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Prints honoring bell hooks, more Lunar New Year festivities, film screenings, and more
The BSR Weekly Arts and Culture Roundup, January 25-31, 2023
Kyle V. Hiller
This week, you’ll have the chance to dive into collaborative works inspired by activist and artist bell hooks over at the Free Library. Additionally, be on the lookout for film screenings from Temple University, PBS, and People’s Light, and a new performance from InterAct Theatre Company.
Stay warm, Philly!
A Visual Elegy for bell hooks
Through February 28, 2023
Parkway Central Library, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia
The Free Library of Philadelphia hosts Visual Elegy, a collaborative prints portfolio exhibition inspired by the 2012 poetry collection Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place by social activist, feminist theorist, and artist bell hooks. The artists featured in the exhibition made prints inspired by poems in the book, which draw from hooks’s childhood in the “isolated hills and hidden hollows of Kentucky.”
Summer with Hope
Thursday, January 26, 6pm
The Reel, 1755 North 13th Street, Philadelphia
Temple FMA, Diamond Screen, and Temple Queer Film Collective present a screening of the acclaimed Iranian film Summer with Hope this week. The story follows Omid, a teenage athlete who is barred for bureaucratic reasons from a swimming competition amidst his parents’ impending divorce, who begins training with Mani—their close friendship leads to community rumors and allegations that they are gay and in a romantic relationship with each other.
Lunar New Year celebration
Saturday, January 28, 1-4pm
Parkway Central Library, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia
Heading over to the library for Visual Elegy this weekend? If you’re going Saturday, you can also catch a Lunar New Year celebration at the library, welcoming in the Year of the Rabbit with music and dance performances, taekwondo demonstrations, a cultural fashion show, Chinese opera, dances from multiple historical dynasties, and more. Registration is recommended.
TOGETHER!
Sunday, January 29, 3-4:30pm
Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion, 2111 Sansom Street, Philadelphia
Check out this community concert with Anna Crusis Feminist Choir, Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus, and Voices of Pride on Sunday afternoon. The event is free with suggested donations—be sure to RSVP ahead of time.
9 Parts of Desire
January 30-February 12, 2023
Streaming online
People’s Light streams the film version of this classic play from 20 years ago. Uprooted after her father’s death during the pandemic, an Iraqi-American woman attempts to grieve at the site of the oldest Iraqi Church in North America. What starts in profound isolation becomes communal as Iraqi women, ordinary and extraordinary, come to her in spirit and ancestry with their personal stories of love and resilience.
The Last Parade
January 27-February 19, 2023
The Drake, 302 South Hicks Street, Philadelphia
InterAct Theatre Company opens its production of The Last Parade, a story following three generations of a Jewish family living in Kyiv as they grapple with whether to emigrate in 1991—and to where.
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