Award-winning experimental filmmaker Su Friedrich screens her terrific new film,The Odds of Recovery, a film about six surgeries, one bad hormone problem, a fifteen-year relationship and the onset of middle age. Acclaimed filmmaker of Sink or Swim and Hide & Seek, Su Friedrich documents her personal journey through a multitude of often unexplained illnesses and the problems she faced while encountering the medical establishment.

The journey through an exasperating health care system is just part of the story, which exposes the ways in which Friedrich ignored her body and the more temporal pleasures of life, and now begins to face middle age, menopause and the fear of death. Friedrich takes a very direct approach to the subject by showing herself in numerous doctors' offices dealing with an assortment of problems - ranging from diseased organs to broken bones to a major hormone imbalance. As she undergoes standard Western treatments, she also documents various attempts to incorporate alternative preventive methods into her daily life, such T'ai Chi, acupuncture, ingesting Chinese herbs and gardening. Ultimately, Friedrich lays bare her medical history as a means to address a perennial human problem: the desire to avoid conflict and deny the need for radical change.

"Friedrich makes flinty and form-minded, extremely pragmatic, highly personal, affecting movies." - J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

Photo of Su Friedrich taken by Rebecca McBride.

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon have been partners in love and political struggle for fifty years. With incisive interviews, rare archival images and warmhearted humor, Joan Biren's 2003 film reveals their inspiring public work, as well as their charming private relationship. When they courageously launched the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, it became the first public organization for lesbians in America. Today, these tireless activists are educating both the LGBT and aging movements on the needs of older lesbians.

A diverse array of dramatic, comic, experimental and documentary shorts. Afterschool Delight (Eve Bregman, 2003) finds 12-year-old Scout and Angie checking out Playboys in her brother's room, while Camouflage Pink (Carolyn Caizzi and Laura Rodriguez, 2002) and Peeling (Heidi Bollock, 2002) feature teenagers with some secrets of their own. Lauren Cook's The Fair and The Weak (2002) deftly draws on 50s educational films to consider her own coming of age. Butch Mystique, winner of this year's Best Short award at San Francisco's Frameline festival (Debra Wilson, 2003), features articulate and thoughtful butch women musing on the mysteries of identity.

Dubbed by critics "the little film that could," Sara Millman's first feature recasts the Robin Hood legend as an urban romance between an idealistic social worker and a charming French thief. The streets and alleys of Oakland take the place of Sherwood Forest, and the evil king is institutionalized racism and poverty. These partners in love and crime face an uncertain future, as Brooklyn's drive to steal from the rich fuels Robin's fire to give to the poor. "a disarmingly sexy blue-collar romance...full of heart and electric chemistry between the two exceptionally gorgeous leads" (Outfest review).