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Try going a day without plastic. Plastic is everywhere and infiltrates our lives in unimaginable and frightening ways. In this touching and often flat-out-funny film, we follow “everyman” Jeb Berrier, who is admittedly not a tree hugger, as he embarks on a global tour to unravel the complexities of our plastic world. What starts as a film about plastic bags evolves into a wholesale investigation into plastic and its affect on our waterways, oceans, and even our own bodies. We see how our crazy-for-plastic world has finally caught up to us and what we can do about it. Today. Right now. For more about Bag It: http://www.bagitmovie.com/

ATA is excited to be featuring “Bag It” as the first in a series of 12 environmental film events being sponsored by the Bay Area Chapter of the Sierra Club. Other featured films will be:

“Race to the Bottom” depicts how the miss-classification of Port truckers has lead to major labor and environmental justice issues right here in the Bay Area especially West Oakland.

“Queen of the Sun: What the Bees Telling Us?” – This is a solution based film about how our farming practices collapse bee colonies and left unchanged will lead to the collapse of the industry.

“Dirty Business: “Clean Coal” and the Battle for Our Energy Future” investigates the true cost of of our dependence on on coal for electricity in the age of climate change.

”Revenge of the Electric Car” the sequel to “Who killed the Electric Car” goes behind the closed doors at Nissan, GM, and Tesla Motors to find the story of the global resurgence of the Electric Car.

If you are a filmmaker that would like to feature a film as part of the series, or for more information about the events please contact Michelle.Myers@sierraclub.org.

The SF Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club is the local group of the most powerful and oldest environmental organization in the nation, working to promote renewable energy, protect habitat, stop pollution toxic to humans, and promote outdoor activities right here in your community. Become a member today or sign up to volunteer: http://sanfranciscobay.sierraclub.org/

Bag It Intro from Suzan Beraza on Vimeo.

Curated and presented by Dale Hoyt
presented by SF Cinematheque in collaboration with Pacific Film Archive

During its 30+ years of existence, the San Francisco Art Institute’s New Genres (formerly Performance/Video) department has produced innumerable high-caliber artists and has influenced performance and conceptual art on a global scale. Simultaneously, the department’s commitment to maintaining state-of-the-art production facilities has contributed to an equally impressive output from myriad film- and video makers. Tonight’s program presents a survey of this important work. While as aggressive and sophisticated as their performance counterpart, the work of these artists displays an equally ingenious and ground-breaking visual language and deals with such varied issues as formalism, feminism, abstract narrative, transgressive sexuality, personal biography and body politics. And, drawn from three decades of activity, the program comprises an historical microcosm of video technology, beginning with industrial and broadcast cameras and behemoth Portapaks through the Hi-8 video revolution, “cuts-only” editing, the Amiga Toaster and Avid systems, up to DV’s utopian technological plateau. Join us for an evening of the early works and rarities of some of the field’s major artists, including Jordan Biren, Nao Bustamante, Monet Clark, Torsten Zenas Burns, Cecilia Dougherty, Didi Dunphy, Dale Hoyt, Andrew Huestis, Tony Labat, Jennifer Locke, Anne McGuire, Guy Overfelt and Emjay Wilson. (Dale Hoyt)

A new short by Elia Vargas,

Woven is textures of reality balanced in psychosis. It is a narrative driven as much by sound as by image that explores our relationship to the world through our perceptions. Those five wonderful sensory tools that extend our percepts. Woven observes Valentine as she undergoes an animalistic transformation in the pursuit of perfection- through song. Her musical journey is fragmented as her own sense of reality blends further into the world she has created for herself. Does she succeed?

Woven is the consequence of many miraculous moments and artists.

Featuring the Music of Honeycomb

Live sets by:

Ever Isles:  http://everisles.bandcamp.com/album/cocoon

Honeycomb:  http://www.myspace.com/honeycombmusic

…………
on elia:

There is a breadth and unique sense of engagement in the video documentation style of Elia Vargas that extends beyond the traditional framework of a documentary.  His subject matter broadly encompasses local and international events, interviews, and personal narrative, while his visual and audio techniques give the viewer a layered sense of presence and engagement.  Elia speaks of being driven by both a compelling desire to document, and an inherent belief in story telling.  While one could be said to compromise the integrity of the other, there is a clear fusion of the two in his work, revealing a consistent and focused interest in individuals and in capturing individual moments.

When Elia talks about documenting, he speaks about “experimental documentation,” about “documenting while going off a feeling” in order to convey “the uniqueness of a moment.” When considering the range of subjects Elia explores, you begin to see not just an interest in the culture and story of people, but the culture and story of sound, and how these elements connect.

-Nif Hodgson