By Cara Jepsen
Tonight’s Reggae Under the Stars fund-raiser benefits Glad Tidings for All’s adopt-a-family holiday fund and features the music of local reggae band Gizzae. The event is from 7 to midnight on Navy Pier’s rooftop deck, 600 E. Grand. The $30 ticket includes all you can eat and drink and must be purchased in advance; guests are asked to bring a children’s book to donate to this year’s holiday effort. Call 714-5805.
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The first Bud Billiken Back to School Parade, a tribute to African-American families, took place in 1929; today it’s the longest-running and largest parade in Chicago (and the second largest in the U.S.). It starts at 10 at 35th and King Drive and travels 20 blocks south to Washington Park, where there will be a picnic. It’s free. Call 664-5900.
Grupo AfroCuba de Matanzas, an Afro-Cuban folklore group that combines dances, songs, and percussion with symbolic religious ritual, will perform tonight at 8 at Chicago Filmmakers, 1543 W. Division, as part of a series of events sponsored by the HotHouse. The HotHouse closed but plans to reopen this fall and in the meantime continues to put on events with other organizations. Tickets are $20. The group will offer an advanced percussion workshop tomorrow at 1; call 235-2334 for info on either event.
Monday 12
John Waters once said that films of George and Mike Kuchar are what made him become a filmmaker. The twin brothers specialized in creating their own sleazy send-ups of Hollywood melodramas until they parted ways in the 1960s. George went on to make such underground classics as Hold Me While I’m Naked and the X-rated Thundercrack!, and today he teaches film at the San Francisco Art Institute. This year’s Chicago Underground Film Festival–which opens tonight and runs through Sunday, August 18, at the Theatre Building–will honor Kuchar with a screening of his recent video work Friday, August 16, at 5:30. Tonight the fest will show a film by a former student of Kuchar’s–24-year-old Sarah Jacobson’s Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore, a supposedly uncensored look at teenage sex that features music by Mudhoney and Babes in Toyland. The film screens at 7:30 at the Theatre Building, 1225 W. Belmont. Tickets are $5; $15 includes an opening-night party at Thurston’s, 1248 W. George, featuring Red Red Meat. Call 866-8660 for information.
