The current show is The Elephant’s Eye: Artful Animals in South & Southeast Asia, March 5, 2014 - June 29, 2014.
The current show is The Elephant’s Eye: Artful Animals in South & Southeast Asia, March 5, 2014 – June 29, 2014.

Do you need a break from the rigors of graduate work this spring? The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive offer a variety of events and shows for your artistic, cultural, and intellectual pleasure.

The Pacific Film Archive offers a smorgasbord of film series, including the annual Center for Asian American Media Festival, which runs March 14-21, 2014. This year’s CAAMFest feature films and documentaries from Singapore, Japan, India, the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, the United States, and more.

The annual Documentary Voices series showcases a broad range of contemporary and historical documentaries, and runs until April 22, 2014.  Screenings include the Academy Award-nominated documentary “The Act of Killing” on Tuesday, April 15, at 7:00 pm, depicting notorious death-squad chiefs brazenly reenacting heinous crimes they committed during the 1960s Indonesian genocide.

The Berkeley Art Museum also has a packed exhibition schedule this spring. The current show is The Elephant’s Eye: Artful Animals in South & Southeast Asia, March 5 – June 29, 2014.  The focus of this exhibition is on the representation of animals —especially elephants — in the art of India, Thailand, and Cambodia.

The Barbara Chase-Riboud: The Malcolm X Steles show recently opened and goes until April 27, 2014. The show features monumental sculptures and lyrical drawings by the internationally acclaimed artist and author, Barbara Chase-Riboud. The exhibition focuses on six major sculptures, marked by the dynamic interplay of material and thematic opposites, and named in memory of the assassinated civil rights leader.

Visit the BAM/PFA website for a full list of exhibition and film screenings.