INDY Selects: What to Do in the Triangle This Week

There’s one record in my vinyl collection with a more confrontational title than most. But from the ridiculous basketball illustration on the cover to the album’s composition—comprised entirely of groovy, saccharine love ballads—it’s obvious that the competitive conceit of The Dells vs. The Dramatics is about as vitriolic as a pillow fight. That same kind of faux-braggadocious needling (and mutual respect) is at the heart of the 919 Jam-Off, a head-to-head-style concert at The Pinhook this Friday, co-hosted by multi-genre label 47 Eyez On Me and the Raleigh-Durham rap collective The Deviants. It’s a great opportunity to see many of the area’s brightest young hip-hop acts all in the same place, including Khalil Nasim, Joey Zen, cardigan, Nikias and many more. One crew will emerge victorious, the other will settle for second place. The biggest L would be not coming out at all. Admission is $10. —Ryan Cocca 

Durham native Hattie Meadows (1885-1966), a resident of the Linwood Avenue neighborhood, was known throughout the community for her thriving and well-organized garden. The tradition of her garden—and her membership in the Year-Round Garden Club (a part of the N.C. Federation of Garden Clubs)—lives on in the Hattie Meadows Gardening School, a free gardening series that runs January through June at the Stanford L. Warren Library and is hosted in collaboration with Sarah P. Duke Gardens and Durham County Cooperative Extension and made possible by the Durham Library Foundation. The first installment, this Saturday, is presented by Ashley Troth, a horticulture agent at the N.C. Cooperative Extension, lays out the foundation for your future garden—how to balance “drainage, organic matter, nutrients, and pH,” per the library website. Subsequent sessions address seed starting, design, native plants, and a “veggie symposium” with three speakers. —Sarah Edwards

Founded in 1963, the Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) lays claim to the title of “oldest avant-garde and experimental film festival in North America,” with a touring model that dates back to 1964 and brings screenings to little theaters, libraries, museums, and universities and offbeat spaces all across the county—in this case, Durham’s very own storage unit cinema.

This year’s program sprawls across Saturday night (7-9 p.m.) and Sunday afternoon (3-5 p.m.) with eight short films screening at each event. Intriguing selections on Friday night include Moral Support by Croatian filmmaker Vuk Jevremovic, an animated film about a fight between striking miners and Yugoslav nationalists in Trbovlje in 1924; Sunday’s program includes German filmmaker Nicolas Gebbe’s The Sunset Special 2, a “multimedia project centered around an animated short film” that “deals with the effects of reality distorting imagery and narrative spread by social media and advertisement through new technologies,” per the film’s website. This event is co-presented by Duke MFA | EDA and is free, though donations are appreciated. —SE

Polyfluoroalkyl substances—better known as PFAS, or forever chemicals—are ubiquitous to consumer products, longlasting in the environments they travel through, and have been linked to numerous health conditions, including cancer and reproductive issues. Eli Yetter-Bowman’s interest in the toxic chemicals began when they discovered that the drinking water in their hometown of Wilmington was contaminated with PFAS, thanks to chemical company DuPont, which began dumping wastewater into the Cape Fear River in the 1980s. Thus was born Gen X, an intensive seven-year research and documentary project that premiers at UNC-Chapel Hill on January 14.

Produced by Mark Ruffalo (who starred in Dark Waters, a very good 2019 drama about an environmental lawyer taking on DuPont), Gen X is a look at North Carolina’s drinking water crisis—and the communities banding together to fight back. This screening is hosted by multiple programs at UNC, including the Department of Chemistry, the Center for the Study of the American South, the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Film Studies, the UNC Environmental Law Project, the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, and the Institute for the Environment and Ethereal Films. Attendees can register in advance here. —SE

Reviews are describing author-illustrator Chanel Miller’s latest release, The Moon Without Stars, as having “the makings of a modern classic.” The coming-of-age story follows Luna, an introverted seventh grader whose love of zine-making unexpectedly whisks her into popularity, testing her friendships and sense of self. The book is Miller’s second foray into YA literature, following her 2024 Newbery Honor-winning book, Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All, but it is her third book, following the 2019 paradigm-shifting memoir Know My Name.

That memoir detailed Miller’s experience of sexual assault and its aftermath, when the legal trial around it placed her testimony in national news. An uncompromising advocate for survivors and a wildly talented artist and writer, Miller is a role model for adults and teenagers alike. At this reading, Miller will be joined by Raleigh author Gillian McDunn, the Schneider Family Book Award Honor-winning author of Honestly Elliott and These Unlucky Stars, among several other books. Tickets are $21.31 and include a copy of The Moon Without Stars. —SE

To comment on this story, email [email protected].