FILM
Minnesotans Make History
The Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival continues tonight with a collection of locally-made, locally-focused documentaries featuring eight profiles of remarkable Minnesotans. The Minnesota Documentaries Program, Change: Past, Present and Future, shows how some of our very own Minnesotans have elicited social change, and highlights changes we can make for the betterment of our future. The eight films — many of them set around WWII — total 106 minutes.
7:15 p.m., Oak Street Cinema, 309 Oak St. SE, Minneapolis; 612-331-3134; $8 ($6 seniors, $5 students and members).
View A Sacred Heart, by Norah Shapiro.
View A Good Doctor by Maxine Davis.
DISCUSSION
Why Iraq?
Speaking of change… maybe it’s time to take a closer look at Bush’s politics as they pertain to Iraq. Join historical political economist Robert Brenner tonight in a discussion of this very topic. Professor of history and director of the Center for Social Theory for Comparative History at UCLA, Brenner is currently in the process of completing his latest book, Why Iraq: The Politics of Bush II, which seeks to understand the Iraq war in the context of the transformations of the domestic economic and political scene taking place over the last three decades, especially the decline of liberalism and the rise of the Republican far right. I don’t know much about this latest endeavor, but if it’s half as good as his last book, The Boom and the Bubble: The US in the World Economy and Merchants and Revolution, you won’t want to miss this event.
7 p.m., Room 104, Nolte Center for Continuing Education, University of Minnesota East Bank campus, 315 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis; 612-626-5054; free.
READING
Bright Lights, Big Bombs
If you’re looking for something almost as powerful, and perhaps a bit more hip and less heady, stop by Galleria and join author Jay McInerney for the paperback release of his latest novel, The Good Life, a story of love, family, conflicting desires, and catastrophic loss set in post-9/11 New York City. Best known for Bright Lights, Big City, McInerney has been praised as the contemporary F. Scott Fitzgerald. Of course, I consider Fitzgerald contemporary literature, so I resent anyone trying to displace him, but McInerney certainly writes beautifully, and he has Fitzgerald’s knack for illustrating the more internal corruption of wealth.
7:30 p.m., Barnes & Noble Booksellers Galleria, 3225 W. 69th St., Edina; 952-920-0633.
MUSIC
Red Rap
Don’t go on ignorantly believing that Native American music is all about pow-wows and honky tonk. Stop on down to the Fine Line tonight and catch the Indigenous In Music concert, featuring Buggin Malone, Bluedog, Red Pony Band, and Cochise Anderson. Buggin Malone won Best Rap/R&B/Hip-Hop Recording at the 2006 Native American Music Awards as well as Best Rap Artist of the Year at the 2006 Indian Summer Music Awards. Bluedog, inspired by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Santana, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Jimi Hendrix — with a touch of Janis Joplin vocals — offers a unique blend of contemporary blues, rock, R&B and folk. Cochise, meanwhile, serves up an eclectic ensemble of word songs and powerful poetry with a hip-hop flavor over traditional Native American beats. It should be an interesting show.
8 p.m., Fine Line Music Cafe, 318 1st Ave N, Minneapolis; 612-338-8100; get a free ticket.
Listen to Buggin Malone.
Listen to Bluedog.
Listen to Cochise Anderson.
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