Silver Screen Travel: Les Blank at PFA

Les Blank

July 8 - August 30th at the Pacific Film Archive - travel through America's back roads, cities and the Amazon jungle with filmmaker Les Blank. I co-curated Always for Pleasure: The Films of Les Blank with Kathy Geritz and Hila Avraham. Blank, one of my favorite filmmakers, will be at each of the screenings for Q&A. Experience  a creole dinner, Aromaround, and tea tasting at PFA this summer!

Les Blank's camera enters the heart of celebrations, feasts, concerts, and dances of regional American cultures that are often overlooked. Music and food crop up repeatedly in his films. He went to college in New Orleans, giving him a fondness for Louisiana culture, demonstrated in films like Always for Pleasure, Dry Wood, and Hot Pepper. His films also portray unique characters from the Bay Area to Appalachia and extraordinary musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie, Lightnin' Hopkins and Ry Cooder.

The ship in Burden of Dreams

Burden of Dreams is one of Blank's best-known films for good reason. Stunning footage of seething jungle and its native inhabitants sets the scene for one of the more unusual films about film making. Burden of Dreams documents Werner Herzog's obsessive four-year struggle to complete his 1982 film, Fitzcarraldo. The title character (played by Klaus Kinski) was himself obsessively driven to build an opera house in the turn-of-the-century Amazon. To finance his project, Fitzcarraldo moves a riverboat over a mountain between two rivers, which Herzog re-creates for his film, the jungle fighting him at every turn. The film has to be seen to be believed. Editor, sound technician and frequent Blank collaborator Maureen Gosling will be at the screening to discuss sound and editing.

I will be introducing the films on Sunday July 15th and Sunday August 12th.

Always for Pleasure: The Films of Les Blank
July 8 - August 30, 2012
at the PFA Theater, 2575 Bancroft, Berkeley, CA

Find the complete calendar on BAM/PFA's website here.

Read about the series in this East Bay Express article.

                                       
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Excavating Urban Ore in Berkeley

Urban Ore's Mission - "To End the Age of Waste"

Urban Ore is like the SPCA for discarded items. Mannequins, doors, vintage National Geographic magazines, resident kitties, jeans, giant paper mache flying pigs, Urban Ore in Berkeley provides a temporary home and adoptive parents for all of them. The massive warehouse is an adventure waiting to happen. Builders can renovate a house using materials purchased from Urban Ore's Building Materials Exchange, including sinks, cabinets, and toilets. Artists and crafters can find art materials and inspiration, from paint brushes to picture frames. Urban Ore also has unique furniture, kitchen supplies, books, and vinyl records for the casual treasure hunter.

Urban Ore is more than just a salvage yard. The business started in 1980 as a group of people who scavenged at Berkeley's city-owned landfill for reusable materials to sell. The business has been able to thrive in Berkeley partly due to citizen's dedication to recycling. 

The store is filled with treasures, including a collection of playful handmade gigantic creatures who oversee the warehouse from their high perches in the eaves. Standing in the massive warehouse my heart fills with joy at the dedication of Urban Ore to their goal of ending the age of waste through providing a home for all of these discarded gems and a place for seekers to find them.  

website: urbanore.com 
Urban Ore is located at 900 Murray Street, Berkeley
Tel. 501-841-7283
Open Monday-Saturday 8:30am-7pm, Sunday 10am-7pm

                                             
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Sampling Indian Street Food in Berkeley

The sweets case at Vik's Chaat Corner, Berkeley
Photo by Madeline Horn

Where can you go in the East Bay to experience authentic Indian street food? Vik's Chaat Corner specializes in chaat (Indian street food), exposing Berkeleyites to flavor and texture combinations way outside the day to day and offering a taste of home to Berkeley's large Indian-American population. Planning a trip to India? I highly suggest you visit Vik's Chaat Corner to prepare yourself for the sensory explosion you will experience in India. Especially helpful for those planning to embark to India is the menu - which serves as a glossary of Indian street food, explaining the back story, the ingredients, and giving actual instruction on how to eat the stuff. Andre and I literally referred to the menu to guide us in eating our Pani Puri, clamshell-sized hollow crispy puffs which you poke a hole in, fill with a mixture of seasoned potato and garbanzo, then tamarind sauce, and finally bright green mint and chili pepper infused water, before popping the whole thing in your mouth.

Mango and Rose Lassis at Vik's Chaat Corner
Photo by Madeline Horn

Vik's Chaat offers exotic beverages to whet your whistle, including mango lassi, rose lassi, chai, and young coconut, hacked open for your sipping pleasure.

Vik's Chaat Corner's warehouse space also includes an Indian market, with lentils, basmati rice, tandoori spice, and mango jello. Ethnic-specific markets are fast becoming one of my favorite things in the East Bay. With Spanish, Arabic, Indian, Southeast Asian, Latino, even Nordic, you can get pretty much any ingredient and cooking utensil you need to recreate international flavors at home. After taking a cooking course in Thailand, I now plan to learn to cook in every country that I visit. After all, eating new foods is one of my favorite things about traveling!

Vik's Chaat Corner website: www.vikschaatcorner.com 
Open Monday-Thursday 11am-6pm, Friday-Sunday 11am-8pm


Have you been to India and tasted their street food? What were your favorite dishes? Have you also been to Vik's? How does it compare to real Indian street food?

                                             
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