This April marks the hundredth year since the Bay Area was clobbered by a devastating quake along the San Andreas Fault. To mark this centenary milestone, PFA presents a weekend-long film series with a wallop, five faulty programs guaranteed to shake you up. Look for Earthquake, the first Sensurround film with enough bass to meet your bottom line; an illustrated lecture by Gray Brechin about the 1906 destruction, with archival newsreels galore; John Wayne wandering the ruins of the Barbary Coast; and the late-fifties disaster flick The Night the World Exploded, with an on-site seismologist to tell us about its unsound science. We hope you'll be not just shaken but stirred.
Steve Seid
Rare photographs and paintings of the 1906 earthquake and its aftermath are on view in the BAM exhibition The Bancroft Library at 100.