Fringe catalogs, film premieres, photos of Philly, and more this weekend

This week is the last First Friday of the summer (though, who are we kidding, the swelter will surely stick through September), and it’s not too early to begin planning your Fringe Festival experience. FringeArts is releasing the 2018 Fringe Festival Guide at a Friday night happy hour from 5:30 to 8pm in the Haas Biergarten. There’ll be a prize wheel and tunes from DJs Yolo Ono and Josh BWC. This year’s fest runs September 6 through 23, and we’ll have plenty of coverage in the coming weeks, to help you plan your attack.

What’s beautiful about Philly?

Also on Friday night, we’ve got a cool special exhibition from the next generation of photographers. Keep Philadelphia Beautiful and the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (PPAC) partnered to ask PPAC’s teen photographers, “What do you think is beautiful about Philadelphia?” Their visual responses to this question will be on display August 3 from 5:30 to 7pm at a temporary art gallery hosted by the Frankford Community Development Corporation (4667 Paul Street). It’s free to enter, and food and drink will be provided. Donations are accepted.

Resistance, part 2

If you missed the Carnival de Resistance last weekend, fear not: You have another chance this Friday and Saturday. The event is coming back to Arch Street United Methodist Church, starting with an interactive Carnival Midway (with tons of cultural community partners) from 5 to 7pm, and a performance from Netos de Kansala West African Drum and Dance on Friday, and Unidos de Filadelphia on Saturday (both at 7pm). On both nights, following at 8pm, the headlining performance is titled Wade Through Deep Water, and follows the “transformative journey” of Moses’s sister, Miriam, and John the Baptist, “who channel the voice the of the water to speak to our current ecological and cultural crises.” Each night finishes with a live dance and drum party. It’s all free.

SWARM. and ‘LIYANA’

On Saturday afternoon, PAFA hosts Building Community in Diaspora, a special discussion with the artists of its major summer exhibition, SWARM., which tackles and dismantles narratives of colonial power (here’s the BSR story). Didier William and Nestor Armando Gil “reveal their multilayered Haitian and Cuban heritages” and explore how these intersect with their lives today in Pennsylvania. The event happens August 4 from 2 to 4pm and tickets are $15 (free for PAFA members).

On Saturday evening, Scribe Video Center and BlackStar Film Festival (did you catch our BlackStar preview?) team for the Philly premiere of 2017’s LIYANA, an international film festival favorite, at 5pm at the Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel’s URBN Annex. Directed by Aaron and Amanda Kopp, with animation from Shofela Coker, the film follows five orphaned children in Swaziland who create an “original African tale about a girl on a dangerous quest.” LIYANA weaves “poetic and observational documentary scenes to create a genre-defying celebration of collective storytelling,” with animator Coker drawing on her own Nigerian roots. Aaron Kopp attends.

See this ‘Midsummer’

If you’re a summer Shakespeare fan who’s secretly tired of sitting on blankets and lawn chairs while swatting mosquitoes at dusk, head to Ritz at the Bourse. Director Casey Wilder Mott’s new A Midsummer Night’s Dream has landed in Philly, and the film is a modern, (somewhat) faithful, funny, sexy, weird, and satisfyingly meta addition to the Shakespeare film canon. Rachel Leigh Cook and Lily Rabe star as Hermia and Helena, opposite Hamish Linklater and Finn Wittrock as Lysander and Demetrius. Singer/songwriter Mia Doi Todd plays Titania as well as providing an irresistible soundtrack rocking with the rhythms of the world, and songs fit to the original language. It’s running all weekend.

Above: A Philly portrait at PPAC by teen photographer Andre Pak. (Image via PPAC on Facebook.)