WHEN: APRIL 19, 7PM

WHERE: Center for Independent Artists

El Colegio

4137 Bloomington Avenue South, Minneapolis

612.724.8392 www.c4ia.org

COST: Sliding fee scale $5 - 10.

Proceeds will go to Diane Wilson's Toxic Tour with the Clean Catch Campaign -to teach fisher people how to test their water for specific contaminants and demand zero discharge agreements from polluting industries. Wilson will restore an old shrimp boat and take it from the Gulf of Mexico up the eastern seaboard in her quest to save the waters and restore the Clean Water Act to its original goal: zero discharge. (see TEXAS GOLD below)

Currated by local filmmaker and activist Teresa Konechne who says "These are three of my favorite films that bring into focus the strength and depth of women, and of rebels. Georgie Sicking, a legendary cowgirl poet and rancher, along with Diane Wilson, a fourth generation Texas fisherwoman who is taking on the giants of the petro-chemical industry, and of course Meridel whose words are like a machete that cut through the weeds that keep us from seeing what is really important. In these days of extremes and a world that's almost surreal in terms of corruption, technology, and imperialism, these women's stories help us return to our roots and ground us in the "real." This night of films is an homage to these women and all rebels, but even more so, to ignite and/or inspire in each of us, our own rebel spirits."

RIDIN' & RHYMIN' © 2005 RT: 57:00

Directed by: Dawn Smallman and Greg Snider

Cowgirl poet Georgie Sicking pens tough rhymes for hard times. Whether she's on horseback, driving hundreds of cattle through a mountain range or onstage, reciting to hundreds of fans, this intimate documentary captures the remarkable life of America?s most honored cowgirl poet.

Life as Georgie sees it : "I know what it is to feel a wild mustang hit the end of my rope, and I know what it is to rock a baby." Ride tandem with this original American icon, to hear how her west was won.

Dawn Smallman & Greg Snider of Far Away Films, LLC live on a volcano in Portland, Oregon, making documentary films about the people and things they admire most in the world. For more info, please visit www.farawayfilm.com

Selected Awards/Festivals:

Big Sky Award, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, 2005

Director's Choice Award, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, 2006

National Cowboy Poetry Gathering

Santa Fe Intl. Film Festival

Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival

TEXAS GOLD: One Woman's Fight in the most toxic place in America ©2005 RT: 21:00

Directed by: Carolyn Scott

Diane Wilson, a fourth generation fisherwoman and mother of 5 has been battling the giants of the petro-chemical industry in the most toxic place in America.

Surviving imprisonments, surveillance & constant harassment, Diane recounts her hunger strikes and civil disobedience actions that have made this self-proclaimed ?unreasonable woman? public enemy No. 1 to the lawless industries who routinely spill millions of pounds of toxins into the air, water & soil.

Diane believes that putting your life at risk is where change happens!

Carolyn Scott ?emerging Filmmaker and long time educator and environmental activist. Carolyn won the Roy W. Dean Writers Grant in 2003 to develop a series that looks at the global ecological crisis through the lives of 5 remarkable women. Her mission is to make films that empower, inspire, outrage and move her audiences to action.

"Meridel Le Sueur: MY PEOPLE ARE MY HOME" 1979 RT: 45:00

Directed by: The Twin Cities Women's Film Collective

Meridel LeSueur - journalist, activist, Communist, feminist, poet, is considered by many to be one of the great American writers of the 20th century.

We see Meridel telling us the truth in her own beautiful words, and narrating from her personal journals written across the first 75 years of her activist and creative life. Always identifying with the struggle, she became the written voice of the people's movements--the workers, the unemployed, women, Indians, the farmers--her stories were their stories.

She died in 1996, but she was still writing & living in Minnesota when a group of women began to meet in the domed bible college at University and 15th on the U of M campus around 1972; the group eventually formed "The Twin Cities Women's Film Collective". They met Meridel through her daughter Deborah who was part of the collective. The filmmakers and Meridel immediately resonated with each other, and the film project was born. With borrowed 16mm technology in their hands, they set about creating a vehicle for Meridel's own history of the Midwest, for her ideas about love and compassion for the earth, for one another, and for the causes of "the people".

Members of the TCWFC will be on hand to talk about the making of this film.