Category — All Events

Friday, October 21st | 7:30 pm | FREE

In the valleys of Appalachia, a battle is being fought over a mountain. It is a battle with severe consequences that affect every American, regardless of their social status, economic background or where they live. It is a battle that has taken many lives and continues to do so the longer it is waged. It is a battle over protecting our health and environment from the destructive power of Big Coal.

The mining and burning of coal is at the epicenter of America’s struggle to balance its energy needs with environmental concerns. Nowhere is that concern greater than in Coal River Valley, West Virginia, where a small but passionate group of ordinary citizens are trying to stop Big Coal corporations, like Massey Energy, from continuing the devastating practice of Mountain Top Removal.

David, himself, never faced a Goliath like Big Coal.

The citizens argue the practice of dynamiting the mountain’s top off to mine the coal within pollutes the air and water, is responsible for the deaths of their neighbors and spreads pollution to other states. Yet, regardless of evidence supporting these claims, Big Coal corporations repeat the process daily in the name of profit. Massive profit allows Big Coal to wield incredible financial influence over lobbyists and government officials in both parties, rewrite environmental protection laws, avoid lawsuits and eliminate more than 40,000 mining jobs, all while claiming to be a miner’s best friend. As our energy needs increase, so does Big Coal’s control over our future. This fact and a belief that America was founded on the democratic principal that no individual or corporation owns the air and water and we all share the responsibility of protecting it, drives these patriotic citizens and their supporters from outside of Appalachia, like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to keep fighting.

A passionate and personal tale that honors the extraordinary power of ordinary Americans when they fight for what they believe in, THE LAST MOUNTAIN shines a light on America’s energy needs and how those needs are being supplied. It is a fight for our future that affects us all.

Written, directed and produced by Bill Haney, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and founder and president of the eco-housing start-up, Blu Homes, THE LAST MOUNTAIN was co-written and edited by Peter Rhodes and produced by Clara Bingham and Eric Grunebaum. Narrated by William Sadler, the film features original music by composer Claudio Ragazzi and includes the song “Your Control” by Crooked Fingers and Neko Case.

Trailer

Film Website

Event contact: Ali Cheff: theatre@thebridgepai.com

Friday – September 30, 2011  | 4pm-5:00pm | The Bridge Parking Lot

Jesse Straight Pastured Poultry and Livestock will be delivering once every six weeks to Charlottesville.  Based out of Warrenton, VA, Jesse and his wife, Liz, began raising pastured poultry in the spring of 2009.  As of 2011, they have added free-foraging pork, grass-finished beef, and pastured laying hens to their repertoire.

They are committed to farming without chemicals, drugs, or genetically modified feed.  Rotational grazing and foraging practices create the best environment for their animals and the most nutritious meat and eggs for their customers.

They serve many restaurants and families in the Warrenton, Va area but reach to parts of Northern Virginia and Charlottesville.

Available for order:
Pastured Chicken (whole chicken, organ meat, heads, feet)
Pastured Turkey
Pastured Eggs
Free-Foraging Pork (whole hog, half hog, individual cuts, sausage)
Grass-Finished Beef (whole beef, side of beef, individual cuts)

Call: 540-349-3099 to schedule an order.

Tuesday, January 10  | 7-9pm | FREE (Barter)
Thursday, January 19th | 7-9pm | FREE (Barter)
Tuesday, January 24th | 7-9pm | FREE (Barter)

These three sessions are helping to promote a project by local musician, Wes Swing.  Check out his Kickstarter project and learn how you can help in your barter.

Jan 10 / Biodiesel Course: This Charlottesville Trade School course is designed to educate you on the alternative fuel biodiesel and what exactly that is.  You may have heard the term tossed around before, but we’re going to dive in and tell you the specifics of this alternative fuel from how it is produced to its environmental, health, and monetary impacts.  The negatives of biodiesel will also be addressed to provide an unbiased view on the matter and also help you decide if the switch to biodiesel is a possibility for you. Towards the end of the course we will connect it to the music world as we talk about how biodiesel can be used by touring musicians for more sustainable tours and discuss our new website Biotouring.com.

Wednesdays, 5pm | Ongoing | Donation

The Charlottesville Guerrilla Yoga Project offers classes at The Bridge on Wednesdays at 5pm.

The Charlottesville Yoga School will also be hosting free Community Classes with their instructors in training.  Dates are as follows:

Sunday November 13 -  4:00-5:00pm
Sunday, November 20 – 4:00-5:00pm

Wednesday, December 7 – 5:15-6:15pm
Sunday, December 11 – 4:00-5:00pm

Donations appreciated.

Contact: Jen Fleisher – jen[at]charmedworks[dot]com

Friday, September 9, 2011 | 8:30pm | $10 suggested | Mature Content Likely

An alternative rock improv performance. A mix of the familiarity of “Whose Line is it Anyway?”, the best of the New York underground stand-up scene and the sketch comedy stylings of Second City. Music, Comedy, Art, Magic, Dance, and Life merge for a night of truly spectacular improv. Classic Bent Theatre games and performers merge with the new in this fantastic comedy experience. This is not your usual Bent Theatre show….this (much like hipsters) is unique.

Photography by Ben Ward
Opening Reception Friday, November 4, 6-8pm | Exhibition up through Saturday, November 26

Black and white and color photography from the world’s first sociopolitical cookbook on the subject of Kurdish people in Turkey. These images were featured in “Kürt Mutfağında Ne Pişiyor?” (“What’s Cooking in the Kurdish Kitchen?”) by author Dr. Ayşe Kudat (2010 Doğan Kitapçılık publishing). This work reflects their first collaboration in 2010.

Short artist bio:

Ben is a native Charlottesville resident who studied music at the University of Virginia. He started working in construction at a young age and works as a builder. He is a self-taught photographer who drew the attention of renowned sociologist/resettlement expert Dr. Ayşe Kudat for his artistic talent, keen eye and compassion for the human condition. They are currently working on their second project which focuses on a hydroelectric dam resettlement project in southeastern Turkey. Ben is married with three children, two dogs and a rogue cat.

Friday, July 1, 2011 | 7pm

An evening of music, film, photography and friends. Featured will be an exhibit by Josh Rogan, a film by Johnny St. Ours, a documentary hosted by the Rogan Brothers Band.

About the film:
The common thread of dreams that runs through Nashville stage performers, Oglalla Sioux grandmothers, to struggling Vets, to a clerk in a latino grocery outside of St.Louis, to the biggest, harriest biker in the Dungeon Bar is unknown and previously undocumented. With the help of their rousing music and empathic charisma, the Rogan Brothers Band will guide our team to this common dream, and we will report back an inspiring tale of a united modern culture.

Thursday, June 16, 2011 | 5:30-7:30pm

As part of Piedmont Council for the Arts’ leadership development program, The Bridge Film Series will be hosting a special screening of Lucy Walker’s acclaimed documentary, Waste Land.

Waste Land follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located near Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs catadores – self-designated pickers of recyclable materials – and collaborates with them as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage. Following the film, attendees will be invited to join in a conversation about the transformative power of art.

The screening is FREE and open to the public. Snacks and drinks will be provided.

For more information, please contact info@charlottesvillearts.org.

Opening Reception Friday, October 7, 6-8pm | Exhibition up through Saturday, October 29, 2011

Read The C-Ville review and interview with Stern.

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The Appalachian Portfolio, 1959-1963, was inspired by Andrew Stern’s wife, Mary Lou Wyatt Stern, who came from Appalachia coal country. Subsequently, a story in The New York Times prompted Stern to travel to Whitesburg and Harlan County, Kentucky. Over a four-year period, he generated over 900 images. The photographs were widely displayed, including at a Senate hearing on President Johnson’s War on Poverty Program. Later, Stern produced a PBS documentary using the images and sound interviews. The broadcast was nominated for an Emmy.

According to Kate Black, University of Kentucky Archivist:

Stern’s photographs are socially concerned but they do not reflect common stereotypes of mid twentieth century rural poverty, nor do they depict residents of Appalachia as the “exotic other.” Stern’s eastern Kentuckians are neither relics of the past nor depraved aberrations. His body of Appalachian work does not contain a single photograph of a soiled child pressed against a dirty window peering forlornly out to a world she can’t dream of inhabiting. Instead, it includes a portrait of a girl outside her bare-bones home finger-painting on a warm spring day as her dogs relax nearby. The facts of her material existence are not hidden but neither is the presence of her creative spirit.

Stern captured on film a particular sociological/historical moment in the Appalachian coal fields but did so before these same subjects were represented by a media lens that more often than not—no matter how well-intentioned–tended to portray Appalachians as poverty objects, available for consumption on the nightly news or in weekly news magazines. Andrew Stern captured with his lens the last moments before an iconic Appalachia became forever emblazoned on the American cultural consciousness.

Stern used a Nikon F1, a Rolleiflex, plus X and Tri X film. The negatives were scanned with an Imacon Photo Scanner, carbon ink prints were made on an Epson 3800 with archival Innova Fiba-print Gloss paper.

The Appalachian Portfolio has been included in international publications and has been exhibited at the University of Kentucky at Lexington, the University of Louisville, Godbey Gallery in Cumberland, KY, the Appalshop in Whitesburg, KY, and Dartmouth College, NH.