University of Delaware
Office of Public Relations
UpDate - Vol. 16, No. 20, Feb. 20, 1997

                    Black Maria film fest scheduled
  Selections from this year's Black Maria Film Festival,
cited by National Public Radio as "the festival to follow"
for people who are looking for innovative, powerful and
original films, will be shown at 4:30 and 7 p.m. Tuesday,
March 4, in Room 115 of Purnell Hall.
  A highly regarded, independent, nonprofit festival
exhibiting 50 award-winning, new experimental, documentary,
animation and narrative works, the Black Maria Festival
tours annually. Its mission is to nationally program and
promote independent film of exceptional quality in honor of
the originator of the motion picture medium, Thomas Edison,
whose Black Maria Film Studio was the first in the world.
  The Black Maria annually scours the globe for the
freshest work and has more than a thousand entries each
year. Entries this year include Zahor, a rich portrait of
Jewish youth-artists, poets, activists-just before Hitler's
consolidation of power; The Church of Saint (John) Coltrane,
about a storefront church in San Francisco where Sunday
services are five-hour jam sessions interspersed with
liturgy, sermon and fellowship; Jules at Eight, a
documentary focused on a child prodigy and his jazz guitar;
and Pale in Your Shadow, a personal narrative about a middle-
aged woman revisiting her Mississippi Delta roots.
  The Black Maria's Newark appearance is sponsored by the
Department of Art and the Faculty Senate Committee on
Cultural Activities and Public Events.
  For information, call 831-2244.