MARCH
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
New York-based experimental filmmaker Su Friedrich has suffered more than her fair share of medical problems–over the last several years she’s had a 13-pound cyst on her spleen, an abscessed ovary, polyps on her uterus, a torn ligament in her knee, and an intractable hormone imbalance that clogged her breast ducts. Her struggle with illness is the centerpiece of her latest film, The Odds of Recovery (2002), which combines first-person narration with documentary-style footage to explore aging, mortality, and Western medicine. Friedrich will discuss her work today at 12:15 at a brown-bag lunch sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Center for Gender Studies, 5733 S. University, Chicago; at 2 her 1996 film Hide and Seek, about a 12-year-old lesbian in the 60s, will be screened at the U. of C.’s Film Studies Center in Cobb Hall, room 306, 5811 S. Ellis, Chicago. Both events are free; call 773-702-9936. Tomorrow from 1 to 3 Friedrich will sit on a Women in the Director’s Chair panel called “Is There a Need for Women’s Media (Anymore)?”; she’ll be joined by film- and video makers Yvonne Welbon, Salome Chasnoff, Jennifer Reeder, and Tammy Ko Robinson. It’s part of WIDC’s 22nd annual film and video festival, which will present the Chicago premiere of The Odds of Recovery on Saturday, March 15, at 9 PM in the School of the Art Institute Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus, Chicago. Tickets are $8, $6 for students and seniors; call 773-907-0610. For more on the festival see the sidebar in Movies or www.widc.org.
15 SATURDAY
17 MONDAY
A company soloist once described working with maverick ballet master Boris Eifman as psychologically as well as physically demanding: The director of the Eifman Ballet of Saint Petersburg is a perfectionist who’s wont to change things as late as opening night, and trying to understand him, the dancer said, is a “senseless task.” Eifman will attend a reception in his honor tonight following the 7:30 Chicago premiere of his most recent full-length ballet, Who’s Who, which draws on several styles of 20th-century dance and concerns the adventures of two Russian immigrants in the U.S. Who’s Who runs at the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress in Chicago, through March 23; tickets run $37 to $67. Call 312-902-1500. Tickets to tonight’s reception in the theater’s second-floor dress circle are an additional $40; call 312-742-5320.
