More than a dozen local folksingers and songwriters will perform Saturday at 7 p.m. to pay tribute in word and song to Bob Blue, an Amherst resident who died in 2005 from the symptoms of multiple sclerosis. He was an elementary school teacher, an activist and a folk musician whose songs have been widely sung and recorded by artists ranging from Sally Rogers to Peter Paul and Mary and Pete Seeger.
Performers Saturday will include Will Fudeman, Ben Grosscup, Jenny and David Heitler-Klevans, Phil Hoose, and many others.
The concert will be at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst, 121 North Pleasant St., Amherst. Admission is free; the facility is wheelchair accessible.
“The Lady from Shanghai” will be shown Sunday at 2 p.m. and Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Amherst Cinema, 28 Amity St., Amherst. The film is part of the cinema’s “Orson Welles Retrospective” series, running this summer.
In this film noir classic, seaman Michael O’Hara (Orson Welles) is fascinated by a gorgeous femme fatale (Rita Hayworth). He joins a bizarre cruise and ends up mired in a complex murder plot.
The film is not rated.
Regular admission.
‘NUTS!” will be shown Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the theater.
The filmmaker, Penny Lane, will be on hand.
The feature-length documentary is about Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, an eccentric genius who built an empire in Depression-era America with a goat testicle impotence cure and a million-watt radio station.
The showing is part of the “Bellwether” film series, a collaboration with Hampshire College, that presents innovative films coming from new voices with fresh perspectives to fiction, non-fiction and experimental cinema.
Using animated reenactments, interviews, archival footage and a “hilariously unreliable” narrator, “NUTS!” traces Brinkley’s rise from poverty and obscurity to the heights of celebrity, wealth and influence.
The Guardian calls the film “A ridiculously enjoyable ode to old, weird America.”
Lane is a Sundance award-winning filmmaker and was named one of Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2012. She is currently a professor in the art and art history department at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, and previously taught video and new media studies at Hampshire College.
Regular admission; free for Amherst Cinema members.
“Stop Making Sense” will be shown Aug. 4 at 7 p.m. as part of the cinema’s “Sound & Vision” summer music series.
The concert film documents the groundbreaking band Talking Heads at its peak. Filmed over the course of three nights in December 1983, the film features classics such as “Psycho Killer” and “Burning Down the House,” as well as the inimitable stage presence of lead singer David Byrne. Not rated.
Regular admission.
To reserve tickets for any of these films, visit www.amherstcinema.org.
“Turn of the Screw,” the final show of the season at Silverthorne Theater Company in Greenfield, opened Thursday and will be onstage Friday and Saturday and Aug. 4-6.
Directed by Ellen Kaplan, the production features Stephanie Carlson as The Woman and Stephen Eldredge as The Man. The action takes place on an almost bare stage as the two actors spin out the stories in multiple voices.
“The Turn of the Screw,” an adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher of Henry James’ eerie Victorian tale of two frightening children, has been called “the most terrifying ghost story every written,” Kaplan said.
Remaining performances are Friday and Saturday and Aug. 4 and 5 at 7:30 p.m. and Aug. 6 at 8 p.m. There are also matinees Saturday and Aug. 6 at 2 p.m. There will be a post-show talk-back Aug. 4 with James scholar and Smith college professor Michael Gorra, immediately following the performance.
Performances are at the Sloan Theater at Greenfield Community College.
Tickets and information are available at www.silverthornetheater.org.
