A hot, steamy, summer night (we hope) event to raise money for ArtRage. Listen to Jazz under the stars with the Jesse Collins Group. Enjoy wine, beer & food in our main gallery and bid on some great items at our Silent Auction until 10pm.  It’s a great way to spend the night and help support the ArtRage Gallery.

In conjunction with our current exhibit — THE POWER OF REVOLT, Grassroots Rebellion in Oaxaca, Mexico — ArtRage presents an evening with Barucha Calamity Peller who is flying in from San Francisco to join us in a photo screening and discussion titled Feminism and Women’s Participation in The Oaxaca Uprising.

In 2006, a widely defended popular uprising swept the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, one of the poorest regions in the country. Often compared in scale and importance to the historic Paris Commune, the Oaxaca uprising lasted for nearly 6 months in which thousands of barricades were constructed in the capital, dozens of media outlets were occupied, and the people of Oaxaca replaced the local government with the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO). Brutal repression of the uprising resulted in dozens of deaths, disappearances, and rapes by the hands of paramilitary and federal police.

One of the most striking elements of the uprising was the participation of women, many of whom identify themselves as “housewives,” whose relentless direct action defined and maintained the uprising. Women constructed and maintained most of the barricades, and led large scale lasting occupations of television and radio stations. Their historic actions were not only the backbone of the uprising, but their voices and participation challenged hierarchy from the state to the household, deeply shaking the foundations of tradition gender oppression.

Peller’s presentation will discuss in detail women’s role in the uprising, as well as an analysis of the problems women faced in terms of gender based repression from the state to the movement itself. She will discuss how women in the Oaxaca uprising articulated a need for a new kind of approach to feminism and gender as necessary for the survival of any future resistance movements. The presentation will include a short video and a slideshow from the uprising.

Barucha Calamity Peller is a writer and photographer based in San Francisco. For years she has worked within and reported on Mexican social movements. Her photographs and analysis have been widely distributed through alternative media outlets such as CounterPunch and the Independent Media Center. Peller reported from Lebanon during the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon war just before entering Oaxaca. She is known for getting herself into very dangerous situations and then escaping with photographs that depict both old women and young anarcho-punks fighting for peace and justice in the streets. Peller asserts that 2006 uprising in Oaxaca could not have been reported from the safety of a hotel room, but only from the barricades themselves.

[Read her articles on elenemigocomun.net]

This event is free but please, donate what you can.

Directed by Dalton Trumbo

“Johnny Got His Gun” presents the story of 18-year-old Joe Bonham (Timothy Bottoms), who brushes off the urgings of his girl-friend Kareen (Kathy Fields) to “just run away” rather than ship out (WW1). Once in the French trenches, he quickly loses his own company and throws in with some British troops. One fearsomely rainy night, he’s sent out to bury a German soldier who had died caught in the barbed wire above their trench and whose rotting body had begun to stink. A direct shell hit on the way back from this errand injures Bonham horribly and irreparably. A military doctor, Col. Tillery (Eduard Franz) declares Bonham “completely de-cerebrated” by his injuries but worth keeping alive, secretly, for research purposes. But Bonham’s in there, walled up in the remnants of his body. Tillery later reappears – white-haired now and a general – the only mark of how much time has passed before Bonham’s breakthrough Morse Code communication with the “fourth nurse” (Diane Varsi), who first inscribes a message on his chest with her finger as he frantically nods his head.

There are plenty of Trumbo films out there to sample – critical and box office successes alike – including a couple Oscar-winners (ironically both of those scripts credited to “fronts” during the 13 years Trumbo spent black-listed and couldn’t work openly in Hollywood films). But “Johnny Got His Gun” was part of Trumbo for a long time. Based on a news clip he’d seen about a British soldier with devastating injuries from the trenches of World War I, Trumbo’s 1939 novel kept the time frame but shifted young recruit Joe Bonham’s story to the US military. And after he’d published the novel, Trumbo saw combat intimately in the South Pacific as a war correspondent. Trumbo’s son Christopher says that making the film was “the best response he could manage to the carnage of the war in Vietnam.”

Trumbo was a young man when he wrote “Johnny Got His Gun,” just 33. It’s nice to have this film back at a time we still need it, along with the knowledge that he didn’t come to think better of his youthful excess.

Full Review by Nancy Keefe Rhodes at http://www.cnylink.com/blogs/nrhodes/view_blog.php?blog_id=1243362185

On the 11th annual National Day of Silence (April 18, 2007), Erin Davies was victim to a hate crime in Albany, NY. Because of sporting a rainbow sticker on her VW Beetle, Erin’s car was vandalized, left with the words “fAg” and “u r gay” placed on the hood and driver side of her car. Despite initial shock and embarassment, Erin’s decided to embrace what happened and film a documentary about her 58-day cross country tour around the US and Canada in her car known worldwide as the fagbug. The film follows Erin’s quest to drive her vandalized car over the course of one year.

Erin’s mission is to raise awareness about hate crimes and homophobia in our society, to give a voice for those who are silent, to inspire others to take a stand against bullies and to be an example of how to overcome obstacles in bringing a creative project to life.

Tickets $10 at the door or advance sale. For ticket information visit www.fagbug.com

• January 2009 – Stick Shift Palme D’Or for Best Gay Car Movie of 2009, Vanity Fair
• January 2009 – Official Finalist at the 2009 Canada International Film Festival
• December 2008 – Silver Lei Award for Excellence in Filmmaking at the 2009 Honolulu International Film Festival