Here's what's going on this week:
Thursday, February 20

• Today from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Dewey Hall, Room 2110-E on the University of Rochester Campus, Kirk Ormand will present a lecture titled Sex and Perversion in the Ancient World: Revisiting Foucault. "Ormand has done considerable work on the topic of sex and gender in the ancient world. His work incorporates modern theory on sex and gender to better understand ideas of masculinity and feminity in antiquity." [source: UofR website events calendar, 2014-Feb-17]
• At 6 p.m. is Network and Learn at City Hall. "The RocCity Coalition is going to be hosting a Network and Learn event for young professionals at City Hall with Mayor Lovely Warren on February 20th." [source: Facebook, 2014-Feb-17]
• Tonight at 7 p.m., the Little will screen Let the Fire Burn (Jason Osder, U.S. 2013, 95 min.) followed by a Skype Q&A with director Jason Osder. (Also, check out my review from a few months back.)
  

  In this astonishingly gripping piece, director Jason Osder has crafted that rarest of cinematic objects: a found-footage film that unfurls with the tension of a great thriller. On May 13, 1985, a longtime feud between the city of Philadelphia and controversial radical urban group MOVE came to a deadly climax. By order of local authorities, police dropped military-grade explosives onto a MOVE-occupied rowhouse. TV cameras captured the conflagration that quickly escalated-and resulted in the tragic deaths of 11 people (including five children) and the destruction of 61 homes. It was only later discovered that authorities decided to "…let the fire burn."

  [source: Little Theatre e-mail, 2014-Feb-19]

• Tonight at 8 p.m., the MuCCC will host a performance of God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza with future performances Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. through March 1.
  

  A playground altercation between eleven-year-old boys brings together two sets of Brooklyn parents for a meeting to resolve the matter. At first, diplomatic niceties are observed, but as the meeting progresses, and the rum flows, tensions emerge and the gloves come off, leaving the couples with more than just their liberal principles in tatters.

  [source: MuCCC website, 2014-Feb-17]

• Starting around 8 p.m. tonight is Richie Ramone at the Lovin' Cup. [source: Lovin' Cup website, 2014-Feb-17]
• The Eastman Jazz Lab Band performs in Kilbourn Hall starting at 8 p.m. [source: Eastman School of Music calendar, 2014-Feb-17]
• The Dryden will screen The Straight Story (David Lynch, U.S./U.K./France 1999, 112 min., 35mm) at 8 p.m.
  

  The true story of Alvin Straight, a seventy-three-year-old man who drove across two states on a John Deere tractor to reconcile with his dying brother, forms the foundation for Lynch's most compassionate and triumphant film to date. Richard Farnsworth earned an Oscar nomination for his role as Straight who, upon learning of his estranged brother's life-threatening stroke, decides to make the journey on his tractor after being denied a driver's license. Along the way, Straight encounters hardship after hardship, along with a diverse cross-section of Midwestern characters, but never loses his resolve to reach his ailing brother. This uncharacteristically straightforward, humanistic portrait is considered by some critics to be an anomaly in Lynch's career, while others have praised it as his best film.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Feb-17]

• Tonight at the Bug Jar starting around 8:30 p.m. is electronic and guitar duo Sparx and Yarms, excellent Gameboy and saxophone SBTHREE, and Veto. [source: Bug Jar calendar, 2014-Feb-17]

Friday, February 21

• This evening from 6:30 p.m. to 9:15 p.m. at the George Eastman House is a Members' Exhibition Preview of Another America and A World Apart. [source: Eastman House calendar, 2014-Feb-17]
• At 7 p.m., The Little will screen Mother of George (Andrew Dosunmu, Nigeria / U.S. 2013, 107 min.)
  

  Adenike and Ayodele, a Nigerian couple living in Brooklyn, are having trouble conceiving a child — a problem that defies cultural expectations and leads Adenike to make a shocking decision that could either save or destroy her family.

  [source: Little Theatre website, 2014-Feb-17]

• The Alternative Music Film Festival continues at the Memorial Art Gallery tonight at 7 p.m. with a screening of Heima (Dean DeBlois, Iceland 2007, 97 min.)
  

  After years touring the world, post-rock band Sigur Ros returned home to Iceland for a series of free, unannounced concerts in every corner of their homeland. Along the way they went to ghost towns, outsider art shrines, national parks, small community halls and the absolute middle-of-nowhere-ness of the highland wilderness, and played the largest gig of their career (and in Icelandic history) at their homecoming show in Reykjavik.

  [source: MAG website, 2014-Feb-17]

• Tonight at 8 p.m. and on Sunday at 2 p.m., the Dryden will screen Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, U.S. 1962, 152 min., 35mm).
  

  British ex-pat Humbert Humbert decides to spend his summer in small-town New Hampshire before moving onto his permanent position at an Ohio university. Without a place to stay, he accepts the offer of Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters) after he sees and falls madly in love with her fourteen-year-old daughter Lolita. He moves in with and marries the possessive Charlotte to be close to Lolita, but when tragedy strikes, the May-December lovers find themselves on the run and hounded by a man with his own agenda (Peter Sellers). Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel is brought into stark visualization with Kubrick's deft black-and-white photography.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Feb-17]

• 5 Head performs at the Dinosaur tonight starting around 10 p.m. [source: Dinosaur Bar-B-Que website, 2014-Feb-17]

Saturday, February 22

• This afternoon at 3 p.m., the Little will screen The Throwaways (Ira McKinley, Bhawin Suchak, U.S. 2014) with "co-director/producer Ira McKinley in attendance for a Q and A after the show".
  

  The Throwaways is the story of homeless filmmaker and ex-felon, Ira McKinley, documenting his struggle to bring positive changes to his community in inner-city Albany, NY. As he strives to get his voice heard and capture the stories of people living on the margins, Mckinley confronts the unavoidable stories of his past and battles against the stigma of being formerly incarcerated.! Guided by this personal narrative of survival, The Throwaways is a timely and provocative look at the impact of mass incarceration and police brutality on black males in America.

  [source: Little Theatre website, 2014-Feb-17]

• Tonight at 8 p.m. at The Space is Nuts and Bolts' Anniversary Show. [source: The Space website, 2014-Feb-17]
• At the Dryden at 8 p.m. is a screening of What Is Cinema? (Chuck Workman, U.S. 2013, English, Farsi, and French w/ subtitles, 80 min., Blu-ray) with director Chuck Workman in person.
  

  Academy Award-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman's documentary tackles the question of its title through over a hundred clips and new interviews with Mike Leigh, Jonas Mekas, Yvonne Rainer, David Lynch, video artist Bill Viola, Robert Altman, Kelly Reichardt, Costa-Gavras, Ken Jacobs, Michael Moore, critic J. Hoberman, and others, and with archival interviews from Robert Bresson, Alfred Hitchcock, Chantal Akerman, Akira Kurosawa, Abbas Kiarostami, and more. The film also includes commissioned sequences from experimental artists Lewis Klahr and Phil Solomon. What Is Cinema? not only asks a poignant question, but chronicles the best of filmmaking today and proposes where cinema will, and should, go in the future.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Feb-17]

• Starting around 10:30 p.m. at the Bug Jar tonight is Caitlin Trabert's B-Day Bash with Harmonica Lewinski, Light Feelings, and Secret Pizza. [source: Bug Jar calendar, 2014-Feb-17]

Sunday, February 23

• Today at 9:45 p.m. at the Downtown Presbyterian Church is a Sunday Forum titled Earth Care: Something We All Can Do, "identifying personal and community efforts to positively impact climate change." [source: City Newspaper events calendar, 2014-Feb-17]
• Starting at 6 p.m. at the Flying Squirrel is a screening of The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 (Göran Olsson, Sweden / U.S. 2011, 100 min.)
  

  Rochester Red and Black present a showing of black power mixtape a documentary with contemporary audio interviews from leading African American artists, activists, musicians and scholars, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 looks at the people, society, culture, and style that fuelled an era of convulsive change. Utilizing an innovative format that riffs on the popular 1970s mixtape format, Mixtape is a cinematic and musical journey into the black communities of America.

  [source: Flying Squirrel website, 2014-Feb-17]

• Tonight at 7 p.m., the Little will screen War Witch (Kim Nguyen, Canada 2012, 90 min.)
  

  Komona, a 14 year old girl, tells her unborn child the story of how she became a rebel. It all began when she was 12; kidnapped by the rebel army, she was forced to carry [an] AK 47 and kill. Her only escape and friend is magician, a 15 year old boy who wants to marry her. Despite the horrors and daily grind of war, Komona and Magician fall in love.

  [source: Little Theatre website, 2014-Feb-17]

Monday, February 24

• Today starting at 10 a.m. is a hearing titled Sierra Club et al. v. Village of Painted Post, et al. in The Hon. Samuel L. Green Courtroom at the Courthouse of the Appellate Division, Fourth Department (50 East Ave.) about "NYS water (the Village of Painted Post) being sold to PA for fracking. The Village wants the income from the sale of one million gallons of water per day. Neighbors complain of impact on their water quality and noise pollution." See the courtroom's Day Calendar for more details. [source: e-mail, 2014-Feb-19]
• From 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester (220 S. Winton Rd.) Mike Kink of Strong Economy for All will discuss Inequality and the NY State Budget.
  

  Over the past two years, Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature have cut billions of dollars and thousands of jobs from the state budget, delaying New York's recovery from the recession and economic meltdown caused by the Wall Street collapse. The number-one category for lost jobs every month here in New York is state and local government — teachers, firefighters, bus drivers and after-school instructors keep getting laid off, and our cities, towns and neighborhoods continue to lose the good, stable middle-class jobs that are the backbone of every local economy.

  [source: Facebook, 2014-Feb-17]

• At 7 p.m., the Little will screen The Trials of Muhammad Ali (Bill Siegel, U.S. 2013, 86 min.)
  

  A story of the famed boxer's toughest bout of all: his battle to overturn the prison sentence he received for refusing U.S. military service. The Trials of Muhammad Ali explores Ali's exile years when he was banned from boxing and found himself in the crosshairs of conflicts concerning race, religion, and wartime dissent.

  [source: Little Theatre e-mail, 2014-Feb-19]

• The Eastman School Symphony Orchestra performs in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre tonight at 8 p.m. [source: Eastman School of Music calendar, 2014-Feb-17]

Tuesday, February 25

• Today's Tuesday Topics in the Kate Gleason Auditorium of the Bausch and Lomb Library Building runs from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. with Bleu Cease discussing The Emerging Arts Scene in Rochester. [source: Monroe County Library website, 2014-Feb-17]
• From 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. in City Hall Conference Room 309-A is a Bidder's Informational Meeting — Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice. And the entire description from the City's website?: the nonsensical non-sentence, "Consultant Services for conducting an Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice (AI), as required by the U.S. Depatment[sic] of Housing and Urban Development." [source: City of Rochester website, 2014-Feb-19]
• Tonight at 7 p.m. in the Auditorium at Gleason Works, Aaron Bartley will present a Reshaping Rochester Lecture titled Neighborhood in Balance with Aaron Bartley. [source: RRCDC flyer, 2014-Jan-14]
• Tonight at 8 p.m., the Dryden will screen O slavnosti a hostech (A Report on the Party and the Guests, Jan NÄ›mec, Czechoslovakia 1966, 71 min., Czech w/ subtitles, 35mm).
  

  When seven friends are accosted at their afternoon picnic and find themselves the unwitting guests at an extravagant outdoor bridal party they are baffled by what has happened. As time passes however, many of them gradually begin to rationalize and accept their surroundings . . . and the pressures for obedience only increase. Often referred to as the most controversial Czech film, this is an absurdist satire allegory and a major contribution to the art of cinema.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Feb-17]

• Starting around 9 p.m. at the Bug Jar is Sleepy Hahas, The Bygone Few, Sexy Teenagers, and Limeworks. [source: Bug Jar calendar, 2014-Feb-17]

Wednesday, February 26

• Nick Young performs at Sticky Lips BBQ Juke Joint tonight starting around 6:30 p.m. [source: Sticky Lips website, 2014-Feb-17]
• Tonight starting around 8 p.m. at Abilene is The 5th Annual Johnny Cash Birthday Bash featuring Tommy Brunett, Brian Williams, and Jimmy Mac. [source: Abilene website, 2014-Feb-17]
• The Eastman Wind Orchestra performs in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre tonight at 8 p.m. [source: Eastman School of Music calendar, 2014-Feb-17]
• The Dryden will screen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, U.S. 2004, 108 min., 35mm) tonight at 8 p.m.
  

  Part romantic comedy, part science-fiction fantasy, French music video director Michel Gondry's sophomore feature took audiences and critics by storm. Playing against type, Jim Carrey stars as Joel Barish, an introvert who starts up a relationship with eccentric Clementine (Kate Winslet) only to discover that they had once been lovers. Following their previous relationship's demise, Clementine had her memories of Joel erased by a New York firm. We join Joel as he undergoes the same process, scanning through his memories of Clementine as they are ultimately erased. A daring experiment, Eternal Sunshine stands out as a true original.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Feb-17]