SUNSET ON KALEIDOSCOPE: Forrest Goodluck, Sasha Lane and Chloe Grace Moretz star in Desiree Akhavan's "The Miseducation of Cameron Post," among the final films to be screened at this year's Kaleidoscope Film Festival.

THROUGH SATURDAY 8/18

KALEIDOSCOPE FILM FESTIVAL

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5 p.m. Thu., 5 p.m. Fri., 10 a.m. Sat. Argenta Community Theater, Argenta Gallery, South on Main. $6-$100.

The days left in the 2018 Kaleidoscope Film Festival are waning, but there’s still time to catch some gems of LGBTQ cinema from the Film Society of Little Rock before the champagne corks pop on closing night. Catch “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,” a block of military shorts presented by Here TV, 5 p.m. Thursday; Gabe Silverman & Fiona Dawson’s “Transmilitary,” the 2018 SXSW Audience Award-winning tale of four transgender people serving in the United States military, 6:30 p.m. Thursday; “Fashion and the Moving Image,” an art-fashion collaboration from Michael Shaeffer and Andrea Bolen, 5 p.m. Friday; an adults-only block of short films, “Red Band Shorts,” 6 p.m. Friday; Bertrand Mandico’s mysticism-laden arthouse fantasy “The Wild Boys,” 7:30 p.m. Friday; a SaturGAY morning cartoon block (with a free bowl of cereal for audience members!), 11 a.m. Saturday; the annual Drag Queen Brunch at South on Main with Roxy Starrlite, DJ Joseph and your newly crowned Miss Gay Arkansas, Chloe Jacobs, 11 a.m. Saturday; Daisy Asquith’s queer film archive “Queerama,” noon Saturday; Yen Tan’s drama “1985,” 2 p.m. Saturday; Drew Lint’s dark tale of obsession “M/M,” 4:30 p.m. Saturday; and the closing night film, Desiree Akhavan’s “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” the Sundance-acclaimed tale of a young woman in gay conversion therapy based on a novel by Emily M. Danforth. See kaleidoscopefilmfestival.com for screening details and passes. SS

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THURSDAY 8/16

BILL EVANS

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7:30 p.m. The Joint Theater & Coffeehouse. $25.

Every assumption I made based on Bill Evans’ promotional photo — a grinning, bespectacled picker perched in the center of a bevy of banjos as if it were his menagerie of oddball pets — was confirmed after coming across a video called “Bill Evans Tells the History of the Banjo in 14 Minutes.” Wielding an early West African specimen called an akonting for the preface and landing on a slick Canadian electric oddity from Allan Beardsell, Evans gleefully guides the listener through 250 years of the instrument’s personality, noting the ways in which the Senegambia lute-like predecessors took on the stylings of the Europeans who’d appropriated them in post-colonial eras. Dude is a living encyclopedia of the banjo’s complicated musical-cultural history, and his ethnomusicology propers are matched by his proficiency; check out his sweet tribute to Glen Campbell, in which Evans plays the late guitarist’s Jimmy Webb tune “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” on a YouTube video made after hours in a college dorm in North Carolina during a banjo conference. Evans appears as a guest of the Argenta Acoustic Music Series. SS

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FRIDAY 8/17

BRICK FIELDS

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8:30 p.m. Pizza D Bar & Grill. Free.

Rachel Fields is one of a handful of Arkansas vocalists who consistently name Sister Rosetta Tharpe as an influence — and makes good on it. The Prairie Grove-based powerhouse has a habit of dropping jaws when it’s her turn at the mic with vocal project Divas on Fire, and takes center stage with Brick Fields, a blues gospel project helmed by her and her husband, Larry Brick. Fields plays flute and guitar, but it’s her internal instrument that’s gonna shake the embers from the cigarette ends and the darts loose from the dartboard at Pizza D Friday night. For fans of Susan Tedeschi, Bonnie Raitt and hair-raising blues. SS

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FRIDAY 8/17

ARGENTA ART WALK

5-8 p.m. Downtown North Little Rock.

Greg Thompson Fine Art at 429 Main St. opens a new exhibition Friday for after-hour art walkers on Main Street in Argenta: “The Best of the South,” his annual show of work by noted regional and Arkansas artists, this year including Carroll Cloar, Dale Nichols, Mark Blaney, Arless Day, William Dunlap, Charles Harrington, Pinkney Herbert, Richard Jolley, Dolores Justus, John Harlan Norris, Sammy Peters, Edward Rice, Kendall Stallings, Glennray Tutor and Donald Roller Wilson. The Blue-Eyed Knocker Photo Club speaks in “The Language of Silver” for its exhibition of 36 black-and-white photographs at the Argenta branch of the Laman Library at 420 Main; contributors are Rachel Worthen, Adrienne Taylor, Lily Ryall, Adams Pryor, Jon Hodges, Rita Henry, Susan Crisp, Ann Bryan, Cindy Adams and Darrell Adams. The Thea Foundation, 401 Main, continues its exhibition “Carmen Alexandria Thompson: The Mind Unveiled,” part of its The Art Department series of shows of emerging artists. Argenta Gallery, 413 Main, opens “Fashion and the Moving Image + 1681,” artwork by Michael Shaeffer and garment design by Shaeffer and Andrea Bolen, in conjunction with the Kaleidoscope Film Festival. Barry Thomas will be painting in his studio at 711 Main St. and the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub at 201 E. Broadway will host its Popup Art Market. LNP

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SATURDAY 8/18

TATIANA RYCKMAN

6:30 p.m. 421 Main St., North Little Rock. Donations.

“I Don’t Think of You (Until I Do)” — a pocket-sized testament from a genderless narrator to some of the stranger corners and characteristics of love — is the latest from author and Awst Press Editor Tatiana Ryckman, and an interview with Ryckman from Split Lip Magazine does much to illuminate its bent. “My feeling for you was like the feeling everyone has a few weeks after a global tragedy,” one canticle reads. “The disconnect between the grocery store and war rendering everything meaningless. What is senseless about killing when meat is on sale?” All-consuming love can require a touch of hubris, or maybe even lunacy, and it’s that sense of mania that may challenge and prod audience members when Ryckman reads at the Argenta Reading Series this week. “The best I’ve learned to do is admit I’m an asshole,” Ryckman continued, in that interview. “Which is to say, to be frank with myself about my human flaws. This is a gift I tried to share with the narrator.” Seth Pennington, author of “Tertulia” and editor-in-chief at Sibling Rivalry Press, opens the evening. SS

MONDAY 8/20

SHORT FILM SCREENING WITH ERIC MANN

7 p.m. Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Pay-what-you-can.

Count Little Rock-born, New York-based actor/dancer/filmmaker/yogi/podcaster Eric Mann among those who are showing up for The Rep. As part of the Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s fundraising efforts after its suspension of operations in April, multihyphenate Mann returns home for a special screening of three of his films: “The Hafiz Project,” a visualization of the poems of 14th century Sufi master Hafiz; “Storytellers,” a docu-series of intimate interviews with storytellers; and “Without a Mirror,” a true story filmed in Little Rock that shows the process of Elizabeth Whitaker, blind since birth, learning the craft of ballet from Arkansas dancer and educator Lauren McCarty Horak. “I was so lucky to grow up in a community that has a thriving theatre scene and to have a second home at The Rep, and the other amazing theatres in Little Rock,” Mann said in a press release. “The Rep is my home, and it opened up my world. They say it’s not the place that makes the experience, but the people. And it’s the people at The Rep, the audiences, the donors, the volunteers, the actors, the musicians, the creatives, the technicians, and everyone else who comes together for something bigger than ourselves that make an experience. … The Rep gave me the foundation to create and share stories.” After the films, Mann, Horak, Whitaker and Alicia Albright of Broadway’s “Frozen” and “Wicked” take the stage for a talkback session. A reception in the theater’s lobby follows. All proceeds benefit The Rep’s revitalization campaign. SS

TUESDAY 8/21

‘THE RED SHOES’

7 p.m. Riverdale 10 Cinema. $9.

“We had all been told for ten years to go out and die for freedom and democracy,” Director Michael Powell said in his memoir, “A Life in Movies,” “and now that the war was over, ‘The Red Shoes’ told us to go out and die for art.” The influence “The Red Shoes” has had on the people who saw it either in its original theatrical run or later, during the heyday of films on television when it was screened in black and white, is undeniable. Gene Kelly is said to have screened the film for his collaborators 15 times before shooting “An American in Paris.” Martin Scorsese, whose father took him to see the film when young Martin was 9 years old, has said that its use of color — red, in particular — has influenced every movie he’s ever made. It was a film that a whole generation of filmmakers would talk about — along with other films by Powell and Emeric Pressburger — in a time before home video. Francis Ford Coppola, Scorsese, Steven Spielberg; they would gather around and start describing films they’d seen only to inevitably realize they were films by The Archers, the name Powell and Pressburger gave their production company. As The Archers, Powell and Pressburger produced 24 films between 1939-72. Based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, “The Red Shoes” tells the story of a group of people within a ballet company that travels Europe performing various shows. There’s Moira Shearer as ballerina Victoria Page, who lives to dance. When asked by company director Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), why she wants to dance, her response is: “Why do you want to live?” It’s just the answer he was looking for; “The Red Shoes” explores the drive to make art and the sacrifices artists make for their craft. Digitally restored in an effort led by Scorsese and his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker (Powell’s wife) in 2009, we screen the 1948 drama as part of the Arkansas Times Film Series, a collaboration with Film Quotes Film. OJ

WEDNESDAY 8/22

ARKANSAS WOMEN’S HALL OF FAME HONOR SERIES

7:30 p.m. South on Main. $12 adv., $15 d.o.s.

On Aug. 30, former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Annabelle Imber Tuck, pioneering composer Florence Price, actor Mary Steenburgen and others will be inducted into the fourth class of the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame. As a ramp up to the induction ceremony, the AWHOF has been hosting a series of concerts (the first one was Aug. 15) to celebrate talented Arkansas women. And what a showcase this is! For a reasonable cover charge, you get Dazz & Brie, the dynamic rock ‘n’ soul duo that won Best Live Performer at the inaugural Central Arkansas Music Awards earlier this year; decorated soul performer Ramona Smith; high school phenom Jamee McAdoo, a spoken word poet; singer/songwriter Amy Garland Angel, Little Rock’s honky-tonk queen; Bijoux, a powerful soul singer who draws heavily from a wide range of genres; and Stephanie Smittle, the Arkansas Times‘ entertainment editor who also happens to be the most versatile vocalist in town: On a given week, you might hear her big voice doing sacred chant at a downtown Episcopal Church, throwback metal with Iron Tongue, opera on special occasions and her own delightful jazz-flecked folk-pop. LM

WEDNESDAY 8/22- MONDAY 8/26

FAYETTEVILLE ROOTS FESTIVAL

Various times. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville), George’s Majestic Lounge, The Hive (Bentonville), Tri Cycle Farms. $5-$199.

The bad news: If you don’t already have a festival pass for Fayetteville Roots Fest’s mainstage musical lineup, you’re out of luck. What started as a one-day festival in 2010 has blossomed in breadth and popularity, and ticketholders have already grabbed up the multiday and single-day passes to hear Gillian Welch, Mavis Staples, Turnpike Troubadours, Flaco Jimenez, et al. The good news? There’s still a ton of peripheral hedonism to be had, mostly through the festival’s new culinary component, wherein a panoply of fancy dishes is laid out by some of the best chefs in the region (and beyond). There’s a five-course dinner at The Hive at 21C Museum Hotel; the Tri Cycle Farms Jamboree, a Sunday afternoon family festival with music by The Wild Rivers & Adam Cox; and a Saturday daytime festival called Roots Food & Spirits, with guided foraging walks, brewery tastings, lectures and food demonstrations. Also still on the table: tickets for a Saturday night concert from The Shook Twins and The War and Treaty at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and throwdowns of the late-night and happy hour varieties at George’s Majestic Lounge on bustling Dickson Street, with sets from Earl & Them, Arkansauce, Charley Crockett, American Aquarium, John Fullbright and The Charlie Hunter Trio. For tickets, see therootsfest.org. SS

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