The films of Sara Driver have recently received a long-overdue jolt of critical and popular attention, with a special screening series at the Anthology Film Archives in March and April in New York as well as additional international screenings. On May 1, 2012, the UCLA community had the rare privilege of participating in this revived interest at a nevent titled “Stranger Than Fairy Tales: Two Films by Sara Driver,” which was organized by Melnitz Movies and cosponsored by the Center for the Study of Women. The event featured You Are Not I (1981) and a new, particularly gorgeous 35mm print of Sleepwalk (1986). After the screenings, Sam Prime, the director of Melnitz Movies, was joined for a Q&A with Harvey Perr and Ann Magnuson, actors in Sleepwalk, and Suzanne Fletcher, who starred in both films.

Of the many performances, talks, and roundtables at Global Flashpoints, The Wife’s Letter and a seminar led by Bishnupriya Dutt specifically addressed questions of race, gender, power, patriarchy, nationalism, and colonialism, and how these issues and others can and should be explored within a transnational context. The first event of the series was a performance of The Wife’s Letter, followed by a discussion with the director and actors moderated by Anurima Banerji, Assistant Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA. On October 11, Bishnupriya Dutt, Professor of Theatre History in the Schoolof Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University and coauthor of Engendering Performance: Indian Women Performers in Search of an Identity, held a seminar on dance and acting in Indian theater. Both events addressed issues of gender andperformance, the colonial and nationalist history of India as related to theater practices, barriers of language and culture, and, more broadly, the effects of holding events such as Global Flashpoints.

Reviews of three 2012 Thinking Gender Panels: GRRR(L) Futures: Subcultures of Rebellious Women; Women’s Rags: High-Brow, Low-Brow and OCD Publics; Dirty Work: Women and Unexpected Labor.