This Sunday Varsity Theatre will host Davis’ 4th annual United Nations Association Film Festival.

This year’s theme, Camera as Witness, advocates the whole notion of the democratization of the camera, said Jesse Drew, a technocultural studies professor at UC Davis. It is a more authentic and realistic view of the world shot by everyday people.

According to the festival’s mission statement on its website, the Stanford Film Society and United Nations Associate Midpenisula Chapter created the festival in celebration of the 15th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Jasmina Bojic, the founder and executive director of the festival and the United Nations Association Traveling Film Festival, said the main point of the film festival is to show something that cannot be seen in the general media … it is a great vehicle for discussion and we hope that people make action out of watching the films.

The festival, the Davis United Nations Association chapter, the city of Davis Human Relations Commission and the International House have collaborated to make the Davis event possible. The main festival will take place Oct. 19 through 26 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, showcasing 32 films out of a 360-applicant pool.

UNA chapters have the opportunity to rent films and create their own film festival consisting of between four to 10 films. Other than Davis, the traveling festival visits Miami, Berkeley and Washington D.C.

The films will begin Sunday at 4 p.m. and will explore global issues such as the war in Iraq, the genocide in Darfur, environmental activists around the world, HIV/AIDS in Lesotho, health consequences of radioactivity and an Afghan’s struggle to assimilate in France.

Former U.S. Marine Brian Steidle documented photographs for The Devil Came on Horseback, a film based on a novel by him and his sister, and was shown on campus earlier this school year. In Darfur, Steidle had access to places even the media could not enter. His horrified reaction brought him back to America to expose genocide and pose the question as to why the West hasn’t taken action.

Another film playing on Sunday is called The Battle of Chernobyl. Marvin Goldman, a UC Davis professor emeritus of radiation biology and biophysics, will give a five-minute commentary after the film. Goldman led the American team that wrote the report on the health risks of the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

The steam explosion blew open the reactor and a plume of gas left the reactor, Goldman said. Inside the reactor were two volatile atoms, iodine and cesium, which are biologically active. Iodine affects the thyroid glands and cesium acts like potassium which goes straight to the muscles.

Goldman said the film fails to emphasize that the particles from the steam dropped onto the grass, which the cows ate. Consequently, children drank the milk from the cows, which induced thousands of cancer cases. No one told the people not to feed their babies fresh milk, which was criminal. Goldman believes that the incident in Chernobyl was the final straw that ended the Soviet Union in 1991.

The film called Tsepong: A Clinic Called Hope, testifies to the risk of allowing the HIV virus to spread in Lesotho. Nearly one third of the city’s population is HIV positive. Doctors are worried that drug resistant strains will develop causing a potential spread to the West.

This film gives you a feel of what is involved in communities where whole families have been dissipated and children have been left without families, said Verena Borton, the president of the Davis chapter of Davis USA-UNA. It’s not just statistics, it’s one small community and you meet people from both sides – patients and those providing medical care.

Given the depth of the content in the films, the festival was created to educate people about controversial and foreign issues.

I think it is a very eclectic and universal offering of film, said Drew. It is a window into other countries and a global perspective that students desperately need.

Tickets for Camera as Witness can be purchased for $10 at the Varsity Theatre located at 616 Second St. For more information about the festival and the filmmakers, visit unaff.org.

June Quan can be reached at arts@californiaaggie.com

After featuring more than 1400 music acts over a five-day stretch in 2007, South by Southwest is back again in March 2008 as one of the premier music festivals in the world. Held in Austin, Texas, the festival gives the music industry a chance to bring all its constituents together in one huge event. Besides hundreds of bands, SXSW also includes a film festival and numerous music industry conferences that draw even more people into the heart of Texas.

With its size and stature, it’s not surprising that SXSW has included local Davis and Sacramento-area bands in the past. Notable Davis band Buildings Breeding – which includes current and former UC Davis students – played the festival last year. The 2008 lineup will feature two UC Davis alumni: Caitlin Gutenberger, lead singer of the band Two Sheds, and Christian Kiefer, a local singer-songwriter.

Kiefer, who earned his doctorate in English from UC Davis in 2006 and has played the festival twice before, said SXSW is a chance for bands to network with a diverse set of music industry people.

It’s a good way to meet people who can help bands develop – if you need a booking agent or a manager there’s industry people everywhere, Kiefer said.

He also explained that because of the sheer volume of performers at SXSW, bands never know exactly how many people will attend their shows.

Despite this uncertainty, Kiefer said that SXSW has some enticing guarantees.

You know [SXSW] is going to be a good time, and you know that even if you don’t play to your own satisfaction, you are going to see 40 bands. And ten of them will be the best bands you’ve ever seen, he said. SXSW is unbelievable – it’s like stepping into an indie music magazine.

Speaking of print publications, local group Two Sheds is scheduled to play Filter Magazine’s Showdown at Cedar Street on Mar. 13 and will share the stage with up-and-coming indie acts like Be Your Own Pet and Robyn. Two Sheds’ Gutenberger said that representing Sacramento at SXSW generally leads to positive reactions by attendees.

For the most part, the bands we play with all express an interest in coming through Sacramento, she said.

Buildings Breeding was added to the 2007 Fanatic Promotion showcase at SXSW by their label, UC Davis alumni Jenn De La Vega’s Mushpot Records. De La Vega also works for Fanatic Promotions and arranged for the band to play the show, said senior psychology major and guitarist Evan Hart.

Although Buildings Breeding was only allocated a 20-minute set at the showcase, the band still managed to impress a representative from the record label Yep Roc and discuss signing a record deal, Hart said.

Even though the deal fell through, at least we got a chance to meet [someone from the music industry] and talk to them and try to get signed, Hart said. It was cool to have someone come … looking for you instead of spamming every record label with your demo and never hearing back from them.

As one might imagine, a large festival like SXSW brings throngs of people to Austin – not just bands, but music fans as well – which means that downtown can become a bit unruly.

[SXSW] is crazy; it’s wall-to-wall people, Hart said. Since almost everything happens at bars, the festival is mostly people drinking a lot and seeing bands at different bars.

As for the appeal of SXSW to small bands, Kiefer said that its size is definitely a major incentive.

When you are a little band, you don’t get to play Lollapalooza, but SXSW gives you chance to experience that kind of atmosphere – the streets are filled with musicians who are drunk, happy and filled with tacos, he said.

For me, I love hanging out in a rad town and discovering new music, Kiefer said. As long as that continues to happen … I’ll be happy to play SXSW.

South by Southwest takes place in Austin, Texas until Mar. 18. The music-related events will take place until Saturday at various venues. For more information, visit sxsw.com.

ZACK FREDERICK can be reached at arts@californiaaggie.com. XXX

East meets West and movement meets art at the Mondavi Center. As part of the Dance Series, the Mondavi will present Re- (Part One) and Folding, two pieces from contemporary dance company Shen Wei Dance Arts.

The company will perform the pieces tomorrow at 8 p.m. at Jackson Hall. Tickets can be purchased at the Mondavi Center ticket office or online at mondaviarts.org. Student tickets are $14 and general admission is $37. A post-performance question-and-answer session will be offered with choreographer and company founder Shen Wei.

For Shen, his art knows no boundaries. Touted as one of the most innovative dance companies today, the New York-based Shen Wei Dance Arts elaborates on the fundamentals of contemporary dance, bringing visual art concepts to physical forms and movement.

It’s a … total artistic experience, said Jeremy Ganter, director of programming at the Mondavi Center. He doesn’t believe in tempering out dance from the visual experience.

Born in Hunan, China, Shen grew up in a family well-versed in the arts world. His mother was a producer and his father ran the Hunan State Xian Opera Company, where Shen performed from 1984 to 1989. In addition to Chinese opera, he studied painting, calligraphy and sculpture.

Education in other forms of art contributed to Shen’s understanding of movement and physical space on stage. As well as being a dancer and choreographer, Shen is also a painter and designer, and he helps create costumes and sets for the company. Davidson said that his visual art background has informed his work, giving his work a distinctive look.

Shen Wei started out as a visual artist, said theatre and dance professor Della Davidson. He is very strong in imagery, and he works a lot from that kind of painterly perspective.

Ganter, who has seen the company twice before, said that audiences can expect a new vocabulary for choreography.

Strictly as a choreographer, he’s very interested in … finding new ways to express [art] through the body, Ganter said.

In addition to a multidisciplinary knowledge in the arts, Master of Fine Arts candidate in choreography Randee Paufve said that Shen’s overseas training in China was a valuable starting point.

I appreciate the fact that he’s working in this form, but from a different culture than the United States, Paufve said. I see a lot of cultural dance history expanding the globe.

Shen’s choreography introduces Chinese acrobatics and martial arts to Western dance traditions. He played a part in the founding of the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, China’s first modern dance company. After coming to New York in 1994, he created Shen Wei Dance Arts in 2000.

For Paufve, the choreography from Shen Wei pushes the envelope of what is considered to be contemporary dance. Paufve currently teaches Drama 14: Introduction to Dance, and she included the Shen Wei company’s performance as part of the course’s curriculum.

[In the class], we talk about what is contemporary dance, she said. Right now, I think that it refers to new performance genres where dance is a big part of what is being created.

To introduce the choreographer and the program is a pre-performance lecture by Davidson. The lecture will be at 7 p.m. in Jackson Hall and is free and open to the public. As a choreographer, Davidson said that contemporary dance is an ever-evolving and diverse art form.

One common denominator is that it uses movement to express a strong point of movement and how movement is organized on stage, she said. The style [of contemporary dance] differs from choreographer to choreographer.

Shen Wei Dance Arts will perform at Jackson Hall tomorrow at 8 p.m. Tickets are $14 for students and $37 for non-students. For more information, visit mondaviarts.org or call 754-2787.

RACHEL FILIPINAS can be reached at arts@californiaaggie.com.

The freaky, fantastical world of Nights at the Circus, originally a novel by Angela Carter, will be brought to life for the first time in the U.S. tonight at the UC Davis Wyatt Pavilion Theatre at 8 p.m. Performances will continue through Sunday.

Nights at the Circus is directed by UC Davis Master of Fine Arts Candidate Patricia Miller, adapted for the stage by Emma Rice & Tom Morris and originally premiered in London in 2006.

Using magical realism and a burlesque, music hall style in turn-of-the-century London, the story revolves around the life of Fevvers, a notorious winged woman in the circus, and the bitter newspaper reporter, Jack Walser, who tries to expose the truth that Fevver’s wings are fake.

Miller said that viewers can expect a dark blend of glamour and sleaze – a wild spectacle of oddities amidst a gritty, Victorian-era environment. Dancing tigers, psychic pigs and fanciful prostitutes are just a few of the denizens who populate the stage.

By showcasing these distinctive characters, the production incorporates themes of individuality, freedom and the vulnerability that those who are different face in a harsh, unforgiving world, Miller said.

It’s a humanist piece, Miller said. We have this tough, self-possessed character [Fevvers] who despite her strong, ballsy exterior is just as scared and insecure as everyone else – she’s vulnerable and longing to connect with people.

Miller said she was first exposed to the novel when she was 17, and was entranced by Fevvers, the strong-willed protagonist.

This bawdy charmer took her freakish wings in her stride, commanding life on her own terms accompanied by her wizened sidekick, Lizzie the Anarchist Whore, Miller said. I was attracted to the play by its rich language, theatrical ensemble storytelling and songs that are part vaudeville, part Brecht.

Alumnus Samuel Hardie, who plays Jack Walser, describes his character as hardbitten.

Jack Walser is a writer for the New York Times who travels to London to demystify this woman, Fevvers, who is an incredibly popular, infamous celebrity, Hardie said. He starts off as a man in a suit and ends up in his underwear.

He is looking for the truth in fact, while she [Fevvers] is looking for the truth in life, added Miller.

Alice Vasquez, who plays Fevvers, said that she had to learn to work the trapeze to play her part. She said that her favorite scene is when she sings the song Humiliation.

Fevvers just lets it all out, her anger and angst and everything she’s learned from her feminist upbringing, Vasquez said.

If he wasn’t playing his own role, Hardie said the character he would liked to have done instead is Mr. Sugar, a rich capitalist, soul collector, who represents temptation.

The original score by was written by Daryl Henline, an acclaimed singer and composer who has been involved in Bay Area theater projects for over 15 years. Recently he composed the score for Kim Epifano’s Epiphany Dance Theatre’s Lotta’s Opera and Trolley Dances.

Nights at the Circus is recommended for mature audiences, as it contains staged violence, sexual content and adult language. Preview tickets for tonight are $10 for non-students and $5 for students. Friday and Saturday presale tickets are $13 for non-students and $9 for students, and $14 for non-students, $10 for students at the door. The final performance will be Sunday at 2 p.m.

Tickets can be purchased at 754-2787 or at mondaviarts.org. For more information, visit theatredance.ucdavis.edu.

SONIA PARECADAN can be reached at arts@californiaaggie.com. XXX

Covering the history, evolution, social significance and musical aspects of rock music through the ages – spanning from the blues to punk and new wave – this relatively new course has been consistently popular with students, as shown by its lecture hall-sized class and high attendance despite its morning time slot.

As a part of Music 106: History of Rock Music, students will study artists and get the opportunity to create and perform their own original music in a concert, the next one occurring Sunday at 7 p.m. in the Main Theatre.

[The course] was started [approximately] 7 years ago by Chris Reynolds, who originally taught the class … I’m very lucky and grateful for the chance to be a part of this, said current MUS 106 professor Robert Sabino.

Music Professor Christopher Reynolds said he wrote to his colleagues in 1996 from his fellowship in Florence, Italy, pleading with them to start such a course. They replied that if he wanted it so much, Reynolds should just start it himself.

I grew up listening to rock and playing classical music, like many successful music professors of my generation. By the ’90s, rock classes were springing up at universities all over the country, but I think the course at Davis was one of the first at a UC campus, Reynolds said. I wanted it to be a class that involved actual music making and song writing. I had no idea how many talented musicians there were…. The course completely changed my ideas about how musical people are, whether or not they become music majors.

Sabino said he structures the class so that students appreciate other forms of music besides rock, such as classical, because there’s so much crossover and influence between the genres. For example, Sabino has the class simultaneously study Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and opera because of the song’s use of traditional opera elements.

We also get jazz appreciation in the class; I have the students listen to Miles Davis and then [watch recorded] interviews with Jimi Hendrix, who listened extensively to Davis and felt influenced by him, Sabino said.

Sabino’s extensive personal history with rock music also makes the class worthwhile. A keyboardist himself, he has played with the likes of Madonna, Simon & Garfunkel and David Bowie. Recently, he had Peter Frampton, whom he had also played with in the ’70s, come to the university to talk about his work.

[Peter Frampton’s visit] was probably the high point of the class for me…. It was a complete shock, said senior classical civilizations major Kaylie Marr, who also said that Sabino kept the visit a secret. [At first, Frampton] talked a little bit to us about music history and his experience … but it seemed like such a shame for him to come all this way and not play something for us, so someone begged him to play two songs, [which he did].

The assignments the students get are also interesting in their own right. All students must pick two out of several listed assignments, which include doing an oral history, like an interview with a parent who was around for the rock ‘n’ roll era, or an analysis on an artist’s website, album or song.

Those who feel more confident in their music-creating ability can opt to do two less traditional-sounding electives – write a blues and rock song or choose to be a part of a rock band.

Students who choose to write music must work in small groups of three or four, whereas the band itself can consist of seven to 17 members, whose instruments can include traditional guitars and drums to a horn and keyboard ensemble. Because of high interest in the latter option, Sabino held auditions to ensure students knew what they were doing musically and to group students together fairly.

[Sabino] has a lot of experience with this stuff, so he’s pretty intelligent about how he makes the groups, said Navid John Zamani, a sophomore psychology major who chose to do both the song-writing and performance options. [My friend Richard and I] wrote music together with two other girls who wrote the lyrics. [Richard and I] are both doing the band together too, so Rob just gave our songs back to us.

According to Zamani, the auditions were held a few weeks into class, and his group has been practicing two to three times weekly ever since. Each band must perform two original songs made by the song-writing groups and assigned by Sabino, and then they must choose two additional songs of choice to cover. Because the members generally do not know each other prior to practicing the pieces, he described the first meeting as kind of awkward. However, after his group got a feel of each other, they were able to work things out instrumentally after a few plays.

Sabino said the department holds these concerts in order to demystify [the idea that only some people have] musical ability and that everyone has some inherently. One of the things he enjoys most about the class is seeing students’ positive reactions to obscure tracks he plays.

Sabino also said he enjoys the fact that though the class is more aimed towards non-music majors; often there are students in his class who really love rock music, whom he ends up learning things from.

Two of my best friends just graduated and they were both angry they didn’t take [this class], said Ruth Cervantes, a senior English major. I say it’s helpful to have the intro course which is listed as a prerequisite, but if you’re eager, you can totally do great.

The course will be offered next during Summer Session II, and the upcoming student concert will be Sunday at the Main Theatre, in Celeste Turner Wright Hall at 7p.m. Tickets are $5 at the door.

CHRISTINE VU can be reached at arts@californiaaggie.com.

The gaming world lost one of its guiding lights last week as Gary Gygax passed away Mar. 4. Gygax is best known for his role as co-creator, with David Arneson, of the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons.

Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D for short, is a game without winners and losers, played in the imaginations of those participating. Known in popular society for its many sided, multicolored die and its vast array of rulebooks, what started as a hobby has become a profitable industry, boasting over $1 billion in estimated sales. Similar estimates place the number of people who have played the game at over 20 million.

Gygax, 69, died of an abdominal aneurism at his house in Lake Geneva, Wis. His presence is already being missed in the gaming community.

Wizards of the Coast was deeply saddened to learn that Gary Gygax passed away, said Katie Page, a Wizards of the Coast spokesperson in an e-mail interview. His innovation created an entirely new type of hobby that now attracts millions of players worldwide to face-to-face and online role-playing games.

Gygax was a grand storyteller renowned for his unique style, sprawling ‘Gygaxian’ adventures and the fantastic World of Greyhawk, she said. He inspired generations of players, designers, and authors, and he will be sorely missed by legions of fans. We extend our sincerest condolences to his family and friends.

The impact of his death is also being felt on the UC Davis campus. The Aggie spoke to Brendan Baker, president of the Davis Roleplaying Activities and Gaming Organizational Network.

I would say some of the members of DRAGON have been hit hard by the news, he said. There are those who have been playing the game for over two decades, and the loss of Gygax is the loss of an icon, a legend. Some would say Gygax was to the gaming world what John Lennon was to the music world.

Gamers note that Gygax, through D&D, has had a profound impact on other gaming areas such as computer and video games, going so far as to say that without him, there would be no World of Warcraft, currently the number one Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game with over 9 million players worldwide.

Yeah, I think that’s accurate, said Wes Pierce, store manager of the Davis gaming and hobby store Bizarro World. A lot of the guys who create the games nowadays grew up in the 1970s. [These are] guys who played D&D or even Chainmail. Anyone who’s grown up around any of this will be influenced by it. All of it can be credited back to Gary Gygax. He’s the founding father, so to speak.

Though D&D is based primarily in fantasy, its roots are in war gaming. Gygax was one of a small community of war gamers in the ’70s who enjoyed collaborating on tabletop military simulations. Dungeons and Dragons grew out of earlier iterations, such as Chainmail, into what it is today. The first edition of D&D materials was published by Gygax’s company Tactical Rules and Strategy (TSR) in 1974. The game is now published by Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, which acquired TSR in 1997.

Gygax often said in interviews that the aspect of the game he enjoyed most was that people would approach him years later and tell him what an impact the game had had on their lives, something he thought was important.

The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience, he said in a 2006 interview.

Gygax is survived by his wife and six children.

RICHARD PROCTER can be reached at arts@californiaaggie.com.