Saturday, July 5th

Wham BAM, thank you, Ma’am! Indefatigable Brooklyn cultural mecca BAM fills the intellectual void that is July 4th weekend with an Afro-Punk Film Festival—so named for a documentary on black punk rock music by James Spooner—which aims to broaden people’s ideas about black music and “black revolution,” said co-curator Jake Perlin, who added that the festival will include much more than just movies—“music and outdoor events, things like that.” Notable among celluloid offerings will be The Federation of Black Cowboys (2003), about “a group of black cowboys in Brooklyn called the Federation of Black Cowboys,” said Mr. Perlin (this can only be a positive thing for Williamsburg), and Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006), about the disproportionate number of African-Americans among cult leader Jim Jones’ 900 suicidal brainwashees in 1970s Guyana, who sped themselves off this mortal coil with poisoned Kool-Aid. (“That’s where the expression comes from, Don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” said Mr. Perlin.) Meanwhile, socialite gals, where have you been all our lives? Designer Lisa Perry celebrates the opening of her Sag Harbor boutique with a heaping helping of photogenic estrogen in the form of candy entrepreneur Dylan Lauren, designer Beth De Woody, indefatigable children’s designer and party girl Lucy Sykes Rellie, and several people who work for Vogue and thus live blissfully encased in air-conditioning until Labor Day.

[Afro-Punk Festival at BAM, www.afropunk.com, through 7/ 13; Lisa Perry store opening, American Hotel, 45 Main Street, Sag Harbor, 5 p.m., invite only]

mbryan@observer.com