Arts & Events

This year's San Francisco Silent Film Festival starts off with a premiere of sorts. Last year a stash of rare American silent films, many long though lost, were repatriated back to the United States for restoration and preservation. Upstream, one of the gems of the collection and the first to be restored, will screen Thursday, July 14, as the opening film of the annual festival that takes over the Castro Theater through Sunday night. -more-

A quarter century ago Bonnie Hughes was perhaps best known in Berkeley as the proprietor of Augusta’s, a well regarded restaurant on Telegraph Avenue just north of Ashby. -more-

It’s a good sign when the testimonials on the back of a 440-page autobiography include the likes of Noam Chomsky, Ed Asner and Martin Sheen. But that only hints at the praise directed at S. Brian Willson’s long-awaited memoir. The testimonials continue on the inside — for another seven pages — and include plaudits from Cindy Sheehan, William Blum, Kris Kristofferson, Norman Solomon, Peter Dale Scott, Cynthia McKinney and Country Joe McDonald. -more-

La Traviata at Festival Opera: Festival Opera, with Michael Morgan as artistic and music director, stages opera in a way that the original meaning of the word becomes apparent. Each artistic element of the production has its own place, accompanies the rest on an equal footing: singing, orchestration, acting, set, spectacle. And with this production of Traviata, dance reassumes its importance in operatic spectacle as well. Mark Foehringer, who has excellently stage directed the show, is a splendid ballet choreographer; the dancers from his Mark Foehringer Dance Project in San Francisco tear up Flora's party in Act II with wonderful gypsy and toreador numbers. And a brief, masked Carnival rout outside the window of the dying Violetta--with an early winter morning Paris dimly glowing--shows the influence of the director's years in Sao Paulo. -more-

The San Francisco Mime Troupe's 2011 summer show opened as usual in Dolores Park over the July 4th weekend, played its first Berkeley engagement at Cedar Rose Park in Berkeley last weekend, and now has added a Berkeley show on Saturday at Willard Park (aka Ho Chi Minh to old lefties). The new date is Berkeley's gain and Southern California's loss, because a planned run down south fell victim to a construction delay in the scheduled venue. -more-

Southside Berkeley's beloved Le Bateau Ivre (The Drunken Boat), a French cafe complete with title from Baudelaire Rimbaud*, offers unique entertainment along with its usual good food on Wednesday evenings. The next two programs are especially lively. This week, there's an evening of swing jazz with a touch of Dixieland, and next week it's opera favorites from the Dazzling Divas. -more-

Karen McLellan and archiving consultant Lincoln Cushing have announced the posting of the first 1,322 of the 24,500 posters in Michael Rossman’s unparalleled collection of political posters. The initial selection is part of the Oakland Museum of California's exhibition of Rossman's "All Of Us Or None Archive." -more-

Berkeley-rooted author Edie Meidav’s new novel “Lola, California” comes out July 5th with Farrar Straus to extraordinary praise. -more-

You're ready to take the plunge--or you already have. Keeping chickens and ducks is easier than you think, but it takes planning and some upfront expense. Longtime chicken wrangler Linnea Due offers advice on feed, housing, breeds, and more, and outlines common assumptions that can lead to trouble. In a Q&A format, she'll address hatcheries, Marek's vaccines, composting with manure, and how to get those all-important eggs. The class is free but limited to twenty, so sign up now. Please specify when registering if ASL interpretation is requested, (at least 10 working days in advance). -more-