Arts And Entertainment

FRIDAY, NOV. 2 -more-

From Bruce Barthol’s days as bassist with the original Country Joe and the Fish, to his three decades as resident composer for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, to playing for this year’s reunion of survivors of the Spanish Civil War’s Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Barthol’s been an unstinting fount of committed and humor songs and instrumental music. -more-

John Cage’s groundbreaking music is often associated with Asian thought: the random throws of the I Ching, Taoist and Zen spontaneity. Tonight (Friday) at 8 p.m., at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave., a different side of Cage’s exploration of non-European music and philosophy will be heard, when dhrupad singer Amelia Cuni sings his “18 Microtonal Ragas.” Cuni, the first performer to prepare all of these ragas for full performance, sings in five different languages, accompanied by Werner Durand, drones and electronics, and Raymond Kaczynski and Federico Saliesi on percussion. Cage’s “Solo for Voice 58” will also be performed. Italian-born Cuni has been a sensation among Indian music listeners the past few years. The concert is presented by Other Minds, founded by Charles Amirkhanian (formerly of KPFA), in association with the Italian Cultural Institute and the Goethe-Institut, both of San Francisco. $25, www.brownpapertickets. com or (800) 838-3006. -more-

Berkeley filmmaker Connie Field has taken on a vast project in her effort to document the global movement against apartheid in South Africa over half a century. Have You Heard From Johannesburg? is a six-part series that examines the movement in stand-alone documentaries. Field has completed the first of them and is at work finishing the second. Apartheid and the Club of the West, which will eventually take its place as the fourth installment in the series, opens today (Friday) at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. -more-

TUESDAY, OCT. 30 -more-

We know so much about the deportation and death of Polish Jews in the Holocaust, but so little about life in the shtetl before the genocide. The exhibition of his paintings, currently on view at the Magnes Museum displays 65 pictures by an artist who has documented the joys and sorrows of daily life in the shtetl. -more-

Mankind’s Last Hope, Virago Theatre’s burlesque futuristic sitcom, through this weekend at Alameda’s Rhythmix Cultural Center near the Park Street Bridge, is the perfect antidote to the overcommercialization of Halloween. -more-

All Hallows, All Saints, All Souls, Samhain, Todos Santos, Dia de los Muertes ... by any other name, to us, Halloween and the cluster of celebrations around the old Celtic lunar new year after harvest, adopted by the Christian Church as holidays. -more-

A long-awaited, much-needed, and up-to-date guide to the great and representative buildings and architectural history of the Bay Area debuts this month. -more-

As long as we've had motion pictures, we've used them to scare ourselves. The medium is perfectly suited for it. Even the earliest filmmakers saw the potential, employing double exposures, trick shots, spooky sets and dramatic lighting to illuminate the darker side of the imagination, to bring to life the ethereal netherworlds and distorted figures of the collective unconscious. -more-