started publishing their incendiary strips in the underground free press, and by the end of the decade, comix had come into their own — and SF was the creative epicenter. Curator and artist Dan Fogel has amassed an impressive array of personal drawings, well known comix art (including original covers), and other ephemera from the heyday of the scene, from artists such as Mark Bode, Vaughn Bode, Guy Colwell, Jay Kinney, Dan O'Neill, Trina Robbins, Randy Vogel, and S. Clay Wilson, as well as Crumb and Rodriguez.

Until the Light Takes Us

2009-07-11T02:30:00Z

Thursday July 9 (7:30pm)

Friday July 10 (7:30 & 9:30pm)

Saturday July 11 (7:30 & 9:30pm)

@ Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Outside of San Francisco's Summer of Love or Crass' peace-punk movement, there has yet to be a musical movement that so thoroughly — and with such diabolic, self-destructive fervor — practiced what it preached as the early black-metal scene in Norway. Using Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind's book Lords of Chaos as a springboard, Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell's documentary takes a non-sensationalist look at the events — two cases of murder, one of alleged cannibalism, and over a dozen church burnings — surrounding the new wave of heavy-metal music that shook Norway from 1991-93. Featuring interviews with key members of the scene and gorgeous footage of the Norse countryside, Until the Light Takes Us is a harrowing journey into one of the darkest extremes of artistic expression.

Nao Bustamante: Silver & Gold

2009-07-11T03:00:00Z

Friday July 10 (8pm)

@ The Lab

As part of the Lab's 25th-anniversary performance series, multimedia artist Nao Bustamante pays a thrice-removed tribute to '40s Dominican screen siren Maria Montes — infamous for her star turn as the titular Cobra Woman in Robert Siodmak's 1944 camp classic of the same name. Montes was the muse of underground queer filmmaker Jack Smith, whose Flaming Creatures (1963) featured another acolyte of Montes, drag queen and Warhol superstar Mario Montes. Channeling Smith by way of Mario's hysteric tribute to Maria's own Hollywood brand of the exotic other, Bustamante uses multi-channel video and live performance to explore the intersections of race, glamour, and the silver screen. Initially commissioned by the LIVE FILM/Jack Smith festival, Silver & Gold makes its SF premiere alongside new performance-based works by local artists Margaret Tedesco and Cliff Hengst.

Kode9 feat. Spaceape w/ Flying Skulls

2009-07-11T05:00:00Z

Friday July 10 (10pm)

@ 103 Harriet St

South London's Kode9 returns to SF after another worldwide jaunt, hitting the decks at basement disco 103 Harriet. His DJ sets span a range of bass-heavy sounds, from dancehall and hip-hop to reggae, dubstep, and grime. Besides DJing and producing, Kode9 also runs the Hyperdub label, whose recent releases fill out dubstep's deep bass and syncopated percussion with wonky midrange synths, vocoded melodies, and 8-bit chirps. He's joined tonight by dubstep MC Spaceape and local breaks and electro live trio Flying Skulls.

Peaches Christ's Midnight Mass: 12th and Final Season

2009-07-11T06:59:00Z

July 10 – Aug 22

Daily (11:59pm)

@ Landmark Bridge Theater

It could be a tabloid headline: "Cult-movie host morphs into seven-figure film director." Instead, it's the end to this 12th season of Midnight Mass curated by Peaches Christ (aka Joshua Grannell). She's already staged spectacles, such as the drag-queen roller derby and the filthiest-person-alive contest, before each screening. And she's only presented the best in camp, horror, and cult movies — this year includes The Exorcist, Heathers, Showgirls, Pink Flamingos, and Poltergeist. She's also mastered the art of wrangling cult icons, such as Linda Blair (who attends the July 10 and 11 screenings), to stroll down memory lane. So, when Christ offers up a scene of her directorial debut, All About Evil, on Midnight Mass' final weekend (the main film is Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, naturally), she'll have ascended from emcee to fiercely independent filmmaker. Eli Roth better watch his back.

Whatever Works

2009-07-11T07:00:00Z

Ongoing

Daily

@ Landmark Embarcadero

Long ago, Woody Allen owned up: his one regret in life was that he was not someone else. Yet, for the better half of his artistic practice, Allen capitalized on that misanthropic, life-is-meaningless persona. In Whatever Works, his latest surrogate is none other than Larry David, here a carping string theorist who dots every other phrase with the thinking man's epithet: "microbe." He maintains his high-and-mighty m.o., even after dimwitted Southern waif Evan Rachel Wood moves in and, against all scientific reason, falls for the bastard — to entropic and farcical ends, of course. The filmmaker's return to a New York setting features some corned rehash (cf. '70s Woody), but there are plenty of hallmark one-liners, not to mention the charm of that irresistible Allen-David marquee.

In the Realm of Oshima

2009-07-11T07:00:00Z

May 29 – July 18

Daily

@ Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Frequently hailed as the Jean Luc Godard of Japan, Nagisa Oshima has a reputation as one of his country's foremost radical filmmakers. In the Realm of Oshima, the most comprehensive US retrospective of his oeuvre in nearly 20 years, brings together nearly all of the feature films spanning the director's four-decade career. Stylistically all over the map, Oshima's work is unified by a restless search for a radical form suited to radical content — a sensibility nurtured by having come of age as a filmaker alongside the rise of Japan's left wing in the '60s. Whether presented through the lens of teen delinquents, disillusioned leftists, corrupt government officials, or sexual outlaws, Oshima's films are bold and beautiful shakedowns of postwar Japanese society.

Outdoor Exploratorium

2009-07-11T07:00:00Z

Ongoing

Daily

@ Fort Mason Center

Since 1969, the Exploratorium has merged science and fun with its hands-on collection; now, it brings that curatorial savvy outdoors, with 20 interactive exhibits that investigate everything from water and wind to sound and light. Bridge Thermometer demonstrates how the Golden Gate can gauge temperature; Tasting the Tides creates a bayside water fountain; and Corrosion Wedge reveals the secret life of historic waterfront buildings. The exhibit has been two years in the making, and it's guaranteed to teach you a thing or two about the phenomena right before your eyes.

San Francisco Silent Film Festival

2009-07-11T07:00:00Z

July 10–12

Daily

@ The Castro Theatre

The Silent Film Festival unspools what is perhaps its most star-driven and diverse lineup for its 14th edition this weekend. Opening Night's Gaucho features Douglas Fairbanks dropping his usual sparkly eyed, wholesome-hero act for a darker swashbuckling charm, as the leader of a pack of banditos; much to the outrage of audiences at the time, he drinks heavily, transgresses (beating up a priest and looting a shrine), seduces an underage Lupe Velez, and causes mischief of all sorts before finding spiritual redemption. Other highlights include a star turn by Jin Yan, the "Valentino of China," in Wild Rose; the Russian constructivist fantasia Aelita, Queen of Mars; and W.C. Fields' rarely screened So's Your Old Man.

Thrillpeddlers presents Pearls Over Shanghai

2009-07-11T07:00:00Z

June 5 – Aug 16

Daily

@ Hypnodrome

The Cockettes, San Francisco's original acid-fried gender-benders, are the honorary fairy godmothers of every queen who has flown a freak flag in stilletos, ever since the late '60s and the troupe's legendary midnight performances at the Palace Theater in Chinatown. In honor of the Cockettes' 40th anniversary, Thirllpeddlers stages a revival of Pearls Over Shanghai, the troupe's first original musical production. Loosely based on John Colton's 1926 broadway play The Shanghai Gesture and Josef von Sternberg's 1941 film adaptation starring Marlene Deitrich, Pearls is a decadent tale of white slavery steeped in opium smoke and sex. Original Cockette Rumi Missabu reprises his role as the evil Madame Gin Sling, and Connie Champagne, Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, and Leanne Borghesi alternate in the role of Petrushka, first created by disco diva Sylvester.