ARTYARD’S CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Celebrated fashion photographer Bert Stern captures the performances, people, and setting during one Saturday of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.

For his one and only film, Stern teamed up with jazz aficionado Aram Avakian to create a breezy and colorful document of not only some of the greatest mid-century jazz performers but also of a certain slice of American life in the ‘50s.

Jazz on a Summer’s Day features fantastic performances from an unbelievably talented and diverse lineup, including Louis Armstrong, Anita O’Day, Dinah Washington, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Stitt, and Mahalia Jackson. Interspersed throughout are Stern’s photographic observations of the scene’s people, yachts, streets, and beaches.

An exhibition featuring William Horberg’s drawings of legendary jazz musicians.

The jazz/poetry ensemble Upsurge led by Raymond Nat Turner, will perform at 8:00 pm on Saturday, Dec 2nd, after the opening of Bill Horberg’s art show Portraits In Jazz at 4:00 pm.

Voted “Best of the East Bay”, the group was founded in 1990. UpSurge is an ensemble of piano, bass, drums, and frontline ‘horns’—saxophone, trombone, and jazz-poets Raymond Nat Turner and Zigi Lowenberg, who bend metaphors and split similes throughout the swinging ride.

With imaginative compositions, innovative arrangements and in-your-face consciousness, UpSurge is honing one of the most original group sounds on the music scene today. Their sound is a compelling mix of jazz, poetry, and politics. But UpSurge isn’t afraid to challenge fans or themselves by incorporating other elements such as funk, klezmer, calypso and found sound.

UpSurge is the ultimate hybrid. They’re New York, and Los Angeles (co-leaders hail from both coasts). They’re African-American, Jewish-American, and more. They march to a different drummer on the high wire of unpredictability. Their second release, Chromatology, mixes conscious words with assorted grooves and feels, dissolving boundaries that separate genres and people. This isn’t surprising. UpSurge’s diverse influences range from Abbey Lincoln, Sonny Rollins, to Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Bertolt Brecht and Langston Hughes. The group’s critically acclaimed debut CD, All Hands on Deck, garnered them an Indie Award nomination by the Association for Independent Music (AFIM) in 2000.

Nothing else has ever looked or felt like director René Laloux’s animated marvel Fantastic Planet, a politically minded and visually inventive work of science fiction. The film is set on a distant planet called Ygam, where enslaved humans (Oms) are the playthings of giant blue native inhabitants (Draags). After Terr, kept as a pet since infancy, escapes from his gigantic child captor, he is swept up by a band of radical fellow Oms who are resisting the Draags’ oppression and violence. With its eerie, coolly surreal cutout animation by Roland Topor; brilliant psychedelic jazz score by Alain Goraguer; and wondrous creatures and landscapes, this Cannes-awarded 1973 counterculture classic is a perennially compelling statement against conformity and violence.

You can watch the trailer HERE.

Drawing from over 100 hours of never-before-seen footage that has been tucked away in the National Geographic archives for over 50 years, award-winning director Brett Morgen tells the story of JANE, a woman whose chimpanzee research challenged the male-dominated scientific consensus of her time and revolutionized our understanding of the natural world. Set to a rich orchestral score from legendary composer Philip Glass, the film offers an unprecedented, intimate portrait of Jane Goodall – a trailblazer who defied the odds to become one of the world’s most admired conservationists.

You can watch the trailer HERE.

ArtYard presents an exhibition by Kahn & Selesnick, curated by Mike Carroll.

Newly restored and available for the first time on DVD, Albert Lamorisse’s exquisite The Red Balloon remains one of the most beloved children’s films of all time. In this deceptively simple, nearly wordless tale, a young boy discovers a stray balloon, which seems to have a mind of its own, on the streets of Paris. The two become inseparable, yet the world’s harsh realities finally interfere. With its glorious palette and allegorical purity, the Academy Award-winning The Red Balloon has enchanted movie lovers, young and old, for generations.

You can watch the trailer HERE.

In a story depicted in oil painted animation, a young man comes to the last hometown of painter Vincent van Gogh to deliver the troubled artist’s final letter and ends up investigating his final days there.

Loving Vincent is a 2017 biographical animated drama film about the life of painter Vincent van Gogh, and in particular, the circumstances of his death. It is the first fully painted animated feature film. It is written and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman. The development was funded by the Polish Film Institute, and partially through a Kickstarter campaign.

Each of the film’s 65,000 frames is an oil painting on canvas, using the same technique as Van Gogh, created by a team of 125 painters. The film premiered at the 2017 Annecy International Animated Film Festival. It was awarded Best Animated Feature Film Award at the 30th European Film Awards in Berlin.

You can watch the trailer HERE.

The Square is a poignant satirical drama reflecting our times – about the sense of community, moral courage, and the affluent person’s need for egocentricity in an increasingly uncertain world.

Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival 2017

Synopsis:
Christian is the respected curator of a contemporary art museum, a divorced but devoted father of two who drives an electric car and supports good causes. His next show is “The Square”, an installation which invites passersby to altruism, reminding them of their role as responsible fellow human beings. But sometimes, it is difficult to live up to your own ideals: Christian’s foolish response to the theft of his phone drags him into shameful situations. Meanwhile, the museum’s PR agency has created an unexpected campaign for ”The Square”. The response is overblown and sends Christian, as well as the museum, into an existential crisis.

The Square is a poignant satirical drama reflecting our times – about the sense of community, moral courage, and the affluent person’s need for egocentricity in an increasingly uncertain world.

Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival 2017

Synopsis:
Christian is the respected curator of a contemporary art museum, a divorced but devoted father of two who drives an electric car and supports good causes. His next show is “The Square”, an installation which invites passersby to altruism, reminding them of their role as responsible fellow human beings. But sometimes, it is difficult to live up to your own ideals: Christian’s foolish response to the theft of his phone drags him into shameful situations. Meanwhile, the museum’s PR agency has created an unexpected campaign for ”The Square”. The response is overblown and sends Christian, as well as the museum, into an existential crisis.

ArtYard is pleased to present Feral Foster and Ali Dineen in concert on Saturday, March 3rd at 8:00 PM.