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VOLUME 11 ISSUE 7
April 19 - May 2, 2019 Follow us on social media! sdnews.com
Old Town • Mission Hills • Bankers Hill
Hillcrest • University Heights • Normal Heights • North Park • South Park • Golden Hill • Kensington • Talmadge
Acclaimed Uptown artists ready for ArtWalk in Little Italy
FEATURE P. 3
Friends for life spend 10 years making double bass
ARTS EVENTS P. 4
Push continues for San Diego AIDS Memorial
Developer presents plans for Olive Street Park at Uptown Planners Meeting, which does not currently include an AIDS memorial. (Photo by Kendra Sitton)
Florists interpret Alfred Eisenstaed photos at Art Alive
Uptown resident Ruth Fromstein will be a featured artist at Mission Federal ArtWalk. (Photo courtesy Ruth Fromstein) By B.J. Coleman From Uptown to Downtown, artists who live and work around the outskirts of central San Diego are preparing for the late-April arts
THEATER REVIEW P. 8
350 artists will display their works, while musicians and other performing artists entertain event-goers on stages during the arts festival.
see ArtWalk, pg 4
Yemeni film takes center stage at San Diego Arab Film Fest
Old Globe premieres ‘They Promised Her the Moon’
FOOD AND DRINK P. 11
Yemen’s first Oscar submission in decades avoids explaining its contentious political context to unite audiences around shared pain and humor Kendra Sitton | Editor
Chicken galore at Hillcrest rotisserie
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festival that enlivens Little Italy during springtime. This year’s 35th annual Mission Federal ArtWalk will fill 16 blocks of Downtown’s Little Italy on Saturday, April 27 and Sunday, April 28. More than
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The eighth annual San Diego Arab Film Festival kicked off its program with “10 Days Before the Wedding.” The April 5 opening show at the Museum of Photographic Arts sold out and had a waitlist, as audience members clamored to watch the first movie made in Yemen in more than 40 years. The excitement of U.S. audiences mirrored the huge popularity the film enjoyed while playing in Yemen. The movie, in which a couple faces hurdles in the lead-up to their nuptials, was the first to
open commercially in Yemen in over three decades when it began showing in 2018. With no theaters to show the film, two wedding halls in Aden were outfitted with wooden screen panels each day to form makeshift movie theaters. The film’s creators only expected to show the film for 10 days, but due to high demand, it kept showing for six months and sold more than 60,000 tickets. Now, the producer and director are taking the film intended for Yemeni audiences around the world.
see Arab Film, pg 7
Theater at the Museum of Photographic Arts (Photo by Kendra Sitton)
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San Diego Community News Network
Uptown Planners approved the creation of Olive Street Park to go forward at its April 2 meeting as the fight continues over whether the site will hold an AIDS memorial. The motion for the park passed 10-3 despite loud opposition from some board members and a neighbor who announced she is suing the city to keep the section of the property she has incorporated into her yard. The proposed AIDS memorial, which would honor the 8,000 San Diego victims of the AIDS epidemic and give their friends and families a place to pay them respects, was not included in the presentation by the developers of the site. This led some board members to oppose the park entirely because the memorial will likely be included in a second permit that will not need to come before the community planning board for approval. Member Amie Hayes accused the city of purposefully using the permit process to keep Uptown Planners from having input on the AIDS memorial, which some worry would create foot traffic and crowding in Bankers Hill. She said the city is trying to bifurcate the projects to get around
see AIDS Memorial, pg 15
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