"Chutney Popcorn," winner of major awards at the 2000 Berlin, Ojai, San Francisco, Los Angeles Outfest and the 1999 Newport film festivals, will open UB's fifth annual International Women's Film Festival tonight in the Market Arcade theater, 639 Main St., Buffalo.

	A scene from "Spring of Life," a film by Czech director Milan Cieslar that will be part of the International Women’s Film Festival.

The festival, presented by the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender (IREWG), will screen films at the Market Arcade every Thursday at 7 p.m. through March 15, with the exception of March 8 when the university is on spring break.

The Market Arcade was selected as this year's festival venue, say the organizers, so that the entire community can enjoy this unusual series of award-winning films by women directors from eastern and western Europe, Tunisia, Canada, Scotland and the United States. Tickets are $6.50 for the general public and $4.50 for students and can be purchased at the Market Arcade box office on screening nights.

The opening film, "Chutney Popcorn," is a full-length independent feature by Canadian-born, Indian-American director Nisha Ganatra, who received critical raves with her earlier film short, "Junky Punky Girlz." It is an eclectic satirical comedy that offers an unusual and humorous perspective on the lesbian and Indian-American communities with its presentation of an interracial lesbian parenting couple.

The series will continue Feb. 1 with another "indie," "Northern Skirts," a co-production by Switzerland, Austria and Germany directed by Viennese filmmaker Barbara Albert. This subtle and realistic film tells the story of a group of young refugees from the former Yugoslavia who stroll the cafes and train stations of the Austrian border, forever dreaming of a better job, a visa to another land or returning home. A touching portrait of a generation on the run, the film features two radiant young actresses-Edita Malovcic and Nina Proll. Proll went on to win the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Actress at the Venice Festival.

On Feb. 8, the festival will present "Ratcatcher," a film by Lynne Ramsey that explores the terrifying realm of besieged childhood in a way that no viewer will ever forget. Film critic Michael Atkinson calls it "easily the best directorial debut of the year and possibly the most mature and haunting film to ever come out of Scotland.a throat-catching masterpiece of lyricism, observation and stone-cold realism."

"The Spring of Life" ("Pramen Zitova"), which will be screened Feb. 15, is a Czech production in Polish and German with English subtitles by Marca Arichteva, directed by Milan Cieslar. It is the love story of a Czech girl and a Jewish boy, set against the background of Operation Lebensborn, the Nazi program that carefully selected young women as breeding stock and brought them together with elite SS soldiers to begin the creation of an Aryan master race. In this case, the young woman survives the experience and even extracts a bit of revenge.

Other films in the series are "Honey and Ashes" (Feb. 22), "Celestial Clockwork" (March 1) and the seldom-screened 1940 film, "Dance, Girl, Dance" (March 15).

The 2001 festival is co-sponsored by the Capen Professor of American Culture (Bruce Jackson), the Center for the Americas and the following departments or groups: Art History, Classics, Communicative Disorders and Sciences, Comparative Literature, Media Study, Modern Languages and Literatures, Philosophy and Women's Studies; the Graduate Student Association; the American Studies Graduate Student Association; the Anthropology Graduate Student Association; the Media Study Graduate Student Association, and the Graduate Group for Marxist Studies.

For more information, contact IREWG at 829-3451.