Angles: Women Working in Film and Video (1993)

people Dalida Maria Benfield has been named the program director for the Chicago-based Women in the Director's Chair. Benfield’s experience includes independent video art production, grassroots production and teaching. Her videos include Women of Pilsen, an oral history project with Chicana women in Chicago; Canal Zone, an experimental documentary examining the impact of United States colonialism in Panama on her family’s life; and Potential Pictures, an experimental narrative describing the complexities of a woman's decision to have an abortion. One of her goals is to work in media to create cross-cultural communication. She is helping form a youth media collective and working with videomaker Raul Ferrera-Balanquet to expand the Latino Midwest Video Collective. Delle Chatman, screenwriter and professor at Northwestern University, lead a discussion on sceenwriting at the Blacklight Festival of International Black Cinema in Chicago. Producer Carol Mundy Lawrence lead a workshop on documentary production management at the festival. Portia Cobb is the new director of Community Media Project in Milwaukee, Wis. She has been working with CMP since September 1992, and will be replace Acting Director Iverson White. Working with media educator Chris Bratton, Cobb has involved local youth in a series of video production workshops. CMP produced Signs of the Times which received national attention. It also provides youths access to contemporary video artists and their work as well as film and video screenings by and about people of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Cobb received her bachelor’s degree from Mills College and her master’s in film from San Francisco State University. She was a producer/programmer at Pacific Radio in Berkeley, Calif., and pro grammed film and video for the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. As a community media educator, Cobb has served internships with the Black Audio Collective and Ceddo Workshop in London and the Watershed Media Collective in Bristol, England. This past May, Cobb was invited to attend the 39th International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, Germany, where she appeared on a panel and screened her work, No Justice, Portia Cobb REL RPA SSL BEAL ATE TWD ST SEIT Se LE EE IO OT ROTEL LDL EEL LE EL EE SEO LO AEG E ELIS, No Peace: Young, Black, imMEDIAte! Peruvian filmmaker Marianne Eyde attended screenings of her film “You Only Live Once,” about the struggles of a mountain village against the tyranny of the Peruvian military and the Shining Path rebels, at the Great Lakes Film & Video Latin American Film Festival, Milwaukee, Wis., and the Latin American Film Festival, Chicago. All of the screenings of the film at the recent Toronto International Film Festival were sold out. Lissa Gibbs was named the director of the 1993 Film Arts Festival in San Francisco, an annual showcase for Bay Area independent film and video artists. Gibbs programmed film and video for San Francisco Cinematheque, Pacific Film Archive, Exploratorium in San Francisco and Film Forum in Los Angeles. She was founding editor of MAIN, the newsletter of the National Alliance of Media Arts and Culture, and editor of the 1992 NAMAC Member Directory. Recently, she directed The Space Between series of open-air projections commissioned by the City’s Market Street Art in Transit program. Randa Haines was presented with the third Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal at the 21st annual Life Achievement Award tribute to Elizabeth Taylor. The Schaffner Alumni Medal, established by Franklin’s widow Jean, is presented each Photo by Cheryl Moody year to a directing alumnus of American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film and Television Studies or the Directing Workshop for Women, which Haines participated in from 1975-77. From her debut work on Children of a Lesser God to The Doctor and the soon-to-be released Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, Haines has firmly established herself as a top director in the U.S. Emily A. Hart’s On With The Wind, was screened at the following festivals: Sundance Film Festival, Festival International du Court Metrage de Clermont-Ferrand, Black Maria Film and Video Festival (Directors’ Award), Bucks Co. Independent Film Tour (Judges’ Commendation), Brooklyn Arts Council and Video Festival, Aspen Shortfest, Charlotte Film and Video Festival (Directors’ Choice Award), Earthpeace Film Festival, National Educational Film and Video Festival, Athens International Film Festival, and the Humboldt International Film Festival (Peoples’ Choice Award for which she won a subscription to Angles). Barbara Koppel received the Dorothy Arzner Special Recognition Award for directing at the 17th annual Crystal Awards luncheon celebrating the 20th anniversay of Women in Film in Los Angeles. The awards were established in 1977 to pay tribute to outstanding women whose talent and endurance have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry. Showbiz Expo A panel on “Directing Your First Feature” was held at Showbiz Expo in Los Angeles. Among the panelists were Selise Eiseman, national special projects officer for the Director's Guild (DGA), and director Karin Howard (The Tigress). More than 125 members attended the Director's Guild networking mixer for women. The topic for discussion was employment in the industry. Panel members included Deborah Norton Golin, producer of America’s Funniest People; Elodie Keene, director and supervising producer for L.A. Law;’ Gayle Maffeo, executive in charge of production for Wind Dancer Productions; Lyn Morgan, vice president of feature production at Warner Brothers; Elizabeth Sayre, director of productions for HBO; and Alice West, senior producer for Picket Fences. New CINE Board Members The following are new members named to the advi sory council on the CINE board: Allison Dollar, the managing editor for In Motion magazine and a former director of public relations and media for the National Association for Senior Living Industries was also a researcher for The James Agee Film Project. Susan Fertig-Dyks, the recent director of communications for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has extensive experience as a producer/director on several award-winning network and PBS documentaries. She is active in the National Association of Government Communicators, and has served as a judge at several major agricultural film festivals, including festivals in Zaragoza, Spain and Berlin. Volume 2 Number2 @ 13