Doors open at 5:30pm, film begins at 6:00pm
For ticket information visit http://www.mjff.org

Weaves gay culture, Jewish Arab history, secular Yiddishkeit, anti-racist analysis, and religious/spiritual traditions into a multi-layered tapestry of Leftist politics. Personal experiences from many of today’s leading Jewish activists reframe the possibilities of Jewish identity. It presents a fresh and constructive take on race, spirituality, Zionism, queerness, resistance, justice, and liberation. USA, 2005, 65m, in English. With a discussion by director Konnie Chameides. Best Documentary, ARPA International Film Festival
http://www.youngjewishandleft.org/

5-8pm, free, All ages

SPACE Gallery is pleased to present The New Constructionists, a drawing show featuring new work by Meghan Brady, Jena Derman, Gina Siepel, and Zoë Wright. While the artists draw on a range of influences, exploring different sets of themes and questions, the works on view all possess a certain “built” quality, employing functions of form and space, symmetry, surface, and pattern to construct drawings from everyday objects and sights familiar. These four artists’ solitary engagements with drawing advance their private experiments in recreating and reimagining.
http://www.space538.org/pages/gallery.php

Doors open at 6:30pm, film begins at 7:00pm
For ticket information visit http://www.mjff.org

Musician and filmmaker Wendla Nolle travels to Manhattan in search of the face of young Jewish music and introduces us to New York's new generation of Jewish musicians. Among the profiled are an Orthodox convert who can rap in four different languages; a young blues musician who sings almost forgotten cantorial chants against African beats; a pop music group that combines a funk sound with Jewish spirituality and Hebrew lyrics; and an Orthodox rabbi whose funny, quirky songs often deal with weighty subjects such as the Israel-Palestine conflict. Germany, 2005, 88m, in English.
http://www.wendla.com/the_chosen_ones/trailer.html

Doors open at 8:30pm, film begins at 9:00pm
For ticket information visit http://www.mjff.org

"bubble," where the strains of a violent outside world are kept at bay. Then Noam, a young Israeli man meets Ashraf, a young Palestinian man and they begin an affair. Ashraf cannot legally work or reside in Tel Aviv. Seeing Ashraf's situation as a chance to act on their principles of peaceful coexistence, the three roommates unite to bring Ashraf into the bubble. How their ideals run headlong into tragic realities forms the core tension in this smart, keenly felt drama. (Mature themes, sexually explicit). Directed by Eytan Fox. Israel, 2007, 90m, in Hebrew with English subtitles.
http://www.thebubble.msn.co.il/eng/index.asp

Doors open at 9:00pm, music begins at 9:30pm, $7, 18+
Buy tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com  

Japanther are a two-piece bass and drum machine that have been merging fractured punk beats with art-school freakout from their homebase in Brooklyn, NYC. Including collaborative performances like a rock puppet opera with Dan Graham and Tony Oursler at Art Basel and the Whitney Biennial, a live music synchronized swimming piece [!], an art/sound/light installation at the ICA in Philly and most recently, an ambitious "Japanther in 3D" music/video/dance collaboration at PS122. Their latest album "Skuffed Up My Huffy" reimagines classic Ramones-style blitzkrieg with Japnther's tape loop-n-sample playfulness. Boston-based Neptune began as a sculpture project of homemade instruments and has evolved into a three-piece lineup that relies as heavily on home-made electronics as it does its signature scrap metal instruments. Neptune rocks like The Fall, clangs like Neubauten and drones like Faust with improvised and not-so-improvised songs that you can almost dance to. Their latest album "Gong Lake" was release on esteemed label Table of the Elements.
http://www.japanther.com
http://www.neptuneband.com

Doors open at 7:00pm, film at 7:30pm, $6, $5 for members, free for USM students and staff w/ ID, All ages
Buy tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com

An exploration of the man and his ideas, Derrida's Elsewhere investigates the parallels between the personal life and the life work of arguably the most important philosopher of the 20th Century, Jacques Derrida. We follow Derrida around his home, office, in the classroom and on his travels as he speaks of the suffering, the challenges and the questions that have conditioned his thought since his childhood in Algeria. The film is woven around readings from Derrida's book Circumfession, evoking a number of seemingly disparate themes including hospitality, religion, sexuality and the place of the subject in philosophy. Followed by discussion with USM Professor of Philosophy. 68 min.
http://www.frif.com/new2001/derr.html

Doors open at 8:00pm, begins at 9:00pm, $10 / $5 for students, 18+

The 4th Annual WMPG Fashion Show presents an exciting array of locally designed, all-original clothing, jewelry and accessories, with 50 products from more than 20 local designers. The Sunshine Lady will provide the soundtrack to this fabulous benefit for Portland's community radio station, based on the University of Southern Maine's Portland campus, and the evening will kick off with a performance by the Portland troupe Samba Mundo Ao Volta. WMPG provides to the community a full-time schedule of music, culture, news and information while promoting awareness and discussion of local as well as global issues and perspectives, which are underrepresented in mainstream media.
http://www.space538.org

Doors open at 7:00pm, film at 7:30pm, FREE SCREENING, Viewer discretion advised

This 1973 film is an adaptation of the seminal postmodern written polemic of the same name.  It is the crowning cut and paste film work of the late Guy Debord - the best known of the Situationists - the obscure art/political group whose anarcho-syndicalist ideas and slogans directly informed and fuelled the tumultuous student/worker uprising of Paris 1968. Society of the Spectacle is a brilliant critique of passivity and alienation, and a damning yet humorous expose of the workings of beurocracy and power in all its contemporary forms.  Followed by discussion with Jason Read, USM Assistant Professor of Philosophy.

Doors open at 6:30pm, starts at 7:00pm, $5, free for students and SPACE members, All ages
Buy tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com

SPACE and The Telling Room present a night of readings in observance of National Poetry Month. Jeffrey Thomson’s third book of poems, Renovation, was part of the Carnegie Mellon University Press poetry series in 2005. An assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington, he has a recent chapbook, The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, from RopeWalk Press. The evening will begin with a series of community members reading their favorite poems.  Readers will include Jill McGowan, apparel designer and founder of her own clothing company; Chris Bowe, co-owner of Longfellow Books; Jill Duson, Portland City Councilor; Francisco Andreu, Director of the Cambalache Spanish Center on Woodford's Corner, and Carlos Gomez, who will read a poem in the language to which they have dedicated their lives, Spanish; Alfred Jacob, who works at Portland High and directs Aserela Maine, a chorus that raises money for schools in refugee camps in Southern Sudan; and a Telling Room writer currently in eighth grade.
http://www.jeffreythomson.com
http://tellingroom.org

Doors open at 8:30pm, music starts at 9:00pm, $10, 18+
Buy tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com

The NYTimes says: "Fiery Gypsy brass, soulful Balkan anthems, and hip-grinding American funk: SSP! is just what it says... these nine musicians have forged a virtuosic new brass band music in the heart of New York City - melding Gypsy, East European, Mexican and Asian immigrant backgrounds with American jazz and soul." We're still talking about their last gig here at SPACE, when they led the entire audience in an impromptu parade down Congress Street in the middle of the show.
http://www.slavicsoulparty.com/

Doors open at 8pm, music starts at 8:30pm, $5, 18+
Buy tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com

Soltero is, first and foremost, the songwriting genius of Tim Howard, who forges downtempo indie psychedelia with mindblowing lyrics. He's joined by labelmate Strand of Oaks (who last played at SPACE with comrades-in-sound Lewis & Clarke), taking his musical cue from Nebraska-era Bruce Springsteen and early Neil Young. Nat Baldwin is an upright bass player and a singer, but he runs both of those things to their limits, perfecting a sound that he can call entirely his own. Based in Portsmouth, NH and kicking around southern Maine more and more these days, Baldwin has a new album, "Most Valuable Player," out this month with help from members of Grizzly Bear and the Dirty Projectors.
http://www.solterosongs.com/
http://www.virb.com/strandofoaks
http://www.myspace.com/natbaldwin

Doors open at 7:00pm, films at 7:30pm, $7, $5 for members, All ages
Buy tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com

Polis is This wrestles with the six foot eight inch 275lb colossus of poetry, Charles Olson. The film traces Olson’s process of self discovery and makes it clear why Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and many other literary figures traveled to sit with the father of the post-modernism — the man they called the“big fire source.” (56 min.) Lowell Blues remembers the place Jack Kerouac could not forget. By fusing visual history, language and jazz into a 30-minute film poem, Lowell Blues illuminates Kerouac's childhood holy land. The film interprets how place activates the writer's imagination, and how the writer's art reshapes his city with reverence and respect. (30 min.) With filmmaker Henry Ferrini if schedule allows.
http://www.ferriniproductions.com