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President Joe Biden is in San Diego to rally for Democratic Congressman Mike Levin, who’s facing a tough challenge from Republican Brian Maryott in the 49th Congressional District. In other news, the San Diego Democratic Party is promoting a dead candidate in the Chula Vista City Attorney race. Plus, we have some weekend arts events worth checking out.

Organizers of the Burning Man festival lifted a driving ban on Monday as muddy roads that had stranded thousands of attendees in the Nevada desert had dried up enough to allow people to begin leaving.

The irreverent "Sorry Comrade" is a delightful, complex feature debut from Vera Brückner. The film is a documentary portrait of Karl-Heinz and Hedi, two lovers in the divided Germany of the 1970s, kept apart by the Iron Curtain. A plan for Hedi’s escape from East Germany is hatched, and we soon find ourselves in thriller territory as their plan begins to unfold. Brückner’s canny film moves quickly and cinematically, using first-person testimony, excerpts from private correspondence, and a rich trove of archival footage. Yet Sorry Comrade plays fast and loose with documentary conventions, deploying a wealth of aesthetic strategies, including some vibrant sets and reenactments that make no apology for their deliberate artifice. Abetted by a memorably jazzy score and a keen sense of humor, this confident, energetic film makes for a deeply satisfying experience that is both profound and delivered with a lightness of touch. Digital Gym Cinema on Facebook / Instagram

On the riverbed of Tijuana, along the US / Mexico border, lives a community of outlaws and addicts. An alcoholic Mayan deportee who finds beauty in delicate flora and fauna, a female photographer who documents the harassment endured by this community, and an elderly couple who are experiencing loneliness, find friendship and hope in this place of limbo. Digital Gym Cinema on Facebook / Instagram

A wildlife volunteer on an uninhabited island off the British coast descends into a terrifying madness that challenges her grip on reality and pushes her into a living nightmare. Evoking the feeling of discovering a reel of never-before-seen celluloid unspooling in a haunted movie palace, this provocative and masterful vision of horror asserts Mark Jenkin as one of the U.K.’s most exciting and singular filmmakers. Digital Gym Cinema on Facebook / Instagram

Congress faces a tight deadline to pass a short term spending bill and avoid a shutdown. Also Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell faces questions about his health following a second public episode.

Sponsored by UC San Diego's Department of Visual Arts and Film Studies Program. "The specific work in question is Wharton’s novel 'The Age of Innocence' (published 1920, set in the 1870s). But Steve Fagin does not set out to adapt this novel in any way, shape or form. To address it, yes. To circle it. Surround it. Question it. Stalk it, even. To treat it as a cultural site (across, literally, its many editions) and also, in a virtual-cubistic sense, an imaginary space that one can inhabit and poke around in. To unsettle its foundations, its comfortable drift into history, including media history."
– Adrian Martin Steve Fagin is an American artist and former professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. He has produced a series of feature length videos, including "The Amazing Voyage of Gustave Flaubert and Raymond Roussel," "The Machine That Killed Bad People" and "TropiCola" (the latter produced in collaboration with some of the most important theatre actors and producers in Havana). RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/515273576137

They've been offered an app intended to block the abuse and toxicity that can slip past older social media filters.

Block 112 in Downtown San Diego reflected the same urban diversity that was typical of large Eastern cities. Of the 50 residents, 16 were white or African American citizens. The other 34 were immigrants and ethnic minorities—Chinese laundrymen, a Mexican mill hand, a French gunsmith, a German day-laborer, a Welsh musician, a Japanese lunch man, and an Irish baker. This presentation reveals clues about their everyday lives, ambitions, and lifestyle. This talk will be held on Zoom. Follow on social media! Facebook + Instagram

Jamal Jawad's shop was stymied when cars kept running into his business in Dearborn, Mich. But the entrepreneur persevered and he now has three stores and a partnership with the Detroit Pistons.