Movies at the 2001 High Falls Film Festival

• Feature Films
• Documentaries
• Shorts
• Faith Hubley Tribute
• Ida Lupino Tribute
• Pam Grier Retrospective
  
• Children's Program

Feature Films:
Acts of Worship
Amy’s Orgasm
Anita Takes a Chance
The Business of Strangers
Christmas in the Clouds
Coffy
Daresalam (Let There Be Peace)
Dinner and a Movie
Eisenstein
The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat)
Foxy Brown
Girls Can’t Swim
Hard, Fast and Beautiful
The Hidden Half
The Hitch-hiker
Jackie Brown
La Buche
La Cienaga (The Swamp)
L.I.E.
No Man's Land
The Perfect You
Prison Song
R.I.T. Student Films
Scarlet Diva
The Truth About Tully
Very Annie-Mary
Without a Trace
Yellow Card

Documentaries:
Beneath the Veil
Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Expedition
Fashion Victim: The Killing of Gianni Versace
Gaea Girls
Grateful Dawg
Independent Spirits: Faith and John Hubley
Life and Debt
Shadow Boxers
Southern Comfort

Film Reviews:
Carrie Rickey, High Falls' Guest Curator and film reviewer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, reviewed most of the films selected for the festival.

ACTS OF WORSHIP

USA/2000/94 minutes.

Written and directed by Rosemary Rodriguez. With Ana Reeder, Michael Hyatt, Nestor Rodriguez, and Christopher Kadish.

A chance meeting in the stairwell of an East Village tenement alters the destiny of two women. Digna (Michael Hyatt) is a recovering addict enjoying her sobriety and successful career as an art photographer. Alix (Ana Reeder) is a crackhead who will do anything for a fix. Rosemary Rodriguez' unsparing but deeply humanist drama takes up where TRAFFIC left off. It is less about the hows of crack cocaine trafficking and interdiction than about the whys of individuals desperate to fill up the emptiness within. more...
Friday, October 19, 9:45 pm
Little Theatre III
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AMY'S ORGASM

USA/2000/92 minutes

Written and directed by Julie Davis. Winner of the Audience Award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, this funny and knowing look at intimate relationships features a twenty-something author of self-help books. She has been burned by love and is hesitant to reenter the fray, but finds herself irresistibly drawn to a man who personifies everything she thought she despised... more...
Thursday, October 18, 10:45 pm
Little Theatre II
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ANITA TAKES A CHANCE (Anita No Perd El Tren)

Spain/2001/89 minutes.

Directed by Ventura Pons. Starring Rosa Maria Sarda, Jose Coronado and Maria Barranco. In Catalan with English subtitles. A doe-eyed blonde with the playful face of Giuletta Masina, Spanish actress Rosa Maria Sarda (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER) is the winning heroine of ANITA TAKES A CHANCE, a saucy fable about a 50-year-old widow who loses her livelihood and finds love. In a zesty variation on the theme of if-life-hands-you-a-lemon, make-lemonade, when Anita wakes up one morning to find her orderly life has been bulldozed, she falls in love with the bulldozer operator. more...
Friday, October 19, 7:30 pm
Dryden Theatre
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BENEATH THE VEIL

United Kingdom/2001/45 minutes.

Saira Shah's journey into the heart of Afghanistan reveals a country of desperate poverty, much of it brought about by the deliberate policies of its fundamentalist Islamic government, the Taliban. Women are deprived not only of education, medicine and freedom, but often of the very means of survival. more...
Friday, October 19, 4:15 pm
Little Theatre II
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THE BUSINESS OF STRANGERS

USA/2001/84 minutes

Produced by Susan Stover. With Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles. Stockard Channing (acclaimed film/stage actor and "West Wing's First Lady) and accomplished newcomer Julia Stiles cross swords and then take on the enemy in this fascinating tale of power -- in the boardroom, the ladies room, and the bedroom. more...
Wednesday, October 17, 7 pm
Dryden Theatre
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CHRISTMAS IN THE CLOUDS

USA/2001/90 minutes

Written and directed by Kate Montgomery. With Tim Vahle, Sam Vlahos, Mari Ana Tosca and Grahame Greene. In English and Ute. Upstairs, Downstairs at a ski resort operated by Native Americans, CHRISTMAS IN THE CLOUDS was shot on location at Robert Redford's Sundance Resort in Utah. With this backdrop, rookie filmmaker Kate Mongtomery has created a whimsical comedy of manners and cultural collisions. more...
Wednesday, October 17, 9:30 pm
Little Theatre II
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COFFY

USA/1973/90 minutes

In celebration of Gala Honoree Pam Grier, we are proud to present an archival print screening of her most explosive and most popular film. Grier is the dangerously sexy title character, a shotgun-toting no-nonsense avenging angel out to get the pimps and pushers who destroyed her little sister. An action classic featuring one of the most exciting heroines ever to shoot her way across the big screen.
Sunday, October 21, 8:00 pm
Dryden Theatre
Pam Grier Retrospective
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DARESALAM (Let There Be Peace)

Chad/France/Burkino Faso/2000/105 minutes.

Directed by Issa Serge Coelo. In Arabic and French with English subtitles. This poignant and timely film provides the backstory to the ongoing civil war in Chad, where the essential geopolitical division between the Islamic, pastoral North and the Christian, agrarian South divides the nation against itself. more...
Thursday, October 18, 9:30 pm
Dryden Theatre
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DINNER AND A MOVIE

USA/2001/85 minutes

Written and directed by Lisa Kors. Starring Marianne Hagan, Mike Dooly and Paul Bartel in Lisa Kors' appealing comedy DINNER AND A MOVIE. Katie (Marianne Hagan), an outspoken independent filmmaker, finds the path to the Great American Documentary is paved with landmines. There are student loans and dubious parents to be paid back. There are blind dates and financial backers to court. Katie's financial and emotional resources are depleted. So while she wants to make a deep-dish documentary about Solzhenitsyn, she's so desperate to work that she agrees to produce a shallow reality-TV series about dating in the Berkshires for the Pittsfield, Mass. PBS station. Hey, it beats her McJob as a children's party entertainer. more...
Friday, October 19, 5:15 pm
Dryden Theatre
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EISENSTEIN (2000)

Canada/Germany/2000/99 minutes.

Written and directed by Renny Bartlett. Produced by Martin-Paul Hus and Renee Schmid. With Simon McBurney, Jonathan Hyde and Raymond Coulthard. Had that ironist and philosopher Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) known the Soviet filmmaker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948), he would have written this playful film biography about the artist doomed to be Stalin's favorite filmmaker and hagiographer. With witty dialogue and artful cinematography, screenwriter/director Renny Bartlett creates a vivid portrait of a tormented genius. more...
Saturday, October 20, 4:10 pm
Little Theatre I
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ENDURANCE: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

USA/2000/93 minutes

Directed by George Butler; Cinematography by Sandi Sissel. Narrated by Liam Neeson. Almost a century ago, an expedition to Antarctica became an extraordinary story of survival against enormous odds and of one courageous man who would not rest until his crew was safe. Because of Sir Ernest Shackleton's tenacity all his men lived to tell the tale. The story of the two-year expedition survives through a 1914 film and photography which are artfully woven through this riveting documentary by filmmaker George Butler and cinematographer Sandi Sissel. more...
Saturday, October 20, 4:45 pm
Dryden Theatre
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FASHION VICTIM: THE KILLING OF GIANNI VERSACE

76 minutes.

Produced by Pascale Lanche, directed by James Kent, narrated by Simon Allen. With Antonio d'Amico, Joan Juliet Buck, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Maureen Orth. The story of designer Gianni Versace puts a new wrinkle in the rags-to-riches saga. It literally was gladrags that made the coutourier to rock and Hollywood royalty rich beyond the dreams of avarice. And it also made Versace, gunned down by Andrew Cunanan in 1997 at the age of 50, prey to a stalker who envied how from his humble origins he created an empire. more...
Friday, October 19, 9:30 pm
Little Theatre II
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THE FAST RUNNER (Atanarjuat)

Canada/2001/172 minutes.

Directed by Zacharias Kunuk, written by Paul Apak Angilirq. With Natar Ungalaaq, Sylvia Ivalue and Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq. In Inuit with English subtitles. Based on an ancient Inuit legend, FAST RUNNER is an evocative and erotic fable about a shaman who divides a nomadic community in the Arctic Circle at the dawn of the first millennium. Filmed on location in Igloolik, this film, which won the Camera d'Or (for first feature) at Cannes, is as hypnotic in the beauty of its pale northern light as it is rich in anthropological details such as crystalline igloos and intricate facial tattoos. more...
Saturday, October 20, 11 am
Dryden Theatre
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FOXY BROWN

USA/1974/94 minutes.

Written and directed by Jack Hill. Starring Pam Grier, Antonio Fargas and Katheryn Loder.

"Don't mess aroun' with Foxy Brown!" advertised the posters for Pam Grier's second star vehicle. It features her in the title role, as a nurse on a mission to find those who gunned down her federal agent boyfriend. Though made for peanuts, the movie turned Grier into an icon, a combination James Bond and Dirty Harry, seeking revenge and justice when all institutions fail. Although earnest filmgoers were made uncomfortable by its vigilantism, FOXY BROWN was one of the first American films to show a woman flex both Her moral macho and her muscles.
Thursday, October 18, 11 pm
Cinema Theatre

Pam Grier Retrospective
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GAEA GIRLS

UK/2000/106 minutes

Produced and directed by Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams. With Takeuchi Saika and Nagayo Chigusa. In Japanese with English subtitles. Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams, the women who brought us DREAM GIRLS, the surreal 1994 documentary about a Japanese finishing school for female impersonators, now give us GAEA GIRLS, about women's wrestling in the Land of the Rising Sun. More like Marine recruits than World Wrestling Federation showmen, the Gaea girls are young women seeking identity, not mere celebrity. more...
Saturday, October 20, 5 pm
Little Theatre II
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GIRLS CAN'T SWIM (Les Filles Ne Savent Pas Nager)

FRANCE/2000/102 minutes

Directed by Anne-Sophie Birot, written by Birot and Christophe Honore. With Isild Le Besco, Karen Alyx, and Marie Riviere. In French with English subtitles. Gwen (Isild Le Besco) and Lise (Karen Alyx) are sexy and 17, looking forward to another summer in Brittany, where Gwen lives and Lise spends her holidays. Two girls in the fishbowl of adolescence trying to break out, they keep smacking into the glass that contains them. Both were reared in families where their parents are estranged and neither knows her father very well. Perhaps this is why Gwen and Lise are both so ravenous for male attention and affection. Like bathers on their beloved Brittany coast, Gwen and Lise struggle to keep their heads above water as the emotional waves crash around them. more...
Saturday, October 20, 1:45 pm
Little Theatre I
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GRATEFUL DAWG

USA/2000/81 minutes.

Produced and directed by Gillian Grisman. Featuring Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Joe Craven and Bela Fleck. Not only Deadheads but all music lovers will enjoy this celebration of the musical friendship between the late Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia and mandolin player David Grisman. Directed by Grisman's daughter Gillian, GRATEFUL DAWG is a bluegrass festival the filmmaker aptly likens to a home-made patchwork quilt, with all the stitches showing. more...
Thursday, October 18, 9:00 pm
Little Theatre I
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A Tribute to.... IDA LUPINO

Director, writer, producer, and actor Ida Lupino was the sole woman in 1950s Hollywood to create a sizable body of work in film and television that both challenged social codes and entertained. She is an icon for the many women who have, without recognition, contributed to cinema's evolution.
Ida Lupino Tribute
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HARD, FAST, AND BEAUTIFUL

USA/1951/78 minutes

Directed by: Ida Lupino. With Claire Trevor and Sally Forrest. Restored 35mm print from The British Film Institute. Greed takes center court in Lupino's telling of the rise of a young tennis star (Forrest), and the complications that come with success. Claire Trevor, as the overly ambitious mother, gives a razor-sharp performance, as encouragement turns to exploitation. It is a key work by Lupino's independent production company The Filmmakers. Lois Weber (1882-1939) Concert pianist Weber entered film early in the medium's evolution, first as an actress, often co-starring with her husband Phillips Smalley. She took the director's helm in 1913 and quickly became the highest-paid woman filmmaker in the world. Outspoken and controversial, Weber refused to ignore social concerns of consequence, such as birth control in WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN (1916). With THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE (1917), BORROWED CLOTHES (1918), WHEN A GIRL LOVES (1919), and THE BLOT (1921), Weber revealed her skills, technically and artistically, in making the spectacle of cinema personal.
Friday, October 19, 3 pm
Dryden Theatre
Ida Lupino Tribute
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THE HIDDEN HALF

Nimeh-Ye Penhan/2001/103 minutes

By Tahmineh Milani. Following Milani’s exuberantly feminist melodrama Two Women, The Hidden Half reprises the theme of women’s complex, interwoven intellectual and sentimental lives, boldly touching on many controversial subjects regarding Iranian attitudes toward women. Star Niki Karimi takes on the difficult role of a demure housewife married to a judge on his way to see a woman prisoner accused of murder. He doesn’t know that his wife, too, is a former political militant. The story is told in a series of flashbacks as the husband reads his wife’s diary/confession, in which she asserts her right to be herself and to have loved another man.
Thursday, October 18, 2:30 pm
Dryden Theatre
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THE HITCH-HIKER

USA/1953/64 minutes

Directed by Ida Lupino. With Pat O'Brien and Jack Klugman. Restored 35mm print from The British Film Institute. This unflinching film noir tells the true story of two friends on a fishing trip who pick up a hitchhiker and find themselves held captive by a gun-toting madman. Lupino's direction maintains tension throughout, as the friends' car becomes a prison cell and over the radio they learn of their passenger's killing spree. An unsettling gem of the genre, THE HITCH-HIKER stands as one of Lupino's finest films.
Saturday, October 20, 2:30 pm
Dryden Theatre
Ida Lupino Tribute
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INDEPENDENT SPIRITS: Faith and John Hubley

USA/2001/62 minutes

Produced by Patty Wineapple, directed by Sybil DelGaudio. With John Hubley, Faith Hubley and Dede Allen. Had Paul Klee and Joan Miro made watercolors that moved, they would have resembled the sunny shimmery animations of Faith and John Hubley, films that defined the ethos and esthetic of the '50s and '60s. John, a renegade from the Disney assemblyline, and Faith, a dropout from Columbia Pictures met in the '40s, married in the '50s and in their artistic collaborations such as MOONBIRD they reinvented the art of animation for the atomic age.
Thursday, October 18, 8:30 pm
Little Theatre II
Faith Hubley Tribute
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JACKIE BROWN

1997/USA/144 minutes.

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, based on Elmore Leonard's novel RUM PUNCH. Starring Pam Grier, Robert Forster, Samuel L. Jackson, Bridget Fonda and Robert De Niro.

Quentin Tarantino's cockeyed tribute to second chances stars Pam Grier as a midlife Isis, a fortyish stewardess who plays Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agents off against the gunrunner for whom she smuggles cash. Can this fox outfox the feds and the finagler? As Brown improvises her fate, pretending to cooperate with each while acting purely in her own self-interest, the wittily-plotted movie brilliantly reinvents itself.
Friday, October 19, 11 pm
Cinema Theatre
Pam Grier Retrospective
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LA BUCHE

France/1999/107 minutes.

Directed by Daniele Thompson, written by Daniele and Christopher Thompson. With Sabine Azema, Emmanuelle Beart, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Francoise Fabian and Claude Rich. In French with English subtitles. The family as sustainer and destroyer is the subject of Daniele Thompson's anxious comedy named for the Buche Noel, or Christmas log, that is the centerpiece and dessert of the French holiday meal. Three sisters, kids of divorce, approach December 25 from very different perspectives. The only shared emotion is worry that for the first time in years, their estranged parents will break bread together. more...
Wednesday, October 17, 7:30 pm
Little Theatre
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LA CIENAGA (The Swamp)

Argentina and Spain/2001/103 minutes.

Produced by Lita Stantic, written and directed by Lucrecia Martel. With Mercedes Moran, Graciela Borges, and Martin Adjemian. In Spanish with English subtitles. Something's rotten in the provincial town of Salta, Argentina, north of Buenos Aires, and it's not the smell emanating from the revelers at Carnival. Mecha (Graciela Borges), the matriarch of a large, sprawling family that runs wild and rabid in its kennel of an estate, inhales the odor of familial decay. In Lucrecia Martel's family portrait, there are children desperate for motherlove, mothers desperate for emotional sustenance, and needy spouses who stray to get their needs fulfilled. more...
Thursday, October 18, 5pm
Dryden Theatre
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L.I.E.

USA/2001/97 minutes.

Directed by Michael Cuesta, written by Stephen M. Ryder, Michael Cuesta And Gerald Cuesta. Produced by Rene Bastian, Michael Cuesta, Linda Moran and Valerie Romer. With Brian Cox, Paul Franklin Dano and Bill Kay. Michael Cuesta's provocative and disturbing look at the American family focuses on Howie (Paul Franklin Dano), a 15-year-old Long Island teen who has physically lost his mother in an auto accident and emotionally lost his father. Hungry for emotional support, and vulnerable to the desires of stronger souls, Howie at first falls in with a charismatic schoolmate (Billy Kay) who tutors him in the art of housebreaking and then with a much older man (Brian Cox) who appears to be a pedophile. more...
Saturday, October 20, 9 pm
Little Theatre I
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LIFE AND DEBT

USA 2001 86 minutes

Music by Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, Bob Marley, Harry Belafonte, and Peter Tosh.

One love. One heart. And one whopping interest payment. The subversive travelogue LIFE AND DEBT is a rough guide to Jamaica, examining how the lending policies of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have not bolstered but rather undermined the economy of the island paradise. Free trade has proved to be very, very costly to local farmers and factory workers.

Inspired by novelist Jamaica Kincaid's nonfiction book A SMALL PLACE, and narrated by the writer herself, Stephanie Black's chronicle takes us to the resort hotels where well-fed tourists gorge on bananas and chicken that are not grown locally. Because high interest rates have devalued the local currency, it jacked up the price of homegrown food and made it cheaper to import lower-quality produce and meat from wealthier nations like the U.S.

A particularly poignant point made in LIFE AND DEBT is how neither lenders nor borrowers anticipated the current economic crisis. Former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley, who signed some of the loans, speaks sorrowfully about the unintended spiral of economic Darwinism that has made strong countries even stronger and weak ones weaker. more...
Friday, October 19, 4 pm
Little Theatre I
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NO MAN'S LAND

Belgium/Bosnia/France/Italy/Slovenia/UK/2001/98 minutes.

Produced by Frederique Dumas-Zajdela, written and directed by Danis Tanovic, with Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Simon Callow and Katrin Cartlidge. In Serbian, French and German with English subtitles and in English. In the comically serious spirit of THREE KINGS, Danis Tanovic's dramatic and droll look at the absurdity of war is set in 1993 in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Nino and Tchiki, a Serb and a Croat (marvelously played by Rene Bitorajac and Branko Djuric) don't know whether to kill each other or reminisce about that pretty blonde they both knew back in Banja Luka. more...
Thursday, October 18, 6:20 pm
Little Theatre II
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THE PERFECT YOU

USA/2001/90 minutes

Written and directed by Matthew Miller. With Chris Eigeman and Jenny McCarthy. An unapologetically raunchy version of WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, THE PERFECT YOU is a sex comedy that asks the question "what happens to people who never fall in love?" This slapstick saga chronicles two most imperfect New Yorkers, an aspiring writer (Chris Eigeman) and an aspiring news anchor (Jenny McCarthy) whose worlds collide repeatedly. more...
Saturday, October 20, 1 pm
Curtis Theatre
To be followed by the Seminar The Art of Producing an Independent Film
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PRISON SONG

USA/2000/90 minutes

Produced by Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro, directed by Darnell Martin, written by Darnell Martin and Q-Tip. Darnell Martin's ambitious PRISON SONG is a rap opera starring Q-Tip as Elijah, a promising artist who, until high-school graduation, manages to avoid confrontations with overzealous police that have taken his father's life, his surrogate father's freedom, and his mother's sanity. Harking back to '30s prison melodramas like EACH DAWN I DIE, Martin's movie indicts the police for meting out particularly harsh punishment to African-Americans, indicts the judicial system for its less-than-judicious prosecution of crime, and indicts a privatized penal system that has no interest in rehabilitation, only in profit. more...
Friday, October 19, 8:30 pm
Little Theatre I
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R.I.T. STUDENT FILMS
USA/70 minutes
Saturday, October 20, 1 pm
Little Theatre II
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SCARLET DIVA (Cancelled)

Italy/2000/91 minutes

Directed by Asia Argento. Film editing by Anna Rosa Napoli. Costume design by Susy Mattolini. With Argento, Jean Shepard, and Vera Gemma. The operatic, visual tour-de-force debut of Asia Argento, an autobiographical exposé of love and cinema in a new age, seems inspired by the bravura of the director's father, horror master Dario Argento, but also expresses an original vision. Scarlet Diva holds nothing back, pushing the medium's technical envelope in a series of spectacular set-pieces, while the intimate narrative reveals a filmmaker unafraid of getting personal and unabashedly self-indulgent.
Saturday, October 20, 11 pm
Cinema Theatre
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SHADOW BOXERS

USA/1999/73 minutes

Produced, written, and directed by Katya Bankowsky. With Lucia Rijker, Tanya Dean, Jill Matthews, and Oscar de la Hoya. From the Senate to the Supreme Court, over the past decades women have stormed historically male arenas, and none with more punch than the boxing ring. The critically-acclaimed documentary SHADOWBOXERS (on which Karyn Kusama's indie hit GIRLFIGHT was based), depicts women with moxie and muscle, focusing on Dutch-born lightweight champ Lucia Rijker more...
Saturday, October Noon
Little Theatre I
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SOUTHERN COMFORT

USA/2001/90 minutes/DOCUMENTARY

Somewhere in the back hills of Georgia lives a bearded, pipe-smoking, straight-talking cowboy named Robert Eads, who happens to be dying of ovarian cancer. Two dozen doctors have refused to treat him for fear it will harm their practices; his parents are coming for the visit they fear will be their last, and Robert has fallen deeply in love with Lola, a male-to-female transsexual. A story of outcasts braving a hostile world in pairs, this movie about intimate transgender relationships is all heart. It won the grand jury prize for documentary at Sundance, 2001. more...
Thursday, October 18, 7:15 pm
Dryden Theatre
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THE TRUTH ABOUT TULLY

USA/2000/102 minutes

Produced by Annie Sundberg and Hilary Birmingham, directed by Hilary Birmingham, written by Matt Drake and Hilary Birmingham. With Anson Mount, Glenn Fitzgerald and Julianne Nicholson. The loss of their mother has left the Coates boys unmoored. And their psychologically-remote father isn't much good at keeping a grip on family ties, even though the father and sons work side by side on a farm in big-sky country. Based on the award-winning story by Tom McNeal, Hilary Birmingham's feature debut sensitively examines the way that buried secrets crop up and hurt the very people they were designed to protect. more...
Thursday, October 18, 6:30 pm
Little Theatre I
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VERY ANNIE-MARY

UK/France/2001/105 minutes

Written and directed by Sara Sugarman. With Jonathan Pryce and Rachel Griffiths. Sara Sugarman's eccentric (musical) comedy VERY ANNIE-MARY is named for its heroine, a onetime vocal prodigy (Rachel Griffiths, of HILARY AND JACKIE and TV's SIX FEET UNDER) who for various circumstances is silenced. The film chronicles her colorful struggle to literally and figuratively find her own voice. more...
Friday, October 19, 5:15 pm
Little Theatre II
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WITHOUT A TRACE

Mexico/Spain/2000/105 minutes

Directed and written by Maria Novaro. Produced by Tita Lombardo, Mariela Besuievsky, Dulce Kuri. With Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Tiaré Scanda, Jesús Ochoa, Martín Altomaro. WITHOUT A TRACE was born of María Novaro's mischievous and fertile imagination: it's a woman's road movie in which Ana, a sophisticated smuggler of pre-Columbian art, teams up with Aurelia, a single mother who is more concerned with diapers than archeology. As reluctant accomplices in flight from laws and outlaws, they travel from Mexico's dusty northern border to the lush tropical landscape of the Yucatán while unraveling each other's lies and motives. more...
Friday, October 19, 9:45 pm
Dryden Theatre
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YELLOW CARD

Zimbabwe/UK/2000/90 minutes.

Directed by John Riber. Produced by John and Louise Riber. Written by Andrew Whaley and John Riber. Cinematography by Sandi Sissel. Edited by Louise Riber. With Leroy Gopal, Collin Dube, and Kasamba Mkumba. Sex, soccer, and secrets are at the heart of this serious comedy about a 17-year-old athlete, Tiyane (Leroy Gopal) who moves so confidently on the playing field and through life that he imagines himself untouchable by the consequences of his extra-athletic activities. But a night of unprotected sex alters his personal landscape and Tiyane must contemplate bigger questions than the simple one of when is the best time to go pro. more...
Saturday, October 20, 6:40 pm
Little Theatre I
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SHORTS PROGRAM
Shorts Program Curator: Karen vanMeenan
The following shorts will be played throughout the festival:

The Bet
Directed by Eva F. Dahr.
Norway.
5:00 minutes. Color/35mm.
Two young boys witness a burial, making a childlike bet. But the event takes on a different meaning when they discover the human side of the occasion.
Print source: Norwegian Film Institute: torils@nfi.no

Breaking Up With Bob
Written and directed by Allison Robinson. Produced by Sharre Jacoby.
US, 2000.
12:35 minutes. Color/Beta SP.
This comedy follows a neurotic woman in her attempt to end an unhealthy relationship. She tries self-help tapes, steadfast denial, and finally therapy which she hopes will give her strength to once and for all . . .break up with Bob.
Print source: Allison Robinson: peele34@aol.com.

The Bride and Broom
Written and directed by Mabebe Delgado.
US.
3:00 minutes. Color, FORMAT.
This lively animation celebrates a woman's brief escape from reality while engaging in mundane housework.
Print source: Myriam Varela: (212) 260-7299.

By Courier
Academy Award Winner.
Written and directed by Peter Riegert. Produced by Sarabeth Litt.
US, 2000.
13:35 minutes. Color, FORMAT.
Two lovers are no longer speaking to one another. As articulate and intelligent as they are, they can't breach the gap without the "poetic" assistance of a thirteen-year-old boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Based on a story by O. Henry.
Print source: Sarabeth Litt: (212) 631-3469.

Entrevue (Meeting)
Written and directed by Marie-Pierre Huster.
France.
8:34 minutes. Color, 35mm.
Two women share an anonymous passionate moment and later meet again under quite different circumstances.
Print source: Compagnie Panoptique: panoptique@phares-balises.fr

Flight of the Stone
Written, directed, and produced by Susanne Horizon-Fränzel.
US, 2000.
15:00 minutes. Color, 35mm.
A young man throws a stone at an enemy. The stone misses its goal, but enters into the earth's orbit. As it travels back to the starting point, the stone witnesses human relationships and disputes.
Print source: Bullfrog Films: John@BullfrogFilms.com

Gottcha!
Directed by Sirin Eide. Written by Tove Cecilie Sverdrup.
Norway.
7:30 minutes. Color, 35mm.
A clever young girl learns that when people are out to get you, it is best to fix it so they go after each other instead.
Print source: Norwegian Film Institute: torils@nfi.no

The Great Pancake Race
Written, produced, directed, and photographed by Barbara Lindstrom.
US, 2000.
7:47 minutes. Color, 1/2" video.
A short history of this comical race, run simultaneously in England and Kansas, which starts with a pancake in a skillet and ends with a kiss.
Print source: Barbara Lindstrom: (800) 931-5015.

Grrlyshow
Written, produced, directed, and photographed by Kara Herold.
US, 2001.
19:00 minutes. Color, Beta SP.
An explosion of fringe feminism and print media, Grrlyshow is a powerful and rebellious message from new, often ignored, voices.
Print source: Marta Sanchez, Women Make Movies: ms@wmm.com.

The Hat
Directed by Michele Cournoyer.
Canada, 1999.
6:00 minutes. B&W, 35mm.
An exotic dancer recalls an incident from childhood in which she was physically abused. Her painful and graphic memories are explored through black ink drawings, spare and rapidly executed, which flow together in a succession of troubling and striking metamorphoses.
Print source: Marta Sanchez, Women Make Movies: ms@wmm.com.

i carry your heart with me
Directed by Marianne Petit.
US, 2000.
3:30 minutes. Color, Beta SP.
In this inventive claymation, an e. e. cummings poem is brought to life.
Print source: Marianne Petit: marianne@mrpetit.com

In Between
Written and directed by Kati Behumi, produced by Enna Osborn.
US, 1998.
9:30 minutes. Color, 16mm.
In Between explores a woman's search for understanding and acceptance in a culture unaware of her heritage, blending documentary-style footage with narrative sequences. Print source: Kati Behumi: kbehumi@hotmail.com

Inherited Memories
Written, directed, animated, and produced by Cynthia Rubin.
US, 1997.
3:07 minutes. Color, Beta SP.
This computer animation fuses the aesthetics of painting with the illusion of modulating space, embarking on a journey into the world of the filmmaker's ancestors in Jewish Eastern Europe.
Print source: Cynthia Rubin: http://CBRubin.net

The Laughing Club of India
Directed by Mira Nair.
US, 2000.
35:00 minutes. Color, 16mm.
This film explores the power of laughter through the strangely popular phenomenon of laughing clubs in contemporary Bombay. Founded by a doctor, these clubs bring hundreds of people together, regardless of caste or class, to laugh for 40 minutes each day.
Print source: Payal Sethi, Mirabai Films: payal@mirabaifilms.com

One Day Crossing
Academy Award Nominee.
Directed by Joan Stein. Written by Christina Lazaridi, story by Joan Stein and Christina Lazaridi.
US, 2000.
25:00 minutes. B&W, 16mm.
Budapest, October 15, 1944: As the Hungarian fascist party the Arrow Cross, gains power, a young mother desperately struggles to conceal her family's dark secret.
Print source: Joan Stein: js@madstonefilms.com

Peekaboo Sunday
Written and directed by Laura Levine.
US, 2000.
1:45 minutes. Color, Beta SP.
A gripping yarn of animal husbandry, this short documentary features a woman passionate about raising miniature horses.
Print source: Laura Levine: LauraL6000@aol.com

Pormenores (Details)
Directed by Flavio Frederico, written by Claudia Alves and Flavio Frederico. Produced by Zita Carvalhosa and Flavio Frederico.
Brazil, 2000.
5:00 minutes. B&W, 35mm.
A portrait of a relationship in crisis, told through the sounds of the breakfast table.
Print source: Cinematografica Superfilmes: super@superfilmes.com.br

Roadside Assistance
Written, directed, and produced by Jennifer Derwingson.
US, 2001.
19:43 minutes. Color, 35mm.
When their bus breaks down, a retired B-movie actress turned Las Vegas magician and an ex-March of Dimes poster child teach a reluctant bridesmaid about love and the true nature of beauty, offering some roadside assistance.
Print source: Sandrine Cassidy, USC School of Cinema: cassidy@cinema.usc.edu

Seraglio
Academy Award Nominee.
Written and directed by Gail Lerner and Colin Campbell. Produced by Colin Campbell, Gail Lerner, and Martin Huberty.
US, 2000.
13:00 minutes. Color, 35mm.
After finding an anonymous love letter tucked inside a cabbage, an unhappy housewife becomes an unlikely seductress, turning her quiet neighborhood upside down. Print source: Colin Campbell: ccandgl@aol.com

Smackers
Written, directed and produced by Tara Miele.
US, 2001.
1:22 minutes. Color, 35mm.
Smackers is an oddball comedy about the downfall of junior-high royalty.
Print source: Tara Miele: t_meile@hotmail.com

Sweet
Written and directed by Elyse Couvillion.
US, 2000.
4:00 minutes. Color, 35mm/mini DV.
A brief, sensual ride through the rapture and realities of love.
Print source: Elyse Couvillion: (323) 935-8199

synchro
Written, directed, produced, and photographed by Kristen Nutile.
US, 2000.
7:30 minutes. Color, 16mm.
This short documentary explores gender boundaries in sports, telling the story of Bill May, the only male competitive synchronized swimmer in the world.
Print source: Kristen Nutile, Soft Spoken Films: knutile@yahoo.com

Two Grey Hills
Written and directed by Emma Wilcockson. Produced by Emma Wilcockson, Gai Wright, and Brent Kinetz.
US, 2001.
25:30 minutes. Color, 16mm.
George left town to spare his one love, Nellie, the shame of his intensifying alcoholism. Years later, he returns home claiming to be a changed man and Nellie must decide if she's prepared to risk her new life to try again.
Print source: Emma Wilcockson: bananaboat@prodigy.net

When the Day Breaks
Academy Award Nominee.
Written and directed by Wendy Tilbis and Amanda Forbis.
Canada, 2000.
9:35 minutes. Color, 35mm.
Ruby the pig witnesses a tragic event and finds comfort in the connectedness of all things.
Print source: National Film Board of Canada, New York office: NewYork@nfb.ca

Karen vanMeenen is the editor of Afterimage, the Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, as well as (from 1998 to 2001) the director of the Rochester International Film Festival, the oldest festival in the world dedicated to the art of short film and video. She is also a freelance programmer, curating or participating in the judging of film and video programs for a variety of organizations including Visual Studies Workshop, the Asbury Film Festival, Young Audiences of Rochester, the National Association of Artists' Organizations, and the National Association for Poetry Therapy.
Saturday, October 20, 3 pm
Little Theatre II
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A Tribute to…Faith Hubley

Join us in honoring Faith Hubley, the doyenne of animation, at two separate screenings, and several events.

On Thursday, learn about the prolific artist's life and collaboration with her husband in INDEPENDENT SPIRITS: FAITH HUBLEY/JOHN HUBLEY.

Then on Friday, join Ms. Hubley for a screening and discussion of several of her acclaimed shorts (listed below).

On Saturday, Ms. Hubley will be presented with "The Web of Life Award," as part of the Closing Night Gala ceremony.

Then finally on Sunday, Ms. Hubley will discuss her career and her working method, screen her autobiographical film MY UNIVERSE, INSIDE OUT, and show the storyboards for her next film at a special animation workshop. (Please refer to Events: Workshops for more details.)

A Selection of Films
Approx. time: 60 minutes.
This screening will focus on Faith's solo work from the last twenty-six years. Faith will present seven of her short films:

WOW (Woman of the World)
1975 color 10 min.
This remarkable collage of world art explores the changing relationship between woman and man throughout history.

THE BIG BANG & OTHER CREATION MYTHS
1981 color 11 min.
Six primal myths from around the world are interpreted through colorful images and music.

ENTER LIFE
1981 color 61/2 min.
Created for a Smithsonian Natural History exhibition, this film playfully traces the evolution of life on Earth.

TALL TIME TALES
1992 color 8 min.
This cleverly crafted film blends ethereal images, surrealist landscapes, and an evocative sound track to turn our sense of time, culture, rhythm, and reality upside down.

BEYOND THE SHADOW PLACE
1997 color 91/2 min.
Different cultures throughout the world see death as a transition of the soul, rather than the end of life.

OUR SPIRITED EARTH
2000 color 81/2 min.
A portrait of our living planet as magical, mysterious, and ever-changing. She inspires her many spirit helpers and together they maintain beautiful and subtle equilibrium - a prerequisite for life.

WITCH MADNESS
1999 color 81/2 min.
Witch Madness traces the violent persecution of woman throughout history, climaxing in the frenzy of the European witch-hunts of the Renaissance.
Friday, October 19, 6:30 pm
Little Theatre I

A Selection of Films sponsored by .

The Web of Life Award
The High Falls Film Festival's Web of Life award is presented to a woman filmmaker who has demonstrated a dedication to presenting the inextricable universality of human existence, creatively utilizing the universal medium of art to express the interconnectedness-the web - of life on this planet. We find this award particularly relevant given the current fragile state of international affairs, when the process of understanding and peacemaking among peoples has become crucial. Faith Hubley is one of the most celebrated animators in the world of cinema. Her career began with a stint at Columbia Pictures in the 1940s and a 22-year creative collaboration with her husband, fellow animator John Hubley. In the over two decades since her husband 's death, Faith has continued to make her mark as not only an animator, but a painter and watercolorist as well. Her work often uses the art and myths of indigenous people to express the seminal similarities of people and cultures worldwide, and, importantly, is accessible to viewers of varying ages and linguistic backgrounds. Hubley has exemplified these qualities of connectedness in works such as BIG BANG (1982), where she animated creation myths from around the world and BEYOND THE SHADOW PLACE (1997) ,in which Hubley explored the idea of death as a transition period, a popular belief in many cultures and faiths around the world. Hubley has concentrated on the situation of women in such films as WOW (Women of the World) (1975), which addresses the changing relationships of women and men during the height of the women's liberation movement; and WITCH MADNESS (1999), where she traces the persecution of women through history, focusing on the witch hunts in New England in the 1600s. Hubley continues to be concerned with the commonalities of people's visual and emotional perceptions. "I believe that with patience and a one-planet attitude," Hubley says, "we can peacefully solve our problems and realize a few of our cherished dreams." We are proud to present this year's High Falls Film Festival's Web of Life Award to animator Faith Hubley.
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A Tribute to…Ida Lupino

Our tribute to Ida Lupino includes two special screenings of her work. HARD, FAST & BEAUTIFUL will be shown after a short film by Lois Weber. In a separate screening, two shorts by Mary Ellen Bute will precede the H I T C H - H I K E R. Accomplished writer/producer Fay Kanin, who made her way through the studio system at the same time as Lupino, will introduce both programs.

Director, writer, producer, and actor Ida Lupino was the sole woman in 1950s Hollywood to create a sizable body of work in film and television that both challenged social codes and entertained. She is an icon for the many women who have, without recognition, contributed to cinema's evolution.

Lupino landed her first part at 14 in HER FIRST AFFAIR (1933). After establishing her signature screen presence - tough but with hues of melancholy - in THE LIGHT THAT FAILED (1939), she appeared in a number of films. In 1948, Lupino founded Emerald Productions and began her most prolific, provocative period. Emerald emerged as a center for independent filmmaking, daring to address social topics too hot for Hollywood - unmarried motherhood, rape, and parental abuse. Lupino went on to conquer television, forming Four Star Productions with Dick Powell, Charles Boyer, and David Niven. Lupino would direct more than fifty programs - including episodes for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Have Gun Will Travel," and "Thriller." Lupino's style exhibited her ability to balance stark realism with emotion. Lupino's work never received a major award. Critics have dismissed her oeuvre. Collaborators considered her difficult. Scholars have questioned her politics. Yet Lupino's films remain her best advocates, showing that lack of money and society's expectations would not stop her from making films that matter. Lupino's works, fueled by social concern and brio, stand as testaments to her own relentless drive to tell her stories. She helped form film and television into vital mediums for personal expression. Ida Lupino, having always taken chances and filmed taboos, deserves her place alongside the most gutsy of the medium's mavericks.

The remarkable Fay Kanin, whose resume includes writing and producing for stage, screen, and television, will introduce two separate screenings of films by Ida Lupino. Kanin was a four-term president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - one of only two women to ever occupy that position. Her films have won awards in every field. TEACHER'S PET, which she co-wrote with her husband Michael Kanin, won an Academy Award. She has received Emmy, Peabody, Christopher, and Writers Guild Awards for her television films, TELL ME WHERE IT HURTS, HUSTLING, FRIENDLY FIRE, and HEARTSOUNDS. Her Broadway musical Grind, which was directed by Harold Prince, garnered her a Tony nomination. Kanin sits on several boards, including the Foreign Language Film Executive Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which oversees the Oscars for foreign language films. After ten years of serving as chair, she is now vice-chair. She also co-chairs the Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute and chairs the National Film Preservation Board in Washington, DC.

Hard, Fast & Beautiful
Directed by Ida Lupino.
With Claire Trevor and Sally Forrest.
Restored 35mm print from The British Film Institute.
USA, 1951. 78 minutes.
Greed takes center court in Lupino's telling of the rise of a young tennis star (Forrest), and the complications that come with success. Claire Trevor, as the overly ambitious mother, gives a razor-sharp performance, as encouragement turns to exploitation. It is a key work by Lupino's independent production company The Filmmakers. -Peter Dowd

LOIS WEBER (1882-1939) Concert pianist Weber entered film early in the medium's evolution, first as an actress. She took the director's helm in 1913 and became the highest-paid woman filmmaker in the world. Outspoken and controversial, Weber refused to ignore social concerns of consequence, such as birth control in WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN(1916). With THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE (1917), BORROWED CLOTHES (1918), and THE BLOT (1921), Weber revealed her skills, technically and artistically, in making the spectacle of cinema personal. -Peter Dowd
Friday, October 19, 3 pm
Dryden Theatre

The Hitch-Hiker
Directed by Ida Lupino.
With Pat O'Brien and Jack Klugman.
Restored 35mm print from The British Film Institute.
USA, 1953. 64 minutes.
This unflinching film noir tells the true story of two friends on a fishing trip who pick up a hitch-hiker and find themselves held captive by a gun-toting madman. Lupino's direction maintains tension throughout, as the friends' car becomes a prison cell and over the radio they learn of their passenger's killing spree. An unsettling gem of the genre, THE HITCH-HIKER stands as one of Lupino's finest films. - Peter Dowd

MARY ELLEN BUTE (1906-83) Filmmaker and animator Mary Ellen Bute opened new doors for a new medium. Born in Houston, she studied painting at the Sorbonne and moved to New York in the 1930s where she experimented with musical composition and synchronous visual accompaniment. She also made live-action films, including the feature PASSAGES FROM FINNEGANS WAKE (1965). An innovator all her life, Bute sought new artistic and technological possibilities for film until her death at the age of 77. -Peter Dowd

THE WOMEN'S FILM PRESERVATION FUND raised money to preserve the Weber and Bute films in this festival. It was founded in 1995 by New York Women in Film & Television, in association with the Museum of Modern Art and American Movie Classics to ensure that the enormous contributions of women filmmakers are not lost to future generations.
Saturday, October 20, 2:30 pm
Dryden Theatre
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Pam Grier Retrospective

The High Falls Film Festival will award film star Pam Grier the Susan B. Anthony "Failure Is Impossible" Award at 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 20, in the Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House. Grier will be the first to receive this stellar inaugural award, created to recognize a woman artist in the film industry who has persevered in her career and triumphed over difficulties.

On the two evenings leading up to this event, the Festival will host a Pam Grier Retrospective at 11 pm at the Cinema Theatre, featuring two of her most well-known films,

FOXY BROWN
USA/1974/94 minutes.
Written and directed by Jack Hill. Starring Pam Grier, Antonio Fargas and Katheryn Loder.
"Don't mess aroun' with Foxy Brown!" advertised the posters for Pam Grier's second star vehicle. It features her in the title role, as a nurse on a mission to find those who gunned down her federal agent boyfriend. Though made for peanuts, the movie turned Grier into an icon, a combination James Bond and Dirty Harry, seeking revenge and justice when all institutions fail. Although earnest filmgoers were made uncomfortable by its vigilantism, FOXY BROWN was one of the first American films to show a woman flex both Her moral macho and her muscles.
Thursday, October 18, 11 pm
Cinema Theatre

JACKIE BROWN
1997/USA/144 minutes.
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, based on Elmore Leonard's novel RUM PUNCH. Starring Pam Grier, Robert Forster, Samuel L. Jackson, Bridget Fonda and Robert De Niro.
Quentin Tarantino's cockeyed tribute to second chances stars Pam Grier as a midlife Isis, a fortyish stewardess who plays Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agents off against the gunrunner for whom she smuggles cash. Can this fox outfox the feds and the finagler? As Brown improvises her fate, pretending to cooperate with each while acting purely in her own self-interest, the wittily-plotted movie brilliantly reinvents itself.
Friday, October 19, 11 pm
Cinema Theatre

COFFY
USA/1973/90 minutes
In celebration of Gala Honoree Pam Grier, we are proud to present an archival print screening of her most explosive and most popular film. Grier is the dangerously sexy title character, a shotgun-toting no-nonsense avenging angel out to get the pimps and pushers who destroyed her little sister. An action classic featuring one of the most exciting heroines ever to shoot her way across the big screen.
Sunday, October 21, 8:00 pm
Dryden Theatre

About Pam Grier

From FOXY BROWN (1974) to JACKIE BROWN (1997), Pam Grier was the sister who showed the brothers what a woman could be, the superheroine who taught gals how to entice, and when necessary, how to emasculate. She was the Great Emancipator of '70s blaxploitation pictures, the life force who liberated the 'hood from the druglords and women from traditional movie roles.

Before Linda Hamilton went mano a mano with the Terminator and Sigourney Weaver took on the Alien, Grier was already the Athena of action goddesses, inspiring a cult that includes just about every director worth working with. Spike Lee paid homage to Grier's Foxy Brown character - once described as "Kali in a double-D cup -- in his film GIRL 6.

A true heroine, Grier arrived on the scene just when we needed her most. This was in the early '70s, when 20th century feminism was gaining momentum and there was a disconnect between the power that women were feeling and the powerless women we saw on screen. It was bad enough that Shirley MacLaine observed at the Oscars in 1975 (the year that Grier was a Ms. Magazine covergirl), "Funny thing about women in the movies this year. Not too many of us were in them."

Perhaps the only Hollywood legend to work her way up from switchboard operator to star, this daughter of an Air Force mechanic turned went from B-movies to A-list with roles in GREASED LIGHTNING (1977) and FORT APACHE, THE BRONX (1981). With 30 years in the business, she has distinguished herself on stage and on both the small and big screen.

The rare actress with both a powerful physical and moral presence, Grier has played principals and prostitutes, and in so doing she shattered every gender and racial stereotype. --- Carrie Rickey
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Special Children's Program
Come join us for a very special hour, programmed just for children!Recommended for ages 6 and up.

Before the screening, you and your children will enjoy a lively introduction and story by a popular local storyteller. In a short film following the storyteller, a little girl learns about her ancestors as she follows a path of rice through their home. The feature film, FIRST SNOW OF WINTER, is the winner of numerous international awards and will delight you and your children with the antics of an adventurous little duck.

The First Snow of Winter
UK, 1998.
30 minutes. Color.
Directed by Graham Ralph. Produced by Jackie Edwards.
This delightful animated film from the UK tells the story of Sean, "a duck run amok," as we are told by his affectionate but reproachful mother. Though "Fly South for the Winter Day" is fast approaching, Sean and best friend Puffy the Penguin have other things on their minds. Sliding down hills and racing through a landscape awash with the last colors of a waning fall, the youngsters are cheerfully oblivious to any dangers that surround them, such as hungry foxes and jumbo airplanes.
But Sean soon pays a price for his distractibility, becoming separated from his family during the annual migration and breaking his wing in the process. Befriended back on land by a clever and caring water vole, Sean learns how to gather food and prepare shelter for the coming harsh winter.
Through it all the plucky young duck learns about friendship, resourcefulness, loyalty, and love. A favorite on the festival circuit, parents will find themselves cheering along with their children at the uplifting and discussion-provoking ending.
Producer Jackie Edwards has worked on children's films since 1995. Her projects include "The Forgotten Toys," starring Bob Hoskins; SPIDER!; the BBC's "William's Wish Wellingtons" and "Angelmouse;" and Channel 4's "So Many Santas." She is working on a BBC Christmas special entitled SECOND STAR TO THE LEFT and a new series for ITV.

Nupur (Ankle Bracelets)
US, 2001.
9:20 minutes. Color.
Written, directed, and produced by Aparna Malladi.
Little Nupur returns to the seemingly gigantic house of her ancestors, in this beautifully photographed, almost mystical short film. Wandering through the many rooms, she finds traces of her roots, as well as the spirit of her grandfather, walking peacefully through the halls. Nupur's mother lays down trails of rice so the girl will not get lost, drawing the metaphor that a path of life is also being set - one that interweaves the present with the past. It is a path she can always follow "home."

Saturday, October 20, 11 am
Little Theatre II
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Filming in Rochester
The High Falls Film Festival began as an initiative of the Rochester/Finger Lakes Film & Video Office, which boasts the largest and most active crew in the state outside of New York City. Notable films shot in the region include Planes, Trains and Autombiles, The Natural, and The Age of Innocence, as well as several segments of ABC's General Hospital.

Located in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York State, the Rochester Film Office offers complete location scouting assistance, information and extensive production resources and services. Rochester is home to one of the largest, most well developed and cost-competitive film and video production communities in the East, offering non-union and picturesque, landmark locations.

The Finger Lakes is most popular for its variety of American towns, New England style 19th-century villages, quaint harbors and lighthouses, and beautiful country roads. Known for its spectacular waterfalls and gorges, the Finger Lakes is also the second largest wine producing region in the country; its steeply sloping vineyards and clear blue lakes (11 in all) make it ideal for doubling the picturesque wineries and lush grape-growing valleys of Europe. Completing the drama of the Finger Lakes are broad expanses of Amish/Mennonite farmland; horse country (the Genesee Valley Hunt Club in Livingston County is the oldest, traditional English-style foxhunt in the United States); stately manor homes; Ivy League colleges; and countless historic sites (the Mormon religion and the Women's Rights Movement began here).

For more information about the Rochester/Finger Lakes Film & Video Office, please contact Executive Director June Foster or Assistant Director T.C.
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Pellett at (585) 546-5490.