San Francisco Film Society Fall Season - Cinema by the Bay

November 5–8, 2010
Roxie Theater, The Lab & Southern Exposure

The San Francisco Film Society's Cinema by the Bay festival celebrates the passion, innovation and diversity of Bay Area filmmaking, featuring new work produced in or about the San Francisco Bay Area that demonstrates the incredible depth and breadth of America’s film and media frontier.

The 2010 edition of Cinema by the Bay opens with Chris Brown’s darkly comic feature Fanny, Annie & Danny and presents dynamic films from leading Bay Area filmmakers throughout the weekend, including Jennifer Gilomen and Sally Rubin's Deep Down, a complex documentary that contrasts the devastating result of rampant energy consumption with the remote and picturesque backdrop of Appalachia. SF360 Presents Essential SF concludes the festival in celebration of Bay Area veteran visionaries and the launch of the newly designed SF360.org.

For tickets and full program information, visit sffs.org.

New Exhibtions Opening Reception: Mapping Memory and Doug Burgess

Wednesday, November 10
5:00PM to 7:00PM
Thoreau Center for Sustainability, San Francisco

In Mapping Memory artist Gurpran Rau mixes maps with layers of paint, de-emphasizing boundaries and their political meanings. Rau's paintings suggest that home is just a state of mind and that we all spring from the same source. In the Seed Gallery, photographer Doug Burgess displays his detailed images of Bay Area invasive plants. He combines his images with narratives, challenging our understanding of weeds and our complicity in their proliferation.

Exhibtion Tours: Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here

Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition founder, Beau Beausoleil, will be available to lead tours of the current Thoreau Center exhibition Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here on Friday, October 22 and Friday October 29 between noon and 2:00 pm. A tour will last approximately half an hour. If you are interested in joining a tour, please email Bruce DeMartini at bruce@thoreau.org.

Thoreau Center Brown Bag - Social Media Discussion

In the news:

• Bing and Facebook form a partnership to bring your social network into your search results.
• President Obama answers your questions from Twitter.
• Malcolm Gladwell claims that Twitter and Facebook cannot be used to change the real world, angering Clay Shirky and activists around the world.
• Google’s new exec in charge of location-based and local services loves Foursqaure.
• While Ning launches a new service to create highly customizable social websites and mobile applications that allow you to connect to them anywhere.

There are new developments in the world of social networking daily. Online social media has already changed the environment in which nonprofits, foundations, philanthropists, and social entrepreneurs operate in rapid, novel, and often unexpected ways. What does it all mean and where is it all going? This event is an opportunity to meet with other organizations and individuals working in the Thoreau Center for an informal lunchtime discussion about such issues. Learn about your neighbors' experiences with these new tools, share strategies and lessons learned, and hopefully have some of your questions answered.


Representatives from United Religions Initiative - @global_uri, and Tides - @TidesCommunity (and the library - @WholeEarthLib) have signed on to give brief presentations to get the discussion started, and if you have experiences, projects, etc. you would like to arrange to share, please contact John Bertland at library@thoreau.org. Otherwise just come with your ideas, thoughts, and questions and join in the discussion.

Thoreau Center Exhibition Opening Reception:

Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here

Art and readings about the 2007 destruction of Al-Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad, Iraq

Thursday, October 14
5:00pm to 7:00pm
Thoreau Center for Sustainability, San Francisco

On March 5, 2007, a car bomb exploded on Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, Iraq, killing 30 people and wounding over 100 others. As the center of Baghdad’s bookselling, Al-Mutanabbi Street was the heart and soul of the city. In April 2007, San Francisco bookseller and poet, Beau Beausoleil, and Al-Mutanabbi printmaker, Grendl Lofkvist, formed the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition, asking letterpress printers to craft a visual response to this attack.

And they did. Over a hundred printmakers submitted their own broadsides depicting Al-Mutanabbi Street’s thriving haven for artistic freedom and a place of civil discourse.

Join us for an evening of art, wine and storytelling in support of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition. The evening’s program will include an exhibition of artwork from many of the printmakers who created and donated their work to help support the progress of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition. Also, three printmakers will read from their own writings in response to this 2007 incident. The readers include Deema Shehabi - Palestinian- American Poet - Co-Editor of the anthology, "Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here"; Esther Kamkar - Iranian -American Poet - Contributor to the anthology, "Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here" ; Bettina Pauly - A California Printer - A Letterpress Contributor to the "Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Project"

Brown Bag events are free informal mid-day learning sessions hosted at Tides. Friends, neighbors and colleagues are welcome. Visitors, please sign in at the front desk.

Thoreau Center Film Screening: "The Killing Seasons"

Presented by Director John Antonelli

Friday, October 8

12:30 pm

Pacific Room at Tides

Can wildlife conservation efforts go too far? Two African stories. Two white families. Two vastly different approaches: one ruthless, one collaborative. Two perplexingly different outcomes.

Filmmaking partners John Antonelli and Will Parrinello will screen their 20 minute rough cut of The Killing Seasons. Shot on location in Zambia and Swaziland, the film began as short segments about Hammer Simwinga and Thuli Makama, two Goldman Environmental Prize winners. Now, midway in the production, Antonelli is shaping the story in the edit room and planning another trip to Africa. This informal feedback session will help inform the filmmakers on their progress and guide them as they move forward.

Antonelli's Sam Cooke: Crossing Over was broadcast on PBS American Masters, which was just nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Series.

Parrinello's most recent film Mustang: Journey of Transformation had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS.

For more information on the filmmakers, go to www.mvfg.com

Brown Bag events are free informal mid-day learning sessions hosted at Tides. Friends, neighbors and colleagues are welcome. Visitors, please sign in at the front desk.

New book donations from IFG

Thank you to the International Forum on Globalization for their recent donation of numerous books to the library collection, including the following diverse selection of books by some of their board members, staff, and other associates. Also be sure to check out the recommended book list they put together this month, part of our new series looking at what books Thoreau Center organizations are reading and recommending.

• Barlow, Maude. (2005). Too close for comfort: Canada's future within fortress North America. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
• Mander, Jerry. (1978). Four arguments for the elimination of television. New York: Morrow.
• Shiva, Vandana. (1997). The enclosure and recovery of the commons: biodiversity, indigenous knowledge, and intellectual property rights. New Delhi: Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology.
• Barlow, Maude, and Tony Clarke. (1998). MAI: the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and the threat to American freedom. New York, N.Y.: Stoddart.
• Korten, David C. (1995). When corporations rule the world. West Hartford, Conn: Kumarian Press.
• Broad, Robin, and John Cavanagh. (2009). Development redefined: how the market met its match. International studies intensives. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.
• Goering, Peter, Helena Norberg-Hodge, and John Page. (1993). From the ground up: rethinking industrial agriculture. London: Zed Books in association with International Society for Ecology and Culture.
• Mander, Jerry, and Edward Goldsmith. (1996). The case against the global economy: and for a turn toward the local. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
• Daly, Herman E., John B. Cobb, and Clifford W. Cobb. (1989). For the common good: redirecting the economy toward community, the environment, and a sustainable future. Boston: Beacon Press.
• Paik, Koohan, Jerry Mander, and Hannah J. Bernard. 2009.The SuperFerry chronicles: Hawaii's uprising against militarism, commercialism and the suppression of the earth. Kihei, Hawai'i: Koa Books.
• Mander, Jerry. (1991). In the absence of the sacred: the failure of technology and the survival of the Indian nations. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
• Barnet, Richard J., and John Cavanagh. (1994). Global dreams: imperial corporations and the new world order. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Hertsgaard, Mark. (1998). Earth odyssey: around the world in search of our environmental future. New York: Broadway Books.
• Clarke, Tony. (2007). Inside the bottle: exposing the bottled water industry. Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.