A number of Ithaca premieres as well as appearances by visiting artists will highlight the 18th year of the Women Direct series of films, videos, and digital media at Ithaca College. All of the screenings will begin at 7:00 p.m. in Park Hall Auditorium, and all are free and open to the public.

Wednesday, March 24

"Feminism for the New Millennium"

Visiting Artist: Joan Braderman

Joan Sees Stars, U.S.A. (1993)
Video Bites, U.S.A. (1998)

Ithaca Premieres

Joan Braderman, award-winning video artist, screenwriter, theorist, producer, college professor, and writer, has been a major figure in the feminist media movement. She cofounded the groundbreaking journal Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics. Joan Sees Stars gives a savvy peek at the ways celebrity culture and movie stars make their way into our lives, our beds, and our dreams. Feminist critic B. Ruby Rich says, "Braderman looks at life through rose-colored glasses, then whips them off and dishes the dirt. Joan Sees Stars is no exception: movies meet life, life meets death, and romance meets Perdue chicken in this meditation on our illicit VCR pleasures. Watch and eat your heart out." Video Bites: A Triptych for the Turn of the Century is Braderman’s searing new observation on the art/media/gender nexus.

Braderman will also give a master class on Thursday, March 25, 2:35–3:50 p.m., in Park Studio A.

Wednesday, March 31

"Courage and Convictions"

Visiting Artist: Lucia Murat

Sweet Power, Brazil (1996)

Ithaca Premiere

Sweet Power tells the story of Bia, a veteran broadcast journalist who takes over as news director of a major television network during a tumultuous political campaign in Brazil. Amidst multiple candidates, corrupt colleagues, and personal intrigues, she is sucked into ethical gray areas from which it proves difficult to escape. Brazilian filmmaker-journalist Lucia Murat (How Nice to See You Alive) has drawn on her own experiences as a television reporter and human rights activist in this stylish drama about the moral conflicts between careerism, political expediency, and personal and professional ideals. Says Ramiro Puerto of the Sundance Film Festival, "Sweet Power is full of humor, romance, intrigue, and real conflict."

A panel discussion will follow the screening, with Ithaca College faculty members Barbara Adams (writing), Carolyn Byerly (television-radio), and Colleen Kattau (modern languages and literatures), as well as Mary Jo Dudley and Tim Holloway of the Latin American Studies Program at Cornell University.

Wednesday, April 14

"Small Appliances"

Visiting Artists: Jennifer and Kevin McCoy

Various Works, U.S.A., with performance, video, Web sites, CD-ROM, digital image synthesizer

Ithaca Premieres

The first female/male collaborative team ever to appear at the Women Direct series, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy have stormed the international new media scene over the last several years. Their videos, Web projects, and CD-ROMs have been shown at every major media exhibition around the globe. Code warriors who rewrite machine language, these digerati convert, alter, bend, recircuit, and rewire computer systems — but never obey them. Their computerized digital image processing system demonstrates that media art will no longer stay in one fixed form but will be endlessly fluid and changing. The McCoys’ appearance here features an exciting mix of their various "small appliances" that promises to launch their audience into the digital art era.

The McCoys will also give a master class on Thursday, April 15, 2:35–3:50 p.m., in Park Studio A.

Wednesday, April 21

"Technologies of Performance"

Visiting Artist: Kristen Lucas

Various Works, U.S.A. (1994–99), with performance, video, Web sites

Emerging artist Kristen Lucas shows us an exhilarating, spontaneous multimedia mix of performance art, video, digital images, and beyond. Lucas is hailed by curators and art critics as one of the new breed of 21st-century media artists defying the borders between technologies and styles, performance and documentation, real time and media time, and factuality and fiction. Lucas rethinks the analog/digital dialogue by torquing everything with intelligence, savvy, and wit — pushing the envelope of what we think of as media art.

Lucas will also give a master class on Thursday, April 22, 2:35–4:00 p.m., in Park Studio A.

The Women Direct series is programmed by Barbara Adams, writing program, and Patricia R. Zimmermann, Department of Cinema and Photography. Major funding for the series is provided by the James B. Pendleton endowment in the Roy H. Park School of Communications. Additional funding is provided by the Departments of Cinema and Photography and Television–Radio, the Electronic Arts Program of the Experimental Television Center (funded by the New York State Council on the Arts), and Cornell Cinema.