The 23nd annual Women in the Director’s Chair International Film & Video Festival, featuring narrative, documentary, animated, and experimental works by women, runs Wednesday, March 17, through Sunday, March 21. Screenings are at the Women in the Director’s Chair Theater, 941 W. Lawrence. Tickets are $8, $6 for students, seniors with a valid ID, and members of Women in the Director’s Chair. Festival passes are also available; for more information call 773-907-0610. Films marked with an * are highly recommended. The schedule for March 17 and 18 follows; a full festival schedule through March 21 is available online at www.chicagoreader.com.

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A program of politically charged shorts. Charlton Heston stands in for George W. Bush in Diane Nerwen’s The Thief of Baghdad (2003), a collage of snippets from old Technicolor epics that transforms Hollywood orientalism into an indictment of U.S. foreign policy. The war in Iraq also figures in Janet Fuchs and Deb Huston’s Let My Country Awake (2003), a documentary about peace demonstrations held around the country in 2003 that were all but ignored by the mainstream media. Bettina Frankham’s Out of Fear (2003) examines the plight of Middle Eastern and Asian refugees seeking political asylum in Australia. Also showing: Dara Greenwald’s Strategic Cyber Defense, Carola Dertnig’s A Room With a View of the Financial District, and Lori Hiris’s The Invisible Hand. 101 min. (Andrea Gronvall) (6:00)

  • In the Beginning Was the Eye

Black Planet

The title of Underground (2003), Aimee Lagos and Kristin C. Dehnert’s suspenseful short, has a hidden meaning related to the closing quote, from Anais Nin: “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anne Ramsay plays a subway rider shadowed by two sinister characters; our anxiety for her nicely sets up a surprise ending. Austrian Marie Kreutzer’s Un Peu Beaucoup (2002), about two sisters who fall for the same guy, also ends with a twist. Marty Mericka’s Happy Hour (2003) is a droll vignette about singles dishing over cocktails. Also on the bill: Unsynchables at Any Age, Victoria Foster’s affectionate documentary about a California swim team; Virginie Danglades’s darkly comic Sparks; and Sabine Marte’s abstract Stewardessenclip. 100 min. (Andrea Gronvall) (10:00)