Get Drunk, Watch Cool Movies At Drunken Film Festival
Temescal Brewing
Want to enjoy the pleasure of getting drunk while watching cool short movies? Then you need to head over to Oakland to enjoy this year’s edition of the Drunken Film Festival (hereafter “Drunken Fest”). From October 9-14, 2022, you can enjoy a program of short films from around the world in six of Oakland’s coolest bars. Each night’s program is an in-person event. The screenings are free, but why not be a mensch and buy a drink or two at whatever venue you attend?
The venues for this year’s Drunken Fest are The Double Standard, Stay Gold, Temescal Brewing, Telegraph, Eli’s Mile High Club, and Starline Social Club. Long-time readers may notice that the venues are a mix of old Drunken Fest favorites and new venues.
Things kick off on October 9 at The Double Standard, located in Oakland’s Korea-Northgate Corridor on Telegraph. Aside from a rotating selection of 10 beers and a nice wine selection, the big perk is the back patio. It’s built around actual old growth redwoods. Tree hugging of these 150+ year old giants is ok. Just remember not to be an asshole and touch the redwoods with a knife or your personal garbage. The Double Standard doesn’t serve food but does let you bring in outside food as long as you clean up after yourself.
On October 10, Drunken Fest returns to Stay Gold Deli on San Pablo Avenue. The peckish can get BBQ plates, Po’Boys, and deli sandwiches such as the Roast Beef Cheddar. Their beer and wine selection covers everything from small brewery local beers to high end burgundy.
One of the dishes available at Stay Gold Deli
For National Coming Out Day aka October 11, Temescal Brewing is an appropriate venue for Drunken Fest with its motto of “Quality, Community, Vibes.” To the folks there, good beer brings people together. Their aims are treating everybody who comes through their doors with respect, creating a safe environment, reaching out to people excluded from the craft beer community, and supporting good causes reflecting these values. As the Temescal folks promise, you can expect fresh beer with no jerks.
A Telegraph Beer Garden sandwich to nosh on while watching the Drunken Film Festival
Instead of celebrating the original Columbus Day of October 12, why not catch Drunken Fest at the Telegraph aka the Telegraph Beer Garden aka Beeryland Oakland? It may not have a fancy mission statement. But this Telegraph Avenue establishment does have some great wall art, Monday cheap beer, and a menu of burgers and sandwiches ranging from the Fade 2 Black Burger to the Broccoli Tofu Sandwich. The place is dog-friendly, too.
October 13 feels like an appropriate day for catching Drunken Fest at Eli’s Mile High Club. It may have dropped being a blues institution. But this Longfellow Neighborhood bar on the North Oakland part of Martin Luther King Way (or MLK for short) still lives up to its motto of being “a garbage bar for losers.” Aside from the beers, the hungry among you might want to try the Crustwrap Supreme (tostada wrapped in a tortilla shaped like a pentagon, unless Eli’s means a pentagram) or the Ungrateful Bowl (ask somebody who’s lived in Oakland more than 7 years why this “healthy AF” dish is called that).
Things wrap up on October 14 at the Starline Social Club. This historic building on the corner of MLK and West Grand has an intriguing history. It started out as an Oddfellows Hall when it was built in 1893. Today, this three story Victorian offers a bar, a restaurant, and various event spaces. Drunken Fest will close out in the ballroom on the second floor. On the other hand, the lack of either an online drink or food menu should make the budget-conscious consider what they’ll buy here.
Starline Social Club
As for what’s being shown at Drunken Fest, the festival website doesn’t help much. The descriptions of the shorts to be shown lean towards the terse and vague. There are stills and the listing of a particular short’s genre. But that’s it.
So for readers who don’t mind books being judged by their covers and all that, the following shorts at least sound intriguing:
“Deerwoods Deathtrap” (documentary about Jack and Betty, who were hit by a train), “‘Concession Stand Girl’–Naomi Alligator” (animated music video involving a frog which “morphs, catches, throws, and drives”), “Neon Phantom” (a non-U.S. narrative about damnation and illusion), “I Want To Be Bored” (animation about attempting to do nothing), “Inner Wound Real” (animated documentary about three BIPOC who self-injure themselves), “Cherry Blossom’s Elegy” (local avant-garde tale of a young woman who receives a dying bouquet of flowers), and “Stranger Than Rotterdam With Sara Driver” (a documentary looking at films on film).
There’s also “Miles” (local documentary about an ultramarathon in the middle of the Mojave Desert), “The Seine’s Tears” (animated tale of Philippine and Algerian workers protesting a Parisian police curfew), “Video Visit” (documentary about the free video calls the Brooklyn Public Library provides to incarcerated loved ones), “From Water Comes Melon” (avant-garde narrative about a future where most people have forgotten about melons), “Punctured Sky” (avant-garde animation possibly about a forgotten computer game), “‘After The Dance’ by An Alien Called Harmony” (music video from a band with an odd name), and “Stay Tunafish” (animated short asking “who’s watching what, who’s watching who?”).
All the Drunken Fest shows start at 7:00 PM. Each show includes a mix of new shorts and repeats from earlier shows. So remember to check the program schedule beforehand. Above all, consider Drunken Fest an excuse to discover a new favorite Oakland bar.
Drunken Film Festival INFO HERE
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