August's Open Screening had a huge turnout, including a writer from the Seattle Times. You never know who's going to make the scene looking for fresh talent. Bring your VHS tapes and get discovered!

To Empower Women: The Beijing Platform for Action

Straight from the United Nations Fourth World Conference in Beijing, China, To Empower Women candidly shares the struggles and triumphs of women from all walks of life. The video, narrated by Bella Abzug, is designed to call women to action. It demonstrates that women's rights issues are worldwide in scope and that the global women's movement is alive and well.

House of Girls
by Karen Cooper

One cabin, two days, five high school girls and a ton of videotape make for a high energy video akin to MTV's Real World, except this work actually does get real. Karen Cooper finds the power of the feminine voice in the hands of five young strangers with something important to say. Each of the girls direct their own segment, exploring honest, in-your-face feelings about spirituality, billboards, goddesses and creativity! Karen Cooper will be present at the screening.

Mirror Mirror
by Jan Krawitz

Take a look at Mirror Mirror as a diverse group of women reflect on how they were taught to hate their bodies and learned to love them again. Mirror Mirror was selected for inclusion in the PBS series P.O.V. in 1991. Jan Krawitz has won numerous awards for her poignant, artistic and documentary films including an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Individual Documentary.

Chronicle of a Genocide Foretold
by Daniele Lacourse and Yvan Patry
In English and Kinyarwanda (English subtitles)

In April 1994, over 500,000 Rwandan men, women, and children (mostly Tutsis) were slaughtered by Hutus in an act of genocide that might have been prevented. In three parts, Chronicle of a Genocide Foretold shows the roots of ethnic war in this troubled country where "blood flowed like a river"; how and why the international community, including the United Nations, turned a blind eye on the plight of Rwandan victims; and the revenge Tutsi extremists, now in power, wreak on their Hutu enemies. Through interviews with survivors, UN peacekeepers, Human Rights Watch activists and others, the film paints a vast, moving mural of outrage and horror. Never underestimating the enduring power of human hatred, this chronicle still leaves room for justice, and even reconciliation.

Friday, October 17th, 9:30pm

Procedure 769
by Jaap van Hoewijk, The Netherlands, 1995 (85 min.)
Rashomon, the same event takes on radically different perspectives depending on the emotions which color the memories of each of the participants. Mixing archival news footage with the interviews, and underscoring both with a voice-over intoning the actual Procedure 769 protocol, filmmaker van Hoewijk has, in his first feature film, provided a memorable analysis of the passion that continues to rage around the death penalty.

The New Gulag: America's Prisons
by Kari Mokko (USA)

In the United States there are five thousand prisons and one and a half million prisoners. The prison system already costs thirty billion dollars per year to maintain and will escalate as stiffer sentences and tougher treatment are being demanded for criminals. Some estimate that half of all Americans will be incarcerated by the year 2050. This hard-hitting film shows that building and maintaining prisons has become an industry. Private companies are running them for profit, often at the expense of any amenities such as recreation and rehabilitation services. Alvin Brunstein of the American Civil Liberties Union and Marc Mauer, a criminologist, argue both sides of this complex issue.

Radioactive Reservations
Goldhawk Productions, US (52 minutes)

The story of how the Indian tribes may become the repository for radioactive waste is yet another chapter in their sad history in North America. Tribal leader Ron Eagleye Johnny takes us on a tour of four reservations whose inhabitants chronicle the negotiations with the US government to place Monitored Storage Retrieval sites on their land. Commercial power companies have run out of places to bury their nuclear waste, and the lure to these impoverished people is quick money, jobs and the promise of safety. Radioactive Reservations is an eloquent statement from the Native Americans themselves on the vulnerability of their very existence.

Whose Child is This?
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada (50 minutes)

After the Indian tribes were vanquished in North America, the governments of the US and Canada systematically destroyed their cultures as well. Young children were taken away from the tribes and sent to missionary and government residential schools where they were not allowed to use their native language. Often, these babies would be whisked away for adoption by stable white families, taken by social workers who deemed their Indian families unlikely to provide an appropriate environment. This film looks at several families where adults have been repatriated; a complicated emotional process to re-establish native ties on a reservation.