January 16, 2004

UCSD's Giovanna Chesler And Minda Martin To Screen
Short Films At San Diego's Museum Of Photographic Arts

By Patricia Quill

A collection of new, award-winning, internationally celebrated films by University of California, San Diego visiting lecturer Minda Martin and assistant professor Giovanna Chesler will be screened at the Museum of Photographic Arts at 7 p.m. on Feb. 6 and 7.

Desire, film still from Giovanna Chesler's BeauteouS.

Addressing issues of sisterhood, beauty, and female subjectivity, these two Southern California filmmakers are dedicated to bringing female voices to the screen. Working in documentary and narrative styles, they experiment with the film and video form to reveal women with unique experiences and perspectives.

Film still from Minda Martin's A.K.A. Kathe

AKA Kathe, a 55-minute documentary, is a portrait of a Mexican American family confronting the tragic loss of a mother and sister. Through the alchemy of intelligence and decency, this exploration of the life and death of Kathe Vargas transforms the base elements of tabloid journalism, prostitution, drug abuse, murder, and foster care into a moving story of family and humanity.

BeauteouS: The Trilogy, 43 min., is a collection of documentary, narrative and experimental portraits of three sisters and their relationships to beauty. Each film presents a new way of understanding women’s complex interaction with detrimental beauty standards in our society. “My films present unique women on screen: women with divergent perspectives on important issues like beauty, their bodies, gender and sexuality,” says Ms. Chesler.

Together A.K.A. Kathe and BeauteouS: The Trilogy, are unique, thought-provoking explorations of sisterhood and the ways in which women see themselves.

Giovanna Chesler, an assistant professor in UCSD’s Department of Communication, is an internationally exhibited, award-winning filmmaker, writer, and cinematographer. She is dedicated to producing films about women and female characters that reveal unique and diverse female perspectives and experiences. Her background in anthropology, archaeology, and women's studies from the University of Virginia, informs her films. Chesler is developing a documentary feature film about menstruation in America and current trends in birth control, which change the way women menstruate and understand their bodies. Chesler’s work has won numerous awards including the Gold Plaque for Best Student Documentary from the Chicago International Film Festival, 2000; Regional Finalist for a Student Academy Award in Experimental Film, 2003; and the California State University Media Arts Award, Honorable Mention for Experimental Filmmaking. Her work has been screened internationally at festivals including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Sao Paulo Brazil International Film Festival, Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films, Outfest LA, Seattle International Film Festival, and the London Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival.

Minda Martin is the producer, writer, director, cinematographer, sound recordist and editor of her shorts and features, which deal with representations of female subjectivity, mother-daughter relationships, and social disintegration in the American family. Her films and videos have shown widely in major international film and video festivals including the New York Video Festival, Barcelona’s MOSTRA European Video Art Tour, as well as festivals in Athens, Berlin, Los Angeles, Paris, and San Francisco.

Since 2000, retrospectives of her work have shown in Los Angeles and Arizona. Reviews of Martin's work have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The LA Weekly, The Village Voice, Writing, Producing & Directing the Documentary, and numerous other periodicals. In addition, her films and videos have won awards including Best Documentary from the Arizona International Film & Video Festival and the Rutgers U.S.-International Super 8 Film & Video Festival. Martin received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts. She has taught film and video production in UCSD’s Department of Visual Arts and Department of Communication, and in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore. Martin has worked with a number of community-based organizations and has been an independent producer for the Kumeyaay Summer Arts Education Program and the Media Arts Center, San Diego. Her recent short experimental films, Do You Know… (2002) and Love, Minda (2003) are currently screening at museums and competitive international film and video festivals.

Chesler and Martin are two of the respected filmmakers who teach in UCSD’s communication and visual arts departments. Earlier this year, U.S. News & World Report ranked UCSD among the best MFA programs in the country and the school’s graduate programs in multimedia/visual communications 6th in the nation. For more information about the UCSD communication and visual arts departments, go to http://communication.ucsd.edu/ or http://visarts.ucsd.edu/. For more information about Giovanna Chesler and Minda Martin, go to their respective websites at http://www.g6pictures.com and http://www.mindamartin.org/.

For more information about the screening, go to the Museum of Photographic Arts website at http://www.mopa.org/pages/filmpages/nowshow.asp#events and scroll down to Sisters Doin’ It For Them-selves.

Media Contact: Patricia Quill, (858) 822-0661 or pquill@ucsd.edu