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A bit of Marshall trivia for you: Marc Hosler of experimental band Negativland lives in the tiny town north of Asheville. Also, Tony Torn, son of actor Rip Torn, has a venue called The FBI (the French Broad Institute of Time and the River).

The French Broad Institute will show the area’s only screening of DJ Spooky’s film.

The institute will be showing the only southeastern screening of DJ Spooky‘s film Rebirth of a Nation. It’s the beginning of what Torn and co-founder poet Lee Ann Brown call The Devotional Cinema series—what they hope will become a home for classical, local and experimental cinema.

Rebirth of a Nation “remixes” D.W. Griffith’s incendiary 1915 film Birth of a Nation (essentially a white-supremacist retelling of the post-Reconstruction era). Spooky, aka Paul Miller, takes the movie apart while building modern parallels. Kronos Quartet performs the original score.

The screening is at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 27, free and open to the public. For more info on the film, visit www.rebirthofanation.com. For more on the FBI, call Torn at (646) 391-8002. The FBI is at 68 Main St. in Marshall.

If it’s music you’re after, what a double bill at the Grey Eagle on Friday, Feb. 27: Firecracker Jazz Band (the fellas who pack ‘em in and get ‘em dancing) will be joined by dirty-tonkers The Trainwreks. The band members and their friends alone could command the venue. Should be quite the raucous time.

It’s all all-star bill when the Trainwreks play the Grey Eagle with the Firecracker Jazz Band.

For a free show on Saturday, Feb. 28, head to ED Boudreaux’s for Americana artist Chris Merkley‘s Thirty Miles from Nashville CD release. Merkley’s story? He was living in Brooklyn and playing with his band The Crooners when he realized: A bus would be just about as much living space as his loft apartment. He’s been spending his time converting a former schoolbus into an eco-friendly tour bus. For now, though, he’s still driving a Subaru. (www.chrismerkley.com)

It’s not too early to tell you about Asheville Green Works/Quality Forward‘s upcoming Earth Day swimsuit competition. Contestants have until March 24 to submit their plans for creating a swimsuit (for either gender) out of recycled materials (yikes!). For all the details, contact Bess Baird at bessbaird@yahoo.com. The winners will be on the runway as part of an Earth Day celebration, April 22 at the Orange Peel.

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