Arts & Events

Around & About Music: 8th Berkeley World Music Festival This Saturday, All Afternoon--Free

By Ken Bullock
Tuesday May 31, 2011 - 08:45:00 PM

The 8th Berkeley World Music Festival kicks off at noon on and around Telegraph Avenue at both indoor and outdoor venues between Bancroft and Dwight Ways, with continuous music all afternoon & evening, noon till nine--and it's free! -more-


Around & About Theater: Woman's Will Playfest 2011--with a preview of Women Behind Suffrage

By Ken Bullock
Tuesday May 31, 2011 - 08:42:00 PM

Woman's Will, the East Bay all-female troupe which was founded by Erin Merritt for women to play all the roles in Shakespeare and other great theater, has for years put on an annual playfest. This year, with Victoria Evans Erville's artistic direction--and dedication to the principal not just of roles for women, but plays written and directed by them--the short plays presented were written by female playwrights from around the country over a two month period, including; -more-


Book Review: German Voices: Memories of Life during Hitler's Third Reich, by Frederic C. Tubach.

Reviewed By Joanna Graham
Tuesday May 31, 2011 - 05:43:00 PM

Ten years ago, the University of California Press published An Uncommon Friendship,by Bernat Rosner and Frederic C. Tubach. The authors, Orinda residents who were then just retiring from their respective professions, had been longtime close friends on the basis of shared interests, shared values, and a common background, both having grown up in rural villages in pre-World War II Europe. But there was one vast dissimilarity. Rosner, a Hungarian Jew, was the sole member of his family to have survived Auschwitz. Tubach, a German, was the son of a man who early and with enthusiasm joined the Nazi party and ultimately the SS. Together, they took on the difficult task of remembering and recounting their wartime experiences and ultimately produced a spare, honest, and deeply moving book which on the one side of the Holocaust refuses to whine and on the other to excuse. -more-


Film Review:Midnight in Paris Strikes Gold
(But Woody’s Script Doesn’t Pan Out)

Review by Gar Smith
Tuesday May 31, 2011 - 08:34:00 PM

Like many devotees, I trekked to Woody Allen's latest celebration of Nebbish Cinema (actually, I caught it at a press screening). And I have to report that the predictable parade of our favorite antic-auteur’s resume of neurotic mannerisms (draped, this time, on the capably slack shoulders of Allen-stand-in Owen Wilson) left me feeling ambivalent (when I wasn’t laughing, of course). Laughter is contagious. So, too, is neurosis. Let me kvetch. -more-


Film Review: Empire of Silver: A Local Filmmaker’s Awesome Debut

Review by Gar Smith
Thursday June 02, 2011 - 02:19:00 PM

Empire of Silver opens June 3 at the San Francisco Metreon and AMC Bay Street in Emeryville. -more-


The Empire of Silver and the Confucian Path to Banking

By Gar Smith
Thursday June 02, 2011 - 02:18:00 PM

The Shanxi merchants depicted in Christina Yao’s epic film, Empire of Silver, were powerful players in Chinese history. By the end of the 19ths century, their wealth and influence rivaled that of the ruling Ming and Qing dynasties. Shanxi province, the setting for Empire of Silver, has been called “the Wall Street of China.” -more-