Alpert Award-winning video and media artist Paul Chan gives a stirring live presentation about an extraordinary community art experiment he spearheaded in New Orleans in collaboration with the Classical Theatre of Harlem and the public arts group Creative Time. Chan and his colleagues staged five site-specific performances of Waiting for Godot in the Katrina-devastated neighborhoods of Gentilly and Lower Ninth Ward, playing to large crowds of local residents for whom the classic Beckett-penned lines rang with fierce immediacy.

J. Hoberman, film critic of The Village Voice and an authority on the Jack Smith performance and film oeuvre, screens and discusses Flaming Creatures, Smith’s unprecedented visionary masterpiece which was simultaneously reviled, rioted over, banned as porn, and pondered by the Supreme Court.

This can’t-miss reading celebrates the publication of an important new anthology of writing on film: Life As We Show It, a dynamic cross-genre collection of short stories, essays and poetry navigating the increasingly fine line between lived experience and representation in contemporary American culture.

CalArts President Steven D. Lavine welcomes architects from Michael Maltzan Architecture, Koning Eizenberg Architecture and Killefer Flammang Architects for an illuminating panel discussion on the role of design in realizing “supportive housing” solutions for the homeless.