Happy Birthday, Albert Woodfox, Angola 3! Visit www.angola3.com.

Next Wave Choreographers Showcase

Co-sponsored by Dance Mission Theater, the Next Wave Choreographers' Showcase is Friday and Saturday, Feb. 22-23, 8 p.m., at Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., San Francisco, and features choreographers Raissa Simpson, Malia Connor, Victor Temple, Luis Napoles, Traci Bartlow, Delena Brooks and more. Tickets are $15 general seating. For reservations, call (415) 273-4633.

Human Rights Watch International Film Festival at Pacific Film Archive

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival concludes in Berkeley this weekend, Sunday, Feb. 24, with "Lumo," which screens at 2 p.m. In eastern Congo, vying militias, armies and bandits use rape as a weapon of terror. Recently engaged to a young man from her village, 20-year-old Lumo Sinai can't wait to have children and start a family. But when she crosses paths with marauding soldiers who brutally attack her, she is left with a fistula - a condition that renders her incontinent and threatens her ability to give birth.
Rejected by her fiancé and cast aside by her family, Lumo finds her way to a hospital for rape survivors. Buoyed by the love of the hospital staff, Lumo and her friends keep alive the hope of one day resuming their former lives, thanks to an operation that can restore them fully to health.

The second film, "Sari's Mother," is set in Iraq and screens at 3:45 p.m. Filmed in Iraq over a period of one year, "Sari's Mother" is a haunting portrait of the struggle of an Iraqi mother to find help for her 10-year-old son, Sari, who is dying of AIDS. This short documentary enters the lives of this family living in the restive Mahmudiyah area of central Iraq. They make their living by selling milk and butter and farming land rented from their neighbors. Amidst their work, Sari's mother administers injections to her son, whose condition is gradually deteriorating as his immune system fails. She seeks help in Baghdad's hospitals and ministries but discovers that the Iraqi healthcare system is in even worse condition under U.S. occupation than before the war.

"Sari's Mother" is followed by "Enemies of Happiness." Malalai Joya became one of Afghanistan's most famous - and infamous - women in 2003 when she challenged the power of warlords in the country's new government. Two years later, she ran in her country's first democratic parliamentary election in over 30 years. She campaigned surrounded by armed guards in a country where the majority of people are illiterate, warlords use threats and bribes to control the ballots and many women cannot leave their children to vote. Winner of the 2007 HRWIFF Nestor Almendros Prize and the Sundance Film Festival's World Cinema Prize: Documentary.

Visit www.hrw.org/sanfrancisco. Screenings are at the Pacific Film Archive Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way between College and Telegraph, Berkeley. Call PFA Program Information any time at (510) 642-1124 or PFA Charge-by-Phone at (510) 642-5249..

African Film Festival at PFA

Visit bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/africanfilm_2008 for information about the closing film of the African Film Festival, screening Feb. 28 at 7:30 p.m., "Juju Factory." Set in Congo, the film is about a writer who is trying to preserve the integrity of his book as shrinking resources force him to make a deal with someone who does not share his artistic integrity. At times it seems as if the author is writing characters into life. The parts of the film where he reads his work are really lyrical and lovely.

‘Paul Robeson: Words Like Freedom'

A CD release party for the long awaited release of "Paul Robeson: Words Like Freedom," a work celebrating the life of Paul Robeson will be held at La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave., in Berkeley, next week, Wednesday, Feb. 27, at 6:30 p.m. The new audio CD is from the Freedom Archives.
Babatunde Lea, Alex Bagwell and poetry with Youth Speaks will be a part of the program. The cost is $10-$20, although no one will be turned away.

In creating this CD, the Freedom Archives offers a unique resource that can be used with history courses and heard by many who may never before have heard the passion and eloquence of Robeson's spoken words. For more information or to purchase your copy, visit www.freedomarchives.org/Robeson.html.

The staged reading of “Quilombo” is an adaptation of the 1984 film.

On Sunday, Feb. 24, at Laney College Theatre, 900 Fallon St. in Oakland, a staged reading of "Quilombo," an adaptation of Carlos Diegues' 1984 movie of the same name, will be presented by Kim McMillon. "Quilombo" is the true story of escaped African slaves who founded their own community as free men and women in 17th century Brazil. Quilombo is an Angolan word that means "encampment."

Quilombo dos Palmares was home not only to escaped slaves, but also to mulattos, Indians and poor Caucasians. Palmares existed as an impressive and powerful settlement with over 30,000 inhabitants until the death of its leader Zumbi in 1694. The play chronicles the lives of the Quilombo leaders, warriors Ganga Zumba and Zumbi. In Brazil, both men are honored as heroes and symbols of Black pride, freedom and democracy.

Members of the public with an interest in taking part in this stage reading should contact Kim McMillon at (510) 681-5652. The rehearsals are Feb. 19, 20 and 21, 6-9 p.m. Actors, dancers, musicians and stage crew are needed for the reading. The February stage reading of Quilombo will be the percusor to the Oct. 9 premiere of "Quilombo" at the Malonga Center in Oakland. The February stage reading is free to the public.

The production and consulting crew includes award-winning filmmaker, director and author of the movie "Quilombo," Carlos Diegues, director Benny Sato Ambush, Brazilian master choreographer Isaura Oliveira, music coordinator and 2005 Bay Area Blues Society Jazz Band of the Year Avotcja and Modupue, and Brazilian translator and documentarian Renata M.T. Andrade-Downs, Ph.D.

Bay Area producer and playwright Kim McMillon brought this group of international artists together to utilize the arts to highlight injustice and to empower communities in their pursuit of social change. Ms. McMillon will write and produce "Quilombo," the play, as well as a cultural and educational series that focuses on cross-cultural projects that bring scholars, artists, students and community leaders together through artistic events and collaborative productions to increase public and international awareness regarding global concerns. One of the goals of this production is to address how communities can work together for the good of the whole. Quilombos still exist throughout Brazil, and are working communities where each person is valued and believes that they are an important part of that community.

The film's musical score, which will be used in the stage reading, is by Gilberto Gil, one of Brazil's greatest pop musicians and a major force in the defining of Afro-Brazilian identity in Brazil since the ‘60s - not to mention Gilberto Gil is the minister of culture for Brazil.

"Quilombo" is a sponsored project of PRO Arts, www.proartsgallery.org, a non-profit arts service organization. PRO Arts serves as the region's primary visual-arts venue by hosting annual exhibitions and special events.

For more information on "Quilombo, The Play," please contact Kim McMillon at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit www.quilombotheplay.com.

"Sonny's Blues" at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre

I caught Margo Hall on her way to a rehearsal at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. The joint Word for Word, LHT production opened to rave reviews a few weeks ago. Word for Word is a theatre that adapts stories for the stage by producing them word for word. Nothing is excerpted. All directions are spoken. It is one of my favorite theatres, begun by former librarians.

When I caught up with Margo on the phone a couple of weeks ago, she was looking for a quiet spot between Powell and Sutter to chat with me on the phone. When she found a spot, I switched on the recorder and began. I am a Margo Hall fan. Whether it's Campo Santo, Word for Word or Berkeley Rep, she is one of my favorites directors and actresses, married to another actor and director I adore, L. Peter Callender. So this was certainly a treat to speak with the director and actress for even a short moment. It was Langston Hughes' birthday, Friday, Feb. 1, so we called his name. Between him and James Baldwin, the journey that morning was guaranteed to be a success, and it was.

I hadn't known Hall was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, a place known for its music scene. Again, Hall was perfect as director. "Sonny's Blues," has an original score composed by the great Marcus Shelby.
The story, written by James Baldwin, is about two brothers, one younger than the other, one a musician, the other a school teacher. When the story begins, the elder brother reads about his brother's arrest for buying and selling heroin, a story confirmed by an old friend of Sonny's.

Peter Macon as the big brother, an algebra teacher and veteran, struggles with ideas about his brother, a jazz musician whom he hadn't seen in a while, when we meet him on stage. Big brother reflects on the story he read in the newspaper on the way to work about Sonny, while his students tease one another the way kids do when the teacher is not attentive. The lighting and blues motif cast an ambiance on the stage, the two brothers dancing on the floor oblivious to other couples. Clearly, they love each other, even if big brother is still kind of bewildered over Sonny's desire to play music, let alone his way of handling a shared inheritance - misery.

Big brother creates formulas to work through the abstractions, while baby brother, Sonny, explores the same worlds using other tools to traverse a similar terrain. A world Sonny escapes, for a moment.
Marcus Shelby's score is inspired. I wish I'd been in the house last week at the gala when Shelby performed live. The music is a fifth character in a work described as a movement or score. Elder brother plays by society's rules and younger brother prefers the improvisational approach, yet both play the blues - suffering a motif they can agree on, a riff Black men are all too familiar with. It's inevitable; one just needs to find the proper tools to navigate what often seems impossible to escape. Big brother doesn't want to agree with Sonny. "Isn't it better, then, to just take it?" he asks.

"But nobody just takes it," Sonny cried, "that's what I'm telling you! Everybody tries not to. You're just hung up on the way some people try - it's not your way!"

"I just care how you suffer. Please believe me. I don't want to see you - die trying not to suffer."
Da'Mon Vann as "Sonny" provides the emotional angst necessary to match older brother's worries. I like the space Baldwin gives to his two characters. They make mistakes, forgive each other and start over again or pick up where they left off. Macon's character struggles to articulate his feelings to Sonny and breaks. These emotional breaks are similar to the inarticulate space between melodies.

"Sonny's Blues" speaks of the terrain Black men walk ... like landmines, few survive unscathed or whole, but Sonny does because he is loved. It might not be a love big brother can express verbally, but he's there. He's there to pick up baby brother when he falls, and he's there to listen to his song.

Baldwin was also the elder brother in his family and while not necessarily clueless like Sonny's brother about the world his character escapes into to survive - the juke joints, clubs and bars, and the precarious tightrope Sonny must walk by day, as every Black man has learned to walk to survive - he writes in his prose about the power of family to protect, if not shield, its Black boys from danger.

He speaks of Harlem, a ghetto, like so many others white America has created to destroy Black boys. His nephew is 15 in 1963, and this is about the age Sonny is when he begins to cut school to escape into his music. He says he isn't learning anything. Later when in prison, Sonny writes his brother in response to a letter from big brother letting him know his niece Grace has died.

"You don't know how much I needed to hear from you," Sonny tells his brother. "I wanted to write you many a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn't write. But now you feel like a man who's been trying to climb up out of some deep, real and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside. I got to get outside."

Baldwin says in an essay, "My Dungeon Shook, Letter to My Nephew," that "to be loved, hard, at once and forever, (is) to strengthen you against the loveless world. If we had not loved each other," Baldwin says, "none of us would have survived. And now you must survive because we love you, and for the sake of your children and your children's children."

I'm sort of on a love kick, and having seen "Sonny's Blues" on Feb. 14, what with Martin King, the love guy, and now Baldwin and "Sonny's Blues" - those hearts all over San Francisco are no help either - I can't seem to leave the theme alone. I am seeing love everywhere. I find it an unexplored solution to most if not all society's ills. The Greeks called the kind of love I'm feelin' "agape." In our Maafa song, we call it "ìfe." In the Maafa song, sung in Yoruba, we say, "Ìfé loju o, ìfe-loju," which means, "Love is supreme. Oh! Love is supreme."

"Sonny's Blues" continues at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 620 Sutter St., San Francisco, through March 2, Wednesday-Saturday, at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. For information, call (415) 474-8800 or visit www.lhtsf,org or www.zspace.org.

Read Wanda's interview with director Margo Hall at www.wandaspicks.com.

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Visit her website, www.wandaspicks.com, for an expanded version of Wanda's Picks and for exciting "web exclusives."

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