6pm - Courthouse Theater

MIX Brasil     [buy tickets]
As a long winter sets in, a dose of Tropicália is just what the doctor ordered. This latest offering from our sister festival south of the Equator rounds up the best of MIX Brasil on their 10th anniversary. Guest-curated by André Fischer & Suzy Capo
All films in Portugese with English subtitles
Community co-presenter: Brasilian Rainbow Group
--program running time: 67 min.

7pm - Maya Deren Theater

Fight Back, Fight AIDS: 15 Years of ACT UP on Video     [buy tickets]
Over the span of its 15-year history, ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) has helped to transform the nation's consciousness about the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and made activism a vital part of the LGBT political landscape. Comprehensively documented by media activists and video collectives (Testing the Limits, DIVA TV, AIDS Community Television, et al.), the bold strategies, media savvy, and decidedly queer wit of ACT UP remains a fresh source of inspiration to today's artists and activists through the invaluable trove of images sampled in this dynamic program of AIDS activist video. Guest-curated by James Wentzy
Community co-presenter: ACT UP/New York

8pm - Courthouse Theater

Looking Is Better Than Feeling You     [buy tickets]
"Shake ya ass, but watch ya self, Show me what you workin' with" --Mystikal

With an irreverence for punk rockers, adults like parents and politicians, non-adults like breasts and babies, and people we generally approve of such as artists and scientists, these works reveal that posers are sometimes better than the real thing. We're all staging our rebellions, even against ourselves, and wind up aloof but completely aware of how we look. Guest-curated by Astria Suparak
Community co-sponsors: Ladyfest East

9pm - Maya Deren Theater

Innovations Features:     [buy tickets]
Habit by Gregg Bordowitz (2001, USA, video, 53 min.)

Habit is an autobiographical documentary that follows the current history of the AIDS epidemic along multiple trajectories. The organizing structure is built around the daily routine of the videomaker Bordowitz, a veteran AIDS activist and person living with AIDS for over ten years. As he moves through his day, attending to mundane errands, eating, taking pills, having conversations with friends (some who have diseases like AIDS and breast cancer, and others who are healthy), the routine is interrupted by recurring memories of a recent trip to South Africa, where an estimated over four million people are infected with HIV, the vast majority of whom do not have access to medical treatments. In South Africa, Bordowitz meets people living with AIDS, fighting to gain access to the same lifesaving drugs that he himself depends on to survive. Habit documents the efforts of South Africa's leading AIDS activist group, the Treatment Action Campaign, struggling to gain access to AIDS drugs. Running parallel to this documentation, the videomaker performs a rigorous working-through of ideas concerning privilege, ethics, responsibility, futility, solidarity, hope and struggle.
Courtesy of Video Data Bank

--screened with:

Top 40 Love
John R. Killacky (2002, USA, video, 3 min.) NY premiere

One boy's journey through sex, politics and music. The golden harmonies of growing up, coming out and falling in love inexorably give way to the anthems of loss that follow.

Keep Up With Medicine
Kelly Spivey (2001, USA, Super 8-to-video, 3 min.) NY premiere

A clever animation using vintage advertising images cut from magazines, Keep Up With Medicine offers alternative routes to health and well-being.

Anhedonia
Thirza Jean Cuthand (2001, Canada, video, 9 min.) NY premiere

Through the gauzy membrane of illness, Cuthand probes the indistinct boundary between two worlds: the healthy and the sick.

Habit will be featured in the second edition of Documentary Fortnight, December 13 - 23 2002, presented by MoMA Film at the Gramercy Theater, 23rd Street at Lexington Ave.

10pm - Courthouse Theater

The Young and the Restless     [buy tickets]
Today's queer youth have a whole new outlook on things. Taking their sexuality mostly for granted, queer teens are casting appraising, critical eyes over the fine mess of a world they've inherited. From androgynous tykes creating private realms with a smoke machine to chula homegirls from 'round the way to suburban culturejammers-in-training, these youth are experimenting with their own ways of seeing and knowing. Pay attention, now--the future's in their hands. Curated by the Festival Programming Committee
--program running time: 67 min.