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.
The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blache
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A fascinating Canadian documentary by Marquise LePage (1995) about the French film pioneer (1873-1968) who was the head of production at Gaumont for several years after the turn of the century. It’s estimated that she produced, directed, or wrote more than 700 films. Several talking-head interviews are featured, including ones with Guy-Blache, near the end of her life, and with Francis Lacassin, a major historian of early French silent cinema. On the same program, a short documentary about Canadian conceptual photographer Michelle Normoyle, Peggy Thompson’s Broken Images (1996). (JR) (Film Center, 6:00)
See Critic’s Choice. (Kino-Eye Cinema, 10:30)
Documentary videos by Zarina Barnett, Street Level Youth Media, Ayanna M. U’Dongo, Barbara Mozinski, Shareka King, Sujey Oller, Denise Vega, Lizbeth Sanchez, and April Smith. (DuSable Museum, 1:00)
Paternity Is Uncertain
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)
