Charles Gatewood/Courtesy

Treasure Island Music Festival

The ever-growing Bay Area music festival returns this weekend with even bigger headliners, including Atoms for Peace and Animal Collective. With the San Francisco skyline as the most epic backdrop ever, the festival is a guaranteed good time. If you decide to splurge on the ticket, make sure you check out Disclosure’s set on Saturday — the duo’s funky beats will definitely get you in the dancing mood.

‘Porcile’ at the Pacific Film Archive

Regarded as one of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s most difficult and intriguing films, “Porcile” (Pigsty) is made up of two stories spliced together, somehow touching on everything from bestiality to psychoanalysis to the brutal effects of human isolation. If you leave the theater feeling like you want to curl up in a ball in an attempt to digest what you’ve just seen rather than meeting your friends at Cafe D, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Classical Revolution

A collection of classically trained musicians has decided to bring the symphony to the common people, meeting up every week in cafes, galleries and other small venues in the Bay Area to jam with other professional and amateur string musicians. Hit up Revolution Cafe on Monday to get in touch with your sophisticated side without having to shed your favorite cut-offs and Converse.

‘Charles Gatewood: 50 Years’

Launching his career with his black-and-white portrait of Bob Dylan smoking a cigarette, Gatewood entered the rock ’n’ roll world with force in the late ’60s. His work is on display this month at the Robert Tat Gallery, including his later shots of New York’s and San Francisco’s underground erotic cultures. If your mother is in town, it might be best to head to the de Young instead.

Contact Alec Smyth at asmyth@dailycal.org.

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Steep Ravine has already played venues such as the New Parish, the Freight & Salvage and Chthonic Theater. The band just released its first full-length, Kickstarter-funded album of original material, Trampin’ On, and leaves on tour Monday for Los Angeles, New Orleans, Seattle and many places in between.

Jan Purat is on violin, Simon Linsteadt is on guitar, Alex Bice is on upright bass and Andy O’Brien is on mandolin.

The Daily Californian talked to the band about its influences, its new album and the terrible price of playing bluegrass for Hawaiian hamburgers.

Daily Cal: How did you come together as a group?

Jan Purat: We were all going to UC Santa Cruz at the time. Simon and I went to the same high school and had been playing music together for a while. We had a bluegrass jam at Andy’s house one time and then somehow got invited to play at this Hawaiian bar and grill. We basically had a regular gig jamming for tips and a free Hawaiian burger.

Andy O’Brien: It was an awkward place to play bluegrass, but we did it anyway because it was so much fun. Plus, the food gave you the shits every time!

DC: Where did the name of the band come from?

JP: We named the band after a hiking trail on Mt. Tamalpais. It leads from high up on the mountain down to Stinson Beach. It’s this beautiful canyon filled with old-growth redwoods. It seemed like a fitting name for our band.

DC: How did you get more gigs starting out?

JP: It’s been pretty amazing with this band how much people have reached out to us. We’ve had to do some work getting gigs but not as much as I had expected. I think a lot of people find it refreshing to see young people really focusing their efforts on this genre of music.

DC: Why bluegrass?

Simon Linsteadt: None of us come from a bluegrass upbringing — we have roots in funk, classical, rock and folk. I think I came to really appreciate the genre around junior year of high school. A lot of people don’t realize how embedded bluegrass is in the musical history of the United States. For me, bluegrass is the diamond of American music.

DC: When you write songs, do you try to replicate that traditional bluegrass sound?

JP: I think we draw a lot from bluegrass, but we also take a lot of elements from folk, jazz and gypsy jazz. Most of our originals have traditional bluegrass instrumentation but pull from a bunch of different genres. It comes naturally — I think that’s what makes us unique; we don’t try to sound like any one thing. Bluegrass is the main ingredient, but not the only one.

SL: Bluegrass is the pot in which everything is melted … Don’t put that in the interview.

AO: We all have very different backgrounds, and it’s hard to not reflect that in our music.

DC: How is the new album different from things you’ve done before?

SL: A lot of the stuff we do live has to be really high-energy because we’re usually playing in bars. This album was our chance to show a spectrum of sound; we have some gentle tunes and some more uptempo tunes, jazz-oriented tunes and bluegrass tunes. We had so much freedom to experiment in the studio.

DC: How was your first experience in a professional studio?

JP: We had an amazing experience at Tiny Telephone Studios. It’s one of the only studios in the Bay Area that records exclusively with analog, meaning that we recorded everything on tape — nothing digital.

SL: Our sound engineer, Jacob Winik, was incredible. He was basically our impromptu producer; he let us get all of our ideas out and made us feel
really comfortable.

AO: I don’t think Jacob has much experience recording bluegrass music, which turned out to be perfect. Since we aren’t really a traditional bluegrass band, his different, fresh approach was more coherent with our different kind of sound.

DC: Where will you be touring the new album?

JP: This will be our first big national tour. We’re basically making a loop to New Orleans and back — we’ll hit LA, San Diego, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Colorado and then Seattle, Portland and the Northwest. It was a lot of work to get all those gigs, but we’re really excited to finally have everything in place for the tour. It’s going to be great.

AO: Everything depends on our 1994 Plymouth Grand Voyager. Once we hit the Rockies, all bets are off.

DC: Will you turn a profit on tour, or are you doing it for the exposure?

JP: It’s really up to us. Unlike a lot of bands, we can busk and play on the street — and we love to do it! If we busk on tour, we’ll definitely make some money. We’ve been playing at the Montgomery and Downtown Berkeley BART stations and doing really well.

Alex Bice: Busking is kind of like our 9-to-5 job.

SL: People are especially happy to see us in the mornings. I think they like to see that musicians can wake up early too.

DC: Why have you chosen to base yourselves in the East Bay?

JP: There are so many great venues to play in the East Bay. Plus, this is a great place to build a following; the people here are really receptive to our music. It feels like home.

You can keep track of Steep Ravine through its website and Facebook page. Its new album is available now.  

Contact Eliot Claasen at eclaasen@dailycal.org.

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The Poetry Foundation/Courtesy

The intimate selections of poetry read by Alice Notley and Simona Schneider at UC Berkeley’s Holloway Reading Series on Thursday made for a night of contradictions; the poets’ performances were lovely yet severe, and their content felt personal yet universal, both descriptive and emotive. Before the event’s slightly delayed start, the reading’s comfortable tone was set as the breezy autumn evening rendered Wheeler Hall’s Maude Fife Room warm and welcoming to the 40 or so eager listeners.

A UC Berkeley student introduced each poet with an eloquent, complimentary biography of the respective poet’s life, work and influence. These introductions were influential additions, as the appreciative students expressed the incredible extent to which poetry can affect aspiring minds.

The first to read was Simona Schneider, a graduate student at UC Berkeley who delivered a collection she wrote during a summer  spent in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Her determined delivery was sprinkled with interludes of smiles and laughs that brought listeners back to the present after being pulled into the meticulously thorough worlds constructed in her poems. Selections that felt particularly moving were those that concentrated on the extraordinary quality of the ordinary; Schneider recounts her absorption in the incredible innovation of Velcro as one of a few “Small Miracles on Public Transit” and meditates on a “gas station to save our souls,” found along the roadway of an American landscape. Her loving, confident tone permitted listeners to recognize the immense beauty found in the everyday.

Where Schneider discovered small miracles of the outer world, Notley explored her inner passions; where Schneider smiled between her works, Notley grasped the podium and her pages, delivering her pieces without pause or introduction. Notley has been recognized with awards including the International Griffin Poetry Prize in 2002 and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 2007. Many of the pieces she read shifted between dreams and wakefulness — I don’t know how to dream, but I’m dreaming — but the shameless honesty of her writing makes her dream state relatable, even appealing. She reasons aloud how she fits into this world: “In your assigned role, you’re a woman, but I’ve always been a poet … Why do I have human features?” She describes her power and courage openly in lines such as, “I like this story, but I like my voice better.” An experienced meditator on self-awareness and self-assertion, Notley delivered her work with passion and honesty.

The pairing of Schneider and Notley at the Holloway Reading Series reading made for a night that was satisfyingly complete. Their performances were both light and strong, exposed and determined, and their works balanced between the observational and the expressive. Schneider’s and Notley’s writings and performances were inspiring, revealing and unapologetically human.

Contact Anna Horrocks at ahorrocks@dailycal.org.

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Image Now Films/Fantastic Films/Passion Pictures/Courtesy

If people were asked to name the most difficult mountain to climb on Earth, Everest would probably come up nine times out of 10. But if mountain climbers were asked the same question, they’d all respond with one answer: K2.

Nicknamed the “Savage Mountain,” K2 sits on the border of Pakistan and China. It is also the setting for “The Summit,” a new documentary from director Nick Ryan. But this film is no 3-D IMAX travelogue geared toward capturing the majesty of the world’s second-highest peak. “The Summit” chronicles the true-life events of a 2008 climbing expedition-turned-tragedy that resulted in the death of 11 people.

The main focus is placed on Irish climbing-fanatic Ger McDonnell, who would perish on the mountain, and the heroic efforts of his climbing partner Pemba Gyalje, who also served as a Sherpa guide. The trouble for Ger, Pemba and the climbing parties occurs at Camp 4, on the edge of an altitude known as the “death zone.” A series of mistakes and bad luck immediately kills off a couple  of climbers, leaving the rest stranded deep in the death zone with night quickly approaching.

Instead of relying solely on photos and interviews with loved ones and surviving climbers, the film incorporates footage of actors reenacting pivotal moments that occurred during the crisis. This mostly concerns the actions and interactions of the ill-fated climbers stuck passing the night near the mountain’s peak after an avalanche.

“I’ve long gone past the ‘reconstruction is a dirty word’ aspect of documentary filmmaking,” Ryan said. “As a filmmaker, you have to use whatever tools that you can to present
what I figured was a very complex story … As long as every tool you use maintains veracity and a truth.”

While the depiction of the harsh conditions facing the climbers is harrowing, the real tension comes from the conflicting stories of the survivors as to what caused it all. Each person has a different perspective from his or her location on the slope during the disaster, resulting in a malleable “Rashomon” style of the truth.

Further complicating matters were the Western media, which ran with the stories of the first couple of climbers who made it back safely. Completely written out of the story was the essential insight of Pemba, who had remained behind to help those still trapped and didn’t make it down until several days later.

“By the time he got there, the media had gone,” Ryan explained. “And we’re living in the world of 24/7 rolling news … Even if somebody was just sitting around there waiting for the truth to come out, who’s going to run it?”

That was largely the reason that drove Ryan to make the film. In many ways it comes from the earnest wish to finally tell the whole story, and more specifically, the story of Ger and Pemba, who were discovered to have risked their own lives to help those in desperate need of medical attention.

“There is a huge moral responsibility when you’re doing this,” Ryan said. “I can hold my head high and say that what we’re saying is exactly as we believe it to be, as the stories that we’ve been told.”

Crafted from daring cinematography, high production value and compelling interviews from climbers, the film pieces together the fateful climb in strong narrative form. But in trying to make up for a lack of facts as told by the media in 2008, the film overcompensates and presents too much information. Repeated temporal jumps to depict events in the past and their relation to the present can be hard to follow. Uneven pacing and tangential asides involving the history of climbing give the feeling that the filmmakers weren’t exactly sure how to tackle their own mountain of facts for the audience to digest.

In the end, the film succeeds in transporting the viewer to the tip of K2 and exploring the inherent danger of such an inhospitable climate but fumbles slightly in its delivery of the events. So if you’re up for the challenge of sifting through the volumes of testimony and taking the film’s final conclusion as conjecture rather than concrete truth, “The Summit” is a climb worth making.

Contact Ryan Koehn at rkoehn@dailycal.org.

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Alex Turney/Staff

Despite the cooling October air and looming midterms, hundreds of Berkeley students in warm sweaters, beanies and tie-dye clothing crowded Sproul Plaza early Friday evening in eager anticipation of the arrival of the celebrated Zion I hip-hop crew. About 5 p.m., local trap artists DRIPMOB took to the stage, warming up the crowd with their edgy reworks of popular hip-hop tracks. The throbbing bass took hold of the audience, triggering cult dance moves such as “the stanky leg” within a large breakdance circle near the stage. While the focus during the opening act appeared to be on the exaggerated dancing, attention shifted to the stage when the sky grew dark and Zion I arrived.

The Zion I crew, consisting of Oakland natives MC Zumbi and producer AmpLive, has toured worldwide but always returns to its Bay Area roots. The artists’ performance was intimate but energizing, drawing the crowd closer with their powerful lyrics and spacey tracks such as “Float,” a collaboration with electronic music producer Minnesota. Zumbi kept the crowd engaged with his improvised lyrics, which he explained after the show were “how (Zion I) learned to do music … through freestyling.”

Zion I has been on the rise in the melding genres of hip-hop and electronic, releasing tracks with electronic gurus like SBTRKT and Bassnectar. Recently, Zion I toured with reggae rock group Rebelution and reggae artist Matisyahu, experiences that allowed for further development of Zion I’s evolving sound.

“I remember the guys from Rebelution came up to me,” Zumbi said of an experience partying in Tahoe. “They were ultra encouraging … it was so cool to hear other musicians encouraging me from an authentic place.”

Zion I’s performance on campus, presented by ASUC SUPERB, was a free event open to all. “I feel like … every time I leave and come back I love (the Bay Area) even more, because I realize how unique and special it is,” Zumbi said after the performance.

On Oakland’s influence on Zion I’s sound, Zumbi said, “(Oakland) is so diverse. I feed on all that energy … I pull from all the good and the bad.” As we talked, fans scuttled behind the stage to wait to take pictures with Zumbi, who humbly obliged. He seemed unfazed by the interruptions, pleased to meet and hear from students. His down-to-earth outlook is definitely reflected through Zion I’s lyrics, as Zumbi explained that he’s frustrated by the superficiality of most rap music.

“(There are) things in hip-hop that I feel are not being addressed that are important,” he said. “I want to fill in the gaps, (but) not be too cerebral that it’s too static.”

It quickly becomes clear that Zion I, which has been a part of the hip-hop and rap scene since the late 1990s, is both conscious of and concerned about the expansion of rap music. Zumbi noted, “These days, the culture is watered down … it’s not a sub-culture anymore.”

He advises aspiring artists in the genre to “get in tune with what you believe in.” The future of hip-hop looks brighter, though. Zumbi believes there has been a resurgence in recent years of younger artists trying to reclaim something of the older era. “I pray that it evolves beyond that (too),” he said.

On future collaborations, Zion I hopes to work with rapper Andre 3000, Yasiin Bey, the hip-hop recording artist formerly known as Mos Def, or the Swedish electronic group Little Dragon’s vocalist Yukimi Nagano.

The campus crowd was thrilled by Zion I’s performance and proximity — many students lingered after the show to chat and take pictures with the hip-hop duo. It seems Zion I’s success is due to its ability to be incredibly inventive yet accessible — something unprecedented in the realm of spoken music of the present.

Contact Kate Irwin at kirwin@dailycal.org.

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Actors Ensemble of Berkeley/Courtesy

Paris, 1904. We are welcomed to the Lapin Agile by its bartender, Freddy (Doug Boyd), who greets a 25-year-old and clean-cut Albert Einstein shortly afterward. From the show’s program, we know Pablo Picasso, passionate artist by day and even more passionate womanizer by night, will eventually join him. The two will discuss beauty, creativity and, above all, genius. The audience will be inspired as it would be by one of Picasso’s vivid paintings or Einstein’s beautifully balanced equations.

At least that’s what I expected. But the latest production of Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” by the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley failed to live up to my expectations.

Martin’s script has all the makings of a great comedy. The jokes are intelligent enough to make people feel smart but crude enough to entertain. The characters have diverse brands of humor, ranging from the cunning and sassy Germaine (Hilary Hesse), the bartender’s wife, to the fast-talking and enthusiastic art dealer Sagot (Stefin Collins). “Picasso at the Lapin” ponders the creative values of science and art through a near-constant repartee of opposing witticisms, reminiscent of Stoppard’s style. But to keep people engaged through this wordplay, quick-paced and cohesive line delivery is vital. This is where the Berkeley cast fell short.

This “Picasso at the Lapin” channeled the fragments of a cubist painting but failed to bring them together for a cohesive portrayal, resulting in a disjointed, awkward experience. The actors’ speeches seemed to drag on so that it felt like we were watching excerpts rather than the play itself.

For instance, Suzanne, a ditzy young woman, describes Picasso’s ambition and prowess — in more than one aspect. Actor Rachel Ferensowicz clearly understood the humor of what she was saying, but during what was at least a five-minute monologue, she remained stationary, as did the other characters, rendering her performance dull and lifeless. At the end of what ought to have been a tantalizing glimpse of an artist who has not yet appeared onstage, the rest of the ensemble expressed little enthusiasm and simply moved on to the next topic of conversation.

Suzanne’s long-winded account was the second-worst kind of anticlimax to end a sexual encounter, and the rest of the play was no better. The quips came a second too slow, and awkward silences that were meant for effect merely blended in with the pace of the play. This made the brief moments of action — spontaneous dancing or two characters passionately kissing — not engaging but merely confusing. How, I kept wondering, did we go from a conversation so sleepy (I swear some of the audience was drooling) to random characters swallowing each other’s tongues against a wall? It was yet another piece of the play that didn’t quite fit with the rest.

There were, however, a few standout performances. Collins as Sagot brought energy to the lull at the Lapin Agile with his deftly affected bustling motions. Frances Serpa, although he only appeared toward the end of the show, was an excellent Elvis from the future, come to foretell the impact Einstein’s and Picasso’s genius would have on the 20th century. His persistent lip curl and swagger left us with no doubt he was the king of rock and roll.

Some of the ensemble might have taken a cue from these supporting actors’ commitment to their roles. Einstein, in particular, seemed to belong more in an accounting firm crunching numbers, with a personality about as dynamic as the color beige. One wonders why actor Nick Dickson chose to portray one of the most famously eccentric and dedicated physicists of all time as having about the same amount of interest in science as a substitute teacher. And this might not give due credit to substitute teachers.

Whereas Picasso’s paintings showed viewers how multidimensional unity can come from starkly contrasting fragments, the cast of “Picasso at the Lapin” showed only a flat series of overly rehearsed monologues. By the end of the play, it seemed that the actors had stopped listening to each other altogether. According to the actual Pablo Picasso, “The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” With its unvaryingly slow pace and lack of chemistry among the cast, the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley failed to convince in “Picasso at the Lapin.

Contact Josephine Yang at jyang@dailycal.org.

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Sacred Land Film Project/Courtesy

Many massive private and public industrial projects threaten to destroy lands that are considered sacred by indigenous groups. With the world rapidly changing through globalization, industrialization and consumerism, there is a price to be paid from the increased commodification of our earth’s resources.

“Standing on Sacred Ground” is a four-part documentary project that focuses on the stories of eight unique indigenous cultures resisting external threats to their lands. Director Christopher (Toby) McLeod emphasized the direction of the narrative of the films. In an interview with The Daily Californian, he said, “We look for a nonlinear cultural story — something that is poetic and told in a different narrative voice that is more mythological or metaphorical.”

McLeod, who has been critical of other documentaries covering topics surrounding indigenous people, also avoids framing the film from a white male perspective. “There have been a lot of films about indigenous people where you have this National Geographic narrator talking right over the ritual and shaman,” he said.

The first episode, “Pilgrims and Tourists,” follows the indigenous people of the Republic of Altai and the Winnemem Wintu tribe of Northern California, which are both confronting government projects that attempt to build over their consecrated areas, such as ancient burial sites and natural springs. The film is beautifully shot with extreme long shots of the stunning and untouched mountains of Uch-Enmek nature park. Altaian activist Danil Mamyev embarks on a lone pilgrimage and explains in the film, “Sacred places are not dead places where humans are forbidden to tread. Instead, sacred places require human visitation — or pilgrimage.”

Although human visitation is integral to the Altaians’ sacred land, the increased tourism brings a lot of sightseers who disrespect the land and customs. The film shows stark close-ups of the ecosystem that has remained intact for thousands of years, which can be attributed to the safeguarding practices of the Altaians. However, the energy corporation Gazprom plans to run a pipeline through the Ukok Plateau. Along with socially irresponsible tourism, the Altaians are dealing with frequent hardships and trying to reach out to other indigenous communities for support.

 The second part of the episode shows the first meeting between two different indigenous groups. Although the two communities have differing sets of cultural values and rituals, they share similar values in their connection to nature and land and face similar threats from industrial projects. The Winnemem tribe, erased from the federal list of recognized tribes, attempts to save its site from the government’s expansion of the Shasta Dam, which would submerge the land. Together, the Altaians and the Winnemem tribe establish a network of indigenous groups working to protect their land and culture.

Scientists have discovered a significantly higher percentage of biodiversity in sacred areas partially as a result of the indigenous groups’ efforts. McLeod notes that “if you can show scientifically that sacred places preserve biodiversity, you have a scientific argument on why sacred places have value to the modern world.” Indigenous practices and rituals are often dismissed as superstitious from a Western point of view, but the techniques they use for preserving their lands can be utilized to help protect other ecosystems around the world.

The second episode, “Profit and Loss,” depicts the Chinese nickel mine company causing environmental problems in Papua New Guinea as well as the tar sand mining in Canada. The decades of mining in Canada have caused deformities among fish, harsh contaminations in the water and cancer and birth defects among the inhabitants. Witnessing these tragic events is a reminder of the ethical quandary surrounding our nation’s dependence on petroleum oil.

The series incorporates powerful cinema verite, illustrated in the third episode, as the Ethiopian indigenous group and Christian evangelicalist group during the New Year’s ceremony have a dispute over land rights. The Christian group attempts to build a church on the indigenous group’s sacred land, much to the displeasure of the native community, culminating in a violent altercation. According to McLeod, attacks from Christian fundamentalist groups against traditional people are a common story that no one talks about in the media.

The second episode, also following the cinema verite tradition, has a long take of a New Guinea native fiercely arguing with a Chinese mining company representative over the harmful mining waste being dumped in the sea. Neither party comes to any sort of agreement as the dispute intensifies. The lack of communication and understanding between the groups in these dialectical shots illustrates the conflicting ideologies that are unable to be reconciled between the indigenous groups and the governments and corporations.

“Standing on Sacred Ground” is a series of documentaries that challenges preconceptions of primitivism and unflinchingly shows the devastation of lands that affect the livelihoods of the indigenous communities. The film, earnest in its ethnographic portrayals of the historically underrepresented and marginalized indigenous groups, presents an urgent message without being overly didactic.

The wondrous shots of the mountainous regions of Altai evoke the exotic and transcendent power of nature, while the shots of the tar sands in Canada show the deadly and pathological consequences of unregulated industrialization. The film is not easy to watch and may cause epistemological rifts but is crucial for understanding the value of indigenous communities in sustaining the future of our environment.

Contact Fan Huang at fhuang@dailycal.org.

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Ashley Chen/Senior Staff

Whether it be with mixed prints or contrast color-blocking, we couldn’t help but notice the bold outfits your fellow Cal bears put together this week. Scroll through and take some notes!

The post Daily Cal Street Style: Make a Statement appeared first on The Daily Californian.

“The Dandelions”

As arthouse hits “Jules et Jim” and “Amelie” have shown in the past, French films have always had a talent for imbuing life with a whimsical charm, with a certain joie de vivre. Continuing in this tradition, “The Dandelions” freewheels through the vibrantly colorful yet psychologically troubled childhood of our schoolgirl protagonist, Rachel Gladstein. Prematurely obsessed with sex and death while bearing hostility toward her too-politically-correct mother, Rachel is a classic Woody Allen-esque case of neurosis. However, her walls begin to thaw when an unforeseen friendship blossoms between her and Valerie, an intrepid schoolmate who teaches Rachel to love life and helps resolve the tensions in her dysfunctional family.

With the look of a Parisian Wes Anderson flick, the fanciful world of “The Dandelions” is meticulously colorblocked. Everything from classrooms to kitchen cabinets pops with a rich palette of primaries and pastels. In one of the film’s most dreamily blissful moments, Rachel and Valerie frolic in the meadows while blowing on the movie’s namesake greenery. The film’s composition, which usually brims with clean, Ikea-chic design, is suddenly replaced with a shaky but remarkably organic home-recording style that truly captures the commonly longed-for joy of youth. Director Carine Tardieu knows how to channel nostalgia.

“The Dandelions” deftly handles serious emotional depth and humanistic drama without losing any of the fanciful charm that makes the film so engaging. Rachel’s family sphere is complicated when her dad is introduced to Valerie’s beautiful single mother, Catherine. When the Gladsteins’ stale family unit is shaken up by a temptress from where the grass is greener, Rachel’s parents begin to seriously tackle the woes of their relationship, and Rachel begins to realize that her parents are people too. That realization is one of Rachel’s many steps toward maturity and emotional closure, results of her new friendship. Valerie pushes her into unfamiliar territory, but it’s a delightful adventure in which Rachel swings to the rhythm of childhood until she finds her rightful ground where she can truly bloom — kind of like a dandelion.

— Jason Chen

“The Retrieval”

Filmed on the crisp desolation of the wintry Texan woodlands, “The Retrieval” marks filmmaker Chris Eska’s dramatic return to Mill Valley after his debut at the festival in 2007. The film unfolds in the American South around the time of the Civil War, as an adolescent black freedman is forced to come to terms with the conditions of his society and how they will affect the sort of man he will come to be.

Will is a member of a group of mostly white bounty hunters, whose forte is tracking down and returning runaway slaves to their masters. While his line of work directly reinforces the institution of slavery, which afflicted him personally for years and tore him away from his family, he depends on his gang for food, security and shoddy company.

However, his obedience is strained when he sets off on a mission with his uncle Marcus to track down a reputed runaway named Nate, and Will discovers that the “runaway” isn’t actually a slave at all but a fellow freedman. He must then make a choice between abandoning his stable life, awaiting his father’s unlikely return from the North, and betraying a man whom he can’t help but see as his kin.

Much of the movie is framed with a sullen sense of realism, with apt pacing marked by feelings of soft isolation that build to sudden bursts of franticness. Ashton Sanders makes a memorable debut as the young protagonist alongside the stern and wizened face of Tishuan Scott, whose portrayal of Nate rightfully won him the Grand Jury Prize for Acting at SXSW 2013. “The Retrieval” has drawn in accolades all across the national indie film scene.

— Erik Weiner

“One Man’s Show”

Newton Aduaka’s French drama “One Man’s Show” is a test in patience.

The story follows a few days in the life of aging actor Emil (Emile Abossolo M’bo in stunning, subtle form) after he is diagnosed with stomach cancer. We discover his life is the real charade as he sets out to make peace with the small wake of women whose lives he has impacted for the better and the far worse.

The film is divided into separate chapters with names like “Birth,” “Purgatory” and “Paradise,” just begging the audience to understand that this is a story about redemption. The narrative framework is interesting but does little to illuminate the confused and vague motivations of the main character. While Emil reflects on his life and mistakes, he gradually comes to grips with his own mortality, echoing the film’s repeated slogan, “You can’t outrun time.”

You can when it moves this slow — “One Man’s Show” has a glacial pace often drawn out with lingering scenes of characters wistfully roaming the streets of Paris at night or sharing silent car rides. While the tension of Emil’s potentially fatal diagnosis starts high, it quickly peters off once he begins making his rounds to the people from whom he seeks forgiveness.

The beauty of Paris is undeniable, but even it becomes played out once it’s clear some scenes exist solely as an excuse to frame the characters against its backdrop. While acted superbly and photographed with lush intimacy, there simply is not enough dialogue to go around for the film’s small cast. Aduaka’s “One Man Show” will undoubtedly not be requested for an encore.

— Ryan Koehn

“The Pretty One”

In “The Pretty One,” director and writer Jenee LaMarque tells a story of tragedy, imperfections and misguided identities. Identical twin sisters Laurel and Audrey (Zoe Kazan, “Ruby Sparks”) are complete opposites — the former lives at home painting copies of famous artworks and taking care of her widowed father, while the latter lives a stylish life working as a real estate agent selling storybook homes in the city. When a great tragedy befalls the family, Laurel is given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move away from home and pose as Audrey, who embodies confidence, independence and “prettiness” to Laurel.

Laurel gradually attempts to make the transformation from sweetly awkward to self-assuredly sophisticated, living in Audrey’s fashionably chic apartment and dating an older married man (Ron Livingston, “The Odd Life of Timothy Green,” “Sex and the City”). But Laurel is able to step back and rethink her pseudo identity when she befriends — and later, falls in love with — her next-door neighbor Basel (Jake Johnson, “New Girl”).

LaMarque’s directorial touch is stylized without being pretentious. The film’s pastel colors are whimsical and fanciful — very “The Virgin Suicides”-esque. Equally as artsy is Kazan’s dual performance, which is both beautifully opaque and emotional. Though at times her performance is a bit overdone, it doesn’t take away from the film’s quirkiness. Johnson reigns as the sensible albeit odd Basel, who swims, reads and sunbathes with the wide-eyed “Audrey,” who, unbeknownst to him, is not Audrey at all.

“The Pretty One” delves into themes of individuality and insecurity while painting a picture of imperfect sisterhood. Its dreamy soundtrack, which includes the music of Frank Fafara, Simone White and (fittingly) Twin Sister, is the perfect backdrop to the idiosyncratic film.

— Addy Bhasin

Contact Jason Chen at jchen@dailycal.org.

Contact Erik Weiner at eweiner@dailycal.org.

Contact Ryan Koehn at rkoehn@dailycal.org.

Addy Bhasin covers visual art. Contact her at abhasin@dailycal.org.

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The Government Press Office, Israel/Courtesy

In “To Build & Be Built: Kibbutz History,” the Contemporary Jewish Museum investigates the social movement that redefined Jewish life in the modern era. The exhibit, a simple display on one wall of the CJM, traces the history of the kibbutz movement with photos of kibbutz life and descriptions of the early settlements, communal culture and the kibbutz today. The timeline begins at the very beginning: “Since their exile from the land of Israel almost two thousand years ago, the Jewish people have prayed and worked for a return to the Promised Land.” It goes on to tell the story of the pioneers who came to the land of Israel to realize their utopian dream.

“Kibbutz” literally means “gathering” in Hebrew. In fact, gathering is the central tenet of the movement, which emphasizes “cooperation, determination, and innovation,” as explained in the museum introduction. However, the explanation continues: While those tenets determine the function of kibbutzim, they were not the fundamental reasons for the movement’s existence. Rather, the concept of the kibbutz was founded upon the utopian musings of modern socialist Jews who saw their tradition and people as having been removed from their foundation — the Land of Israel — for too long. These thinkers envisioned a “new” kind of Jewish society that returned to the fundamentals of Jewish existence. The kibbutznik dream was of Jews who were strong and tied to their land not just through their heritage but also through the physical labor they devoted to it.

In fact, these kibbutz ideals find their origins in another movement that existed long before the concept of the kibbutz: Zionism. The very concept of a place where Jews could be festive, productive, proud and free was originally a Zionist thought, and the reality of holidays such as Passover and Shavuot — which had traditionally meant heightened violence against Jews in the Diaspora — coming to be the most celebrated holidays at kibbutzim was the dream of Zionists who sought self-determination and a proud existence for Jewish people. However, because the majority of the first kibbutzim were doctrinally antireligious, the celebrations of these holidays were nationalistic and ideological, with religious aspects of the holidays often replaced with “references to the power of the community, the land, and labor,” as the exhibit points out.

These priorities are clearly expressed in the cultural production that has emerged from kibbutzim. “New” Hebrew folk tunes for community singing events, the hora — a traditional Jewish circle dance — and modest artistic performances in the dining hall were fit for all to enjoy and take part in. These artistic expressions relate directly to the intention of returning to the simple “folk” culture that kibbutzniks felt was lost in the hyperintellectual urban communities from which they came. (You can hear some of the classic songs in headphones as you look at the pictures in the exhibit.)

All in all, this simple experience of photos, historical outline and music gives a surprisingly deep picture of the kibbutz as an entity, social movement, national feature and concept. Seeing a photo of people sorting oranges from 1934 takes on tremendously more meaning when one is listening to the simple tunes of the kibbutz songs and connecting that image of working people to the concepts of Zionism, utopia, self-determination and the return of people to their land and to the fundamentals of their heritage. Moreover, “To Build & Be Built” makes for a fantastic starting point for seeing the rest of the museum, which is also showing “Work in Progress: Considering Utopia.” This exhibition mainly features the work of kibbutz artists who investigate the Jewish concept of utopia and what it means, particularly regarding the kibbutz and the foundation of Jewish utopian thought from which the movement gains its values.

Contact AJ Kantor at akantor@dailycal.org.

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