Women in the Director’s Chair

The 16th annual Women in the Director’s Chair International Film & Video Festival runs Friday through Sunday, March 21 through 23.

It highlights shorts as well as features by women, including documentary, animated, narrative, and experimental works. Screenings are at the DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl.; Kino-Eye Cinema at Chicago Filmmakers, 1543 W. Division; and the Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson. Tickets are $7, $5 for Women in the Director’s Chair members, students, and senior citizens with a valid ID; festival passes are also available. For more information call 773-281-4988.

Messages From Home

Films and videos from France, Canada, and the U.S., by Diane Bonder, Catherine Quinn, Julia Pimsleur, Kirsten Johnson, Kathleen Sweeney, and Portia Cobb. (Kino-Eye Cinema, 6:00)

Further Adventures of Animated Women

See Critic’s Choice. (Kino-Eye Cinema, 10:30)

SATURDAY, MARCH 22

A Woman’s Work Is Always Done

Short films and videos, mainly documentaries, by Anita Chang, Lina Hoshino, Wendy Own, Thalia Drori, Charlotte La Garde, Cheryl Hess, and Melissa Thompson. (Kino-Eye Cinema, noon)

Reclaiming the Road

Video documentaries by Zakia Carter, Katrina Jordan, Tracy Huling, and Kathy Katz. (Kino-Eye Cinema, 2:00)

Cycles

Documentary films and videos from the U.S., UK, and New Zealand by Beverly Singer, Lawan Jirasuradej, Veena Cabreros-Sud, Gurinder Chadha, Mandalina Stanisich, and Jennifer Frame and Jay Rosenblatt. (Kino-Eye Cinema, 4:00)

Paternity Is Uncertain

Films and videos by Dulcie Clarkson, Sayer Frey, Wendy Levy, Diane Zander, Annette Otto, Guerlande St. Louis, Sambo Mean, Alix Umen, and Lani Sciandra. (Kino-Eye Cinema, 6:00)

The longest film on this program, Robin Cline’s Pretty Mean, concerns a hard-to-believe crime that occurred in Madison, Indiana, a few years back: a girl was killed by other teenagers as a result of a lesbian love triangle involving a 12-year-old. With commendable honesty, Cline recognizes her inability to enter their world; she films herself retracing the girls’ steps, worrying that she’s satisfying “some sick obsession” as actors reenact the crime. But the film disappoints because it becomes almost solely about Cline’s inability to understand the case–which we already knew was baffling and whose facts she doesn’t even present very clearly. Zelda Lin’s Dollhouse combines Claymation and puppets to produce scary, if somewhat obscure, imagery; Kella Prill’s Sugar and Spice is a pedestrian, occasionally trite view of a young tomboy. But the fourth film on the program, Lori Silverbush’s Sticks and Stones, is a small gem; this story of a young boy taunted by bullies is filmed with sensitive subjective framing and editing and makes effective use of its factory-town locale. (FC) (Kino-Eye Cinema, 8:00)

Dykes in the Director’s Chair

Films and videos by Monica Nolan, Wendy Levy, Andrea Stoops, Irene Rea, Etang Inyang, Shoshanah Oppenheim, Liza Johnson, and Jill Reiter. (Kino-Eye Cinema, 10:00)

SUNDAY, MARCH 23

Against the Odds

Films and videos by Anne Lewis, Jill Evans Petzall and Deeds Rogers, Debra Levine, and Jennifer Reeves. (Kino-Eye Cinema, 1:00)

First Nations/Native Nations

The one truly original work on this program of films and videos by and about Native Americans is Beverly Singer’s Video Book, a dense series of synthetic images that are combined collage-like to ask questions rather than present answers. A variety of video effects–an image is “tiled” to produce a grid of copies of itself–results in allusive images that are like small, self-contained poems. Women and Men Are Good Dancers, by Arlene Bowman, is a kind of rock video of traditional Cree music and dance, more interesting for its content than for the way it’s made; “Real Indian”, by Malinda Maynor, a Lumbee Indian, is a look at the identity of the Lumbee, many of whom are light skinned and can “pass.” The longest work on the program, Katie Jennings’s hour-long Huchoosedah: Traditions of the Heart is a feel-good, fuzzy-headed PBS-style documentary best characterized by its image of a canoe in front of an oversized setting sun. It offers interesting information–about, for example, the attempt to preserve the unique language of the Upper Skagit, now spoken by less than a dozen people–but the TV-documentary collage form obscures more than it illuminates. (FC) (Kino-Eye Cinema, 3:00)

Uncovering Buried Histories

Documentaries, some of them experimental, by Sarah Galloway, Diane Nerwen, Kym Ragusa, Nadine Patterson, and Ayoka Chenzira. (Kino-Eye Cinema, 5:00)

What Is to Be Written Here? Viewing and Re-Viewing the Holocaust

Film and videos by Sarah Jane Lapp, Rachel Schreiber, Wendy Oberlander, and the team of Fabienne Rousseau-Lenoir and Martine Habib. (Kino-Eye Cinema, 7:00)

“The films are intensely personal, occasionally experimental and often provocative. Chicago Tribune.

They are also made by filmmakers who are independent and women, so few, if any, will ever be seen in traditional theaters. To show these films, ranging from the humorous to the inflammatory, takes a special venue, such as this week’s Women in the Director’s Chair International Film and Video Festival. In its 15th year, the festival will feature the work of nearly 100 women from around the country and the world.

The festival will be held at three Chicago locations Thursday through Sunday, March 24. It will open Thursday evening with a party and screenings of greatest hits from previous festivals. This year’s films include documentary, diary, music video, animation and narrative pieces. Among the subjects are families, racism, friendship, marriage and even dogs and hats. The festival will be divided into programs, each with five or six films. Program titles include “Working Girls,” “Homegirls: Work by Chicago and Illinois Artists,” “Looking for Love” and “Flava in Ya Ear: New Youth Video”