11am FILMMAKER'S BRUNCH
Come enjoy a delicious spread of food and drink and a chance to talk with the film and video makers of the 2004 WIDC festival!

12noon SOUR MIX

Man's Search for Happiness
Caz McIntee miniDV 5'
An instructional slide show for genetically engineered children and their parents. Creepy & captivating.

Spin
Catherine LeCouteur UK beta 10'
Teeming with teenage awkwardness and tension, Spin takes us to a house party where a game of spin-the-bottle leads to something the participants don't expect.

Just Between You & Me
Miriam Kim beta 13'
A little girl discovers her dad's dirty magazine and struggles to sort out the difference between good girls and bad girls in a world of "men's needs."

Whatev... I'm Weird
Nicole Beaudry beta 7'
A teenage girl bears it all for the camera in this hilarious and raw autobiographical testimonial of her weirdness.

Sour Mix
Michelle Oznowicz beta 30'
A young teen fights the delicate balance in setting boundaries with her rockstar rehab mom and a father who works too much and is entirely unavailable.

Savior
Erla Skuladottir Iceland 35 on beta 28'
The teenage daughter of busy parents, our frustrated heroine gets sent to a summer camp for little kids. She escapes into the wilderness of the Scandinavian countryside and there begins an odyssey of survival and epiphany.

Born in Beirut
Liliane Matta Lebanon beta 14'
With historical footage, present day portraits and reenactments, the maker tells her story of growing up in war-torn Lebanon.

2pm BEAH: A BLACK WOMAN SPEAKS
LisaGay Hamilton beta 90'
Beah is the incredibly moving story of celebrated African American pioneer of stage and screen, Beah (nee Beulah) Richards, as told by her protégée and Beloved co-star LisaGay Hamilton. This touching tribute to the life of celebrated actress, poet and social activist Beah Richards documents her struggle against racial stereotypes in Hollywood, and her passionate work for civil rights. Hamilton celebrates the life of this legendary African American actor, poet and political activist, best known for her Oscar nominated role in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. While Richards struggled to overcome racial stereotypes throughout her long career onstage and onscreen in Hollywood and New York, she also had an influential role in the fight for civil rights, working alongside the likes of Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois and Louise Patterson. The film is a fitting tribute to Richard's life of integrity, leadership and service to the two cultures she loved so deeply - the arts and the African American community. (Women Make Movies)

4pm HOW DO THINGS WORK AROUND HERE? Ethnography and Subjectivity in Media Making
Screening & Panel Discussion
Co-sponsored by APOC (Anti-Authoritarian People of Color)
Visual ethnography is a widely used documentary-making style to tell stories and explore cultures and peoples. Panel will include media makers, cultural workers and thinkers who will address technical, ethical and cultural issues in ethnographic filmmaking.

Semishe Manwe
Maura Smith Ethiopia/US beta 12'
What is your name? The youth of Ethiopia are the central subjects of this ethnographic short

Bye Mom
Roos Geevers Netherlands miniDV 5'
"My soul has never been so torn as when Roos started travelling." So opens Bye Mom, Roos Geever's evocative experimental short which seduces the viewer into a dreamy super-8 world of memory, the foreign and the familiar.

Resort
Anna Abrahams Netherlands 16mm 15'
Delicate, slow paced and exquisitely beautiful, Resort presents vignettes of moments within an uncertain context. Residents of this housing project? refugee camp? diverse neighborhood? co-exist with the camera to reveal a brief portrait of the relationships between people and architecture.

Mathamma
Leena Manimekalhi India beta 16'
Mathamma documents a village in India in which many girl children are given as offerings to the patron goddess of the community, Mathamma. A complex web of religious ceremony, cultural convention, poverty, exploitation and subjectivity.

Asylum
Sandy McCleod US/Ghana beta 20'
A Ghanaian woman chronicles the change of her life when her father steps in and insists she undergo circumcision.

Panelists:
Martine Caverl, Moderator APOC Chicago
Tammy Ko Robinson Video Machete
Jyoti Argade Cultural scholar, Northwestern University
Judy Hoffman Documentarian, University of Chicago
Sonia Shah Mediamaker
Leena Manimekalhi Mediamaker

7pm NIGHT PASSAGE
Screening & Discussion
Trinh T. Minh-ha DVCAM 98'
Co-sponsored by Asian American Institute & Asian Social Network

Night Passage is a spiritual tale of a young woman's journey from death back to life, told through the metaphor of a long ride on a night train. An homage to the novel Milky Way Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa, the story of the hypnotically beautiful Night Passage unfolds around the young woman, her best friend, and a little boy. At each stop of the train, the travelers
disembark to encounter a world of waking dreams at once strange and spectacular, yet mysteriously in tune with their inner desires.

Trinh T. Minh-ha is a world-renowned independent filmmaker, feminist, post-colonial theorist, and poet. She has published eight books, has created large-scale multimedia installations, and her six feature-length films have been honored in 27 retrospectives around the world: Reassemblage (1982), Naked Spaces (1985), Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989), Shoot for the Contents (1991), A Tale of Love (1996), and The Fourth Dimension (2001). She has been teaching at the University of California/Berkeley since 1994. Her classes focus on women's work as related to cultural politics, post-coloniality, contemporary critical theory and the arts. Night Passage is her latest film and this is a Chicago Premiere.

10pm WRAP PARTY
Celebrate the closing of the 23rd Annual Women in the Director's Chair International Film & Video Festival with us in the WIDC Theater!