A listing of tours and conversations with contemporary artists and filmmakers, curators' talks, musical performances, lectures, and special events coming up at BAM/PFA.

Monthly Events

First Impressions: Free First Thursdays at BAM/PFA
Infatuation, discovery, surprise, epiphany - all start with a first impression. Get acquainted with an inspiring world of art and film on Free First Thursdays during the first week of every month. Encounter the work of artists, filmmakers, and scholars who shape our cultural landscape, or take a second look at visual culture from across time and around the world. GAP is proud to support First Impressions: Free First Thursdays at BAM/PFA.

Guided Tours of Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India, Measure of Time, and Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle
Tours led by UC graduate students will be offered on selected Thursdays and Sundays (see below).

Events Listed by Calendar Date

Sunday, September 3
2:00 p.m., Gallery 1
Guided Tour of Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India

3:00 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – Metropolis, with Judith Rosenberg on Piano
Fritz Lang's gorgeous, dystopian classic, "a crazed, pathetic ballet of mechanized ant-man in revolt against his Utopian overlords" (Monthly Film Bulletin). Part of the series The Mechanical Age.

FREE First Thursday!
Thursday, September 7
12:15 and 5:30 p.m., Gallery 1
Guided Tours of Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India

5:30 p.m., PFA Theater
FREE Screening – The Mechanical Man
A robot runs amok in this remarkable early science-fiction film from Italy. With shorts March of the Machines and Robots. Part of the series The Mechanical Age.

Sunday, September 10
2:00 p.m., Gallery 1
Guided Tour of Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India

3:00 p.m., Museum Theater
Musical Performance by Sudipto Chatterjee
Performer and scholar Chatterjee will present the compelling vocal music of the Baul tradition with excerpts from his acclaimed theatrical production Man of the Heart (The Life and Times of Lalon Phokir). Part of the exhibition Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India.

3:00 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – Charley Bowers: Dream Machines, with Jon Mirsalis on Piano
The charming, crazy contraptions of animator/comic Bowers take American ingenuity to surreal heights. Part of the series The Mechanical Age.

Thursday, September 14
12:15 and 5:30 p.m., Gallery 1
Guided Tour of Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India

5:30 p.m., PFA Theater
Conversation: Filmmaker Ali Kazimi (Free Admission)
An informal conversation with documentary maker Kazimi about his artistic process. Part of the series Ali Kazimi: A Commitment to Justice.

7:30 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – Shooting Indians, with Ali Kazimi in Person
A dialogue with Iroquois Canadian photographer Jeffrey Thomas about Edward S. Curtis, photography, and stereotypes. With short Passage from India. Part of the series Ali Kazimi: A Commitment to Justice.

Friday, September 15
7:30 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – Runaway Grooms, with Ali Kazimi in Person
This illuminating documentary investigates Indo-Canadian men returning to India for arranged marriages, only to disappear with their brides' dowries. Part of the series Ali Kazimi: A Commitment to Justice.

Saturday, September 16
3:00 p.m., Museum Theater
Artists' Panel: Lawrence Cohen, Vasudha Dalmia, Atul Dodiya, Chaitanya Sambrani, and Nalini Malani
Artists Malani and Dodiya, exhibition curator Sambrani, and UC professors Cohen and Dalmia will discuss how contemporary Indian art deals with a range of interdisciplinary issues, especially with the country's recent troubled political history. Part of the exhibition Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India.

6:30 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – Continuous Journey, with Ali Kazimi in Person
Kazimi's award-winning film examines one of North America's first "immigration panics," when a boatload of Indian immigrants were refused entry to Canada in 1914. Part of the series Ali Kazimi: A Commitment to Justice.

8:45 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – Narmada: A Valley Rises, with Ali Kazimi in Person
Taking sides, not just photographs, this documentary follows indigenous protests against India's notorious Narmada Valley dam project. With short Documenting Dissent. Part of the series Ali Kazimi: A Commitment to Justice.

Sunday, September 17
2:00 p.m., Gallery 1
Guided Tour of Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India

3:00 p.m., Asian Galleries, Galleries 2 and 3, and Theater Gallery
Gallery Talk: Professor Joanna Williams on Folk and Fine Arts Flux in India Today
Williams will discuss the place of traditional Indian art practices in India's contemporary art scene. Part of the exhibition Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India and Centers of Artistry: Indian Paintings from the Collection.

5:00 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – The Unsilent Film: The Sentimental Bloke, a Special Event with Live Music by Jen Anderson and the Larrikins
This charming tale of an ordinary bloke wooing and winning his beloved, considered the jewel of Australian silent cinema, gains extra sparkle from a score by Australia's own Jen Anderson.

Sunday, September 24
2:00 p.m., Gallery 5
Guided Tour of Measure of Time

3:00 p.m., Museum Theater
Lecture: Professor Linda Dalrymple Henderson on The Fourth Dimension: Space, Time, and Space-Time as Leitmotif in 20th-Century Art
Author and art historian Henderson considers the disappearance and reemergence of the fourth dimension as a relevant concept in art and culture in light of the Cubists, Marcel Duchamp, kinetic artists of the 1950s and 1960s, and Robert Smithson. Offered in conjunction with Measure of Time.

4:00 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – Sherlock Jr., with Judith Rosenberg on Piano
Buster Keaton is a projectionist who dreams his way onto the screen in this ode to cinema, the beautiful machine. With Japanese animated short Broken Down Film. Part of the series The Mechanical Age.

5:30 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – The Man with a Movie Camera, with Judith Rosenberg on Piano
Dziga Vertov's "epitome of machine art, the grand summa of the Soviet futurist-constructivist-communist avant-garde" (Village Voice). Part of the series The Mechanical Age.

Tuesday, September 26
7:30 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – Charming Augustine, with Zoe Beloff in Person
Beloff's latest evocative work, presented in stereoscopic format, uses a late–19th-century case of hysteria to study the connections between the history of psychology and the prehistory of narrative film. With shorts Case History of a Multiple Personality and The Painted Lady. Part of the series Alternative Visions.

Thursday, September 28
7:30 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – The Serial and the Mechanical Age, with Lecture by Archivist David Francis and Judith Rosenberg on Piano
The struggle between man-or woman-and machine is the theme of this program of serials, featuring episodes from The Perils of Pauline, The Exploits of Elaine, Nick Carter, and other cliffhangers. Part of the series The Mechanical Age.

Saturday, September 30
7:00 p.m., PFA Theater
Special Presentation: David Francis and Joss Marsh on The Magic Lantern and the Mechanical Age, with Judith Rosenberg on Piano
Francis and Marsh reveal how that wondrous 19th-century pre-cinema entertainment, the magic lantern, reflected the concerns and obsessions of the mechanical age. Featuring beautiful lantern slides from Francis's own collection. Part of the series The Mechanical Age.

Sunday, October 1
2:30 p.m., PFA Theater
Screenings – Pandora's Box: The Engineer's Plot followed by The General Line, with Judith Rosenberg on Piano
In Pandora's Box, acclaimed British film essayist Adam Curtis intriguingly muses on the determinism that has shaped our age. Then, at 4 p.m., it's down on the collective farm with Sergei Eisenstein, revolutionary master of montage, in The General Line. With short The General Line. Part of the series The Mechanical Age.

Tuesday, October 3
7:30 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – Alternative Requirements: Works by Bay Area Student Visionaries, with Artists in Person
Our annual program of poetic, passionate, and playful avant-garde works from Bay Area colleges. Part of the series Alternative Visions.

FREE First Thursday!
Thursday, October 5
5:30 p.m., PFA Theater
Free Screening – Shadows and Light, The Last of the Pioneers: Nazih Shahbandar
A profile of a founding father of the Syrian film industry, with short A Silent Cinema, capturing the courageous spirit of Syrian filmmakers. Part of the series The Road to Damascus: Discovering Syrian Cinema.

Tuesday, October 17
7:30 p.m., PFA Theater
Lecture: War and Video Games, a Multimedia Lecture and Booksigning by Ed Halter
Author of From Sun Tzu to Xbox, Halter offers a political history of the video game and a powerful argument about its role in the way Americans have come to think about war. Part of the series Alternative Visions.

Wednesday, October 18
12:00 p.m., Galleries 2 and 3
Curator's Talk: Constance Lewallen on Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle
Lewallen inaugurates the exhibition Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle with an insider's view of the exhibition galleries.

Thursday, October 19
7:00 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – Spinning Up, Slowing Down: Industry Celebrates the Machine, with an Introduction by Archivist Rick Prelinger
In one of his patented presentations of ephemeral films, Prelinger reveals American industry's fascination with the machine and its off/on contributions to our prosperity. Featuring a newly-preserved print of Master Hands. Part of the series The Mechanical Age.

Sunday, October 22
2:00 p.m., Gallery 2
Guided Tour of Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle

3:00 p.m., Museum Theater
Discussion: Peter Galison and Pamela Lee on In and Out of Time
Harvard physicist and historian of science Galison and Stanford art historian Lee explore scientific ideas and cultural anxieties about time in relation to 20th-century artists' practices. Offered in conjunction with the exhibition Measure of Time.

Thursday, October 26
12:15 and 5:30 p.m., Gallery 2
Guided Tour of Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle

Sunday, October 29
1:00 p.m., Gallery 2
Guided Tour of Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle

2:00 p.m., Museum Theater
Tribute: A Countercultural Circle: Wallace Berman and Semina
A tribute to Wallace Berman from exhibition curators Michael Duncan and Kristine McKenna; publisher Tosh Berman; poets Diane DiPrima, Michael McClure, and David Meltzer; and artist George Herms. Part of the exhibition Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle.

Start Halloween Early!
7:00 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – Neighborhood Watch, with Graeme Whifler in Person
"Neighborhood Watch is a film that creeps up on you like a festering disease. In fact, Neighborhood Watch is a festering disease-its symptoms are fear, dread, disgust, and nausea."-Horror Review. Part of the series A Theater Near You.

Tuesday, October 31
7:30 p.m., PFA Theater
Screening – Experiments in Terror, with an Introduction by Noel Lawrence
Featuring experimental auteurs who use visionary cinematography and a masterful montage of rare film artifacts to probe every dark corner of the human psyche, this shocking evening explodes the genre of the horror film. Part of the series Alternative Visions.

Exhibitions

Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India
Through September 17

Centers of Artistry: Indian Paintings from the Collection
Through October 22

The Bancroft Library at 100: A Celebration, 1906–2006
Through December 3

Tara Donovan: Colony
Through April 15, 2007

Measure of Time
Through June 24, 2007

Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle
October 18 – December 10

Allen Ruppersberg: The Singing Posters
October 18 – December 10

Grapefruit
October 18, 2006 – March 28, 2007

Film Series

A Theater Near You
September 1 – October 29

The Mechanical Age
September 3 – October 22

Alternative Visions
Tuesdays, September 5 – October 31

Arrr, Matey: Pirates and Piracy
Wednesdays, September 6 – October 25

The Road to Damascus: Discovering Syrian Cinema
September 7 – October 12

Ali Kazimi: A Commitment to Justice
September 14 – 16

Special Event: The Unsilent Film
September 17

Consummate Storytelling: The Cinema of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
September 22 – 29

Ousmane Sembène: Pioneer of African Cinema
October 7 – 26

Credit Line

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Additional support is provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Koret Foundation, the Bernard Osher Foundation, Packard Humanities Institute, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Columbia Foundation, the Christensen Fund, the William H. Donner Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, Gap Inc., other private foundations and corporations, and our individual donors and members. Major endowment support has been provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation and by George Gund III.

Gap Inc. is proud to support First Impressions: Free First Thursdays at BAM/PFA. For more information about Free First Thursday gallery tours and screenings visit our website at bampfa.berkeley.edu.

University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Located at 2626 Bancroft Way, just below College Avenue near the UC Berkeley campus.

Gallery and Museum Store Hours:
Wednesday and Friday to Sunday, 11 to 5; Thursday 11 to 7. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Admission:
General admission is $8; admission for seniors, disabled persons, non-UC Berkeley students, and young adults (13 – 17) is $5; admission for BAM/PFA members, UC Berkeley students, staff and faculty, and children under 12 is free; admission for group tours is $3 per person (to arrange a group tour, call [510] 642-5188). Admission is free on the first Thursday of each month.

Information:
24-hour recorded message (510) 642-0808; FAX (510) 642-4889;
PFA recorded message (510) 642-1124; TDD: (510) 642-8734

Website: bampfa.berkeley.edu

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