Skip to main content.
Submit or edit an event >
Advanced search >
Critics Choice

Sign up to receive the coming week's event highlights emailed to you each Monday morning.

today

Painting: Reviving the art of Mongol Zurag
April 22 – July 15, 2009 every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday with exceptions | 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. | 6th Floor Institute of East Asian Studies (2223 Fulton)

The “Eternal Sky” is a profoundly meaningful concept in Mongolian tradition. For a people ever on the move, criss-crossing the vast sweep of the Eurasian steppes, the ever-present sky was invested with spiritual significance. In the time of Chinggis Khan, it is believed, the eternal sky blessed the Mongol leader in his imperial ambitions. In our own time, as Mongolia seeks to re-establish its identity in Asia, the Mongol Zurag (literally: Mongol picture) is being reinvented.

The exhibit Eternal Sky: Reviving the Art of Mongol Zurag features the work of artist and calligrapher Narmandakh Tsultem. Since 1988, when the decades-long repression under Mongolia’s Soviet-style regime eased, Tsultem has taught Mongol Zurag style painting at Mongolian University of Arts and Culture.



Painting: Sherry Chen
June 5 – July 31, 2009 every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday | 5-9 p.m. | ASUC Art Studio, Lower Sproul Student Union

The ASUC Art Studio is currently featuring the new works of local artist Sherry Chen: "My paintings are inspired by nature, poetry, Zen philosophy, and dreams. The visual vocabulary consists mainly of organic shapes, lines, and color. By utilizing these elements they inform and interact within their own language. Ultimately, the elements evolve to create an atmospheric garden full of humanity, beauty, and light."



Lawrence Hall of Science: Animal Grossology hands-on exhibit
February 7 – September 6, 2009 every day | Lawrence Hall of Science

Enter the world of the gross: a larger-than-life adventure that will require all your senses—including humor. Animal Grossology, a hands-on exhibit at the Lawrence Hall of Science, brings to life all the gritty and gross facts on some of nature’s most "disgusting" critters. You’ll get sucked into five kinds of gross: Blood Slurpers, Dookie Lovers, Slime Makers, Vomit Munchers, and other gross stuff.

 $11.00 Adults,  $9.00 Students, Seniors, Disabled,  $6.00 Children
This exhibit is included with admission to the Hall. You may purchase at the front desk. Buy tickets by calling 510-642-5132.


Exhibit: City Beautiful Movement in the SF Bay Area
May 20 – September 15, 2009 every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday with exceptions | Library - 210 Wurster Hall

Jules Guerin, Civic Center, 1916. John Galen Howard Collection, Environmental Design Archives, UC Berkeley The City Beautiful Movement, spurred by Baron Haussmann’s remaking of Paris in the1860s and the Progressive Movement in America, was intended to create a rational, classical city to replace the crowded, unplanned Victorian city common in the 19th century. This exhibit explores the City Beautiful Movement as manifested in the San Francisco Bay Area.



Painting: Deborah Grant
May 31 – October 11, 2009 every Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday | 11 a.m.-5 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum

Deborah Grant’s paintings are densely layered with marks and meanings drawn from popular media, history, and personal experience. The centerpiece of her MATRIX exhibition views contemporary concerns—race, sexuality, violence—through the surprising prism of an imagined meeting between painter Francis Bacon and comedienne Jackie “Moms” Mabley.


TuesdayBack to top

Film: Violence at Noon
Tuesday, July 7 | 7:30 p.m. | Pacific Film Archive Theater

In investigating the case history of a sex criminal, director Nagisa Oshima creates one of his most effective crime films while, as always, radically transcending the genre. The story unfolds through the recollections of two women—the rapist’s wife and one of his victims—strangely united in an effort to protect him from capture. With highly effective editing, Oshima focuses on the relationship between the women. Their despair is linked to that of the rapist himself, and both, to the failure of the socialist movement in immediate postwar Japan.

Part of the PFA series, In the Realm of Oshima.


WednesdayBack to top

Lawrence Hall of Science: Ken Bergmann percussion discussion
Wednesday, July 8 | 12:30-2:45 p.m. | Lawrence Hall of Science

Get the beat on twenty difference percussion instruments with Ken Bergmann's "Percussion Discussion." Ken uses drums, bells, boxes—and even a chair—to entertain and explain.

Ken Bergmann is a unique mix of accomplished educator, actor and professional musician. He holds California teaching credentials in music, drama, and mathematics. As a music specialist, he has often been recognized for his innovative educational methods.


Event free with Museum Admission.

ThursdayBack to top

Lecture: Japanese music and beyond
Thursday, July 9 | 7 p.m. | Home Room International House

In this talk, Japanese architect, I-House Alumnus, and longtime radio talkshow host Taki Kanno will explore links between music, science, and all other fields of human activity. Taki will play songs of Japan, Ireland, France, Russia and many other countries, interspersed with explorations of brain maps, world beginnings and why the Japanese have incorporated so much music from other cultures into their own. He will examine what in the brain actually controls our actions, and how it influences our appreciation of music, as well as the different powers music wields over those who listen to it.


FridayBack to top

Film: Phantom of the Paradise
Friday, July 10 | 9 p.m. | Pacific Film Archive Theater

Winslow Leach (William Finley) has almost completed his Faustian cantata when it’s stolen by Swan (Paul Williams), the satanic exec behind Death Records, who needs a new sound for the opening of his rock palace, the Paradise. After the consequences of the theft leave him with disfigured body and twisted soul, Winslow haunts the dark reaches of the Paradise while completing his cantata for his elusive love Phoenix (Jessica Harper), a young singer whose life belongs to Death. Phantom of the Paradise is a frantic, cartoon-like musical that collides Ken Russell’s Tommy and Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera with Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray

Part of the PFA series, Eccentric Cinema.


SaturdayBack to top

Concert: Death Cab For Cutie with guests Andrew Bird and Ra Ra Rio
Saturday, July 11 | 6:30 p.m. | Hearst Greek Theatre

No one makes prettier postmillennial indie rock than Death Cab for Cutie. Frontman Ben Gibbard's indie-rock blues plumb emotional depths with remarkable literary detail. Gibbard has sung about an incriminating kiss in a photo booth, discovering forgotten pictures of an ex in his glove compartment, and an especially bleak Kodak moment from a doomed marriage. By the end of their newest release, Narrow Stairs, Gibbard has gained a deep understanding of lovelessness and the way people live in its quiet wreckage.


Buy tickets online.

SundayBack to top

Film: Katyn
Sunday, July 12 | 7 p.m. | Pacific Film Archive Theater

In 1939, when the German and Soviet armies vied for Poland, over 8,000 Polish Army officers were taken prisoner, then sent to Russia and executed. Soon to occupy the nation, the Soviets quickly blamed the Nazis for the slaughter. Among those murdered officers, really the intelligentsia of Polish culture, was director Andrzej Wajda’s father. This solemn narrative, made all the more somber by the plaintive Krzysztof Penderecki score, closely follows the sisters, mothers, and widows of the dead as they grapple with the truth.

Part of the PFA series, A Theater Near You.


TuesdayBack to top

Anime: Porco Rosso
Tuesday, July 14 | 7 p.m. | Pacific Film Archive Theater

With resonances in the wartime stories of Dahl and Hemingway, Porco Rosso is an often whimsical adventure where the light heart of Miyazaki’s previous films is nevertheless entering the shadow that would, five years later, cover his dark anime Princess Mononoke. Based on a comic the director drew for a model-building magazine about Marco, a (literally) pig-headed aviator who hunts pirates over the Depression-era Adriatic, Porco Rosso is touched with glimpses of rising Fascism, and ironic postcard views of the same Croatian coastal towns that would come under destruction during the making of the film.

Part of the PFA series, A Tribute to Hayao Miyazaki.


WednesdayBack to top

Lawrence Hall of Science: Ice Cream Day
Wednesday, July 15 | 12-2 p.m. | Lawrence Hall of Science

Treat yourself to a cool experience at Lawrence Hall of Science. Make and eat your own ice cream, then see what sculpture or building you can create with the cones. Bring your own cup and spoon and receive free sprinkles.


Event is free with museum admission.

ThursdayBack to top

Film: A Boy and His Dog
Thursday, July 16 | 8:45 p.m. | Pacific Film Archive Theater

Aboveground all is a barren stretch, populated by marauding scavengers picking through the wreckage of World War III. A savvy survivor, Vic (Don Johnson), and his dog Blood forage for food, garb, and the occasional female. Against the advice of his sardonic mutt—a telepathic canine with a Mensa I.Q.—Vic decides to go “down under” to a subsurface colony fashioned after 1930s Kansas. Adapted from Harlan Ellison’s novella, A Boy and His Dog dutifully re-creates his vision of a civilization wasting away on nostalgia.

Part of the PFA series, Eccentric Cinema.


SaturdayBack to top

Film: Gohatto
Saturday, July 18 | 8:30 p.m. | Pacific Film Archive Theater

The subject of countless films and novels, favored by Japanese nationalists for their strict samurai codes of honor and death, the Shinsengumi were a notoriously brutal militia sworn to protect the shogunate during its final days. Leave it to writer/director Nagisa Oshima to place a tender, operatic story of manly love in their midst. In Kyoto in 1865, two new recruits join up: the ruggedly handsome Tashiro and the fey, feminine Kano, whose ruby lips and girlish locks cause even the militia’s leaders to falter.

Part of the PFA series, In the Realm of Oshima.



Lawrence Hall of Science: Saturday night stargazing
June 6 – August 15, 2009 every other Saturday with exceptions | 9-11 p.m. | The Plaza Lawrence Hall of Science

Saturday Night Stargazing is a free public viewing program sponsored by the LHS and Bay Area amateur astronomers. Stargaze through astronomical telescopes. Ask questions and talk with amateur astronomers. Learn how to use a star map to find constellations. Stargazing is always weather permitting—foggy and overcast skies can cancel stargazing at the last minute.



ONGOING: Exhibits around campus >


Notify the calendar editor of a correction to Critic's Choice or the campuswide calendar.