These camps give young artists ample time to dive into their projects, make friends, and create finished pieces of work for the end-of-summer student and teaching artist exhibition. All camps are taught by practicing artists in Space One Eleven’s professional art studios.

Using techniques such as collage, embroidery, and image transfer, artist Miriam Calleja works with acrylic paint, ink, watercolor, pencil, and found materials to incorporate her original verse into handmade books, assemblages, and mixed-media pieces. Each of Calleja’s pieces contains a line or an entire poem from her repertoire, including some new unpublished work. The exhibition name is inspired by her poem “A choreography of almost." Poems featured in stuck; lingering are on display alongside Calleja’s artwork so that viewers can explore the correspondence between it and her poetry.

Calleja is an internationally published poet, artist, translator, and writer. A native of Malta, she has lived in Birmingham for the past three years. Her poetry collections include Pomegranate Heart (EDE Books, 2015) and Inside (EDE Books, 2016). Among her poetry chapbooks are Remember (Stamparija Reljic, 2020), Stranger Intimacy (Stamparija Reljic, 2020), and Come Closer, I Don’t Mind the Silence (BottleCap Press, 2023). Calleja’s upcoming book Variations on Silence (PoetryWala, 2025) is translated from Maltese. Learn more about Calleja at miriamcalleja.com.

This exhibition is made possible by a grant awarded to the Friends Foundation of BPL by the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

Automatic Seafood’s Chef de Cuisine Jacobi Williams is popping up at Salud on Monday, June 30 from 6 p.m. to close. Chef Jacobi will be creating a special menu consisting of Berbere Butter Gulf Fish Tacos, Tuna Tartare “Nachos,” Masa Tostada with Charred Corn & Coconut Crema, Smoked Brisket Quesabirria Arepas, and Polvorones de Canela Banana Pudding. Guests will also be able to enjoy specialty cocktails from beverage director José Medina Camacho to complement Jacobi’s food.

One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing as a couple traveling through Argentina and locked in a turbulent cycle of infatuation and destructive jealousy as they break up, make up, and fall apart again and again. Setting out to depict the dynamics of a queer relationship with empathy and complexity on the cusp of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong—when the country’s LGBTQ community suddenly faced an uncertain future—Wong crafts a feverish look at the life cycle of a love affair that is by turns devastating and deliriously romantic. Shot by ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle in both luminous monochrome and luscious saturated color, Happy Together is an intoxicating exploration of displacement and desire that swoons with the ache and exhilaration of love at its heart-tearing extremes.

Part of our SHOUT Film Spotlight Weekend sponsored by Birmingham AIDS Outreach

In the early 1970s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder discovered the American melodramas of Douglas Sirk and was inspired by them to begin working in a new, more intensely emotional register. One of the first and best-loved films of this period in his career is The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, which balances a realistic depiction of tormented romance with staging that remains true to the director’s roots in experimental theater. This unforgettable, unforgiving dissection of the imbalanced relationship between a haughty fashion designer (Margit Carstensen) and a beautiful but icy ingénue (Hanna Schygulla)—based, in a sly gender reversal, on the writer-director’s own desperate obsession with a young actor—is a true Fassbinder affair, featuring exquisitely claustrophobic cinematography by Michael Ballhaus and full-throttle performances by an all-female cast.

This film is part of our SHOUT Film Spotlight Weekend series sponsored by Birmingham AIDS Outreach.

Director Levan Akin centers the vital spirit of Istanbul’s trans community in this poignant story of unlikely connection. With three exquisite performances that vividly transcend generational divides, Crossing is a defiant city symphony and a compassionate tale of hope, identity, and forgiveness.

This film is part of our SHOUT Film Spotlight Weekend series sponsored by Birmingham AIDS Outreach

An outrageous lesbian pop musical satire inspired by the pop frenzy of the early 2000s, QUEENS OF DRAMA charts the rise and fall of new star Mimi Madamour and her passionate, rage-fueled love affair with punk icon Billie Kohler. Over the course of half a century we follow these drama queens as they top the charts and set sail on the course of mad queer love. Featuring an iconic cast, including Asia Argento and Alma Jodorowsky, and containing hit songs like 'Don’t Touch' by Yelle and 'Fisted to the Heart', this film vividly dissects the turbulence of toxic relationships—whether between fans and their idols or within passionate queer love affairs. Director Alexis Langlois brings their trademark glittercore pop-punk aesthetic to create a vibrant, unforgettable spectacle of music and passion.

Part of our SHOUT Film Spotlight Weekend sponsored by Birmingham AIDS Outreach

Paris, Summer 1979. Anne (French pop star Vanessa Paradis) produces third-rate gay porn. After her editor and lover Lois leaves her, she tries to win her back by shooting her most ambitious film yet with her trusted, flaming sidekick Archibald. But one of her actors is brutally murdered and Anne gets caught up in a strange investigation that turns her life upside-down. Shot on 35mm and featuring a killer retro score from M83, Yann Gonzalez’s KNIFE+HEART is an ultra-stylish and blood-soaked ode to ’70s-era De Palma, Argento, and Friedkin.

Part of our SHOUT Film Spotlight Weekend sponsored by Birmingham AIDS Outreach