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AWFJ Women On Film – Releasing January 6 and 8, 2010

Jennifer Merin , ,
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AWFJ highlights films made by and about women:

Wednesday, January 6

  • Garbage Dreams – Iskander Films, 79 mins, limited NY – Mai Iskander’s documentary follows three teenager boys who make their living recycling Cairo’s garbage
  • Sweetgrass – Cinema Guild, 101 mins., limited NY, with national roll out to follow – Ilisa Barbash co-directs this documentary about a group of aging shepherds who wrangle their sheep through Montana’s remote and rugged Beartooth Mountains on a final drive during summer of 2003.

Friday, January 8

  • Leap Year – Universal – Deborah Kaplan co-wrote this romantic comedy in which Amy Adams stars as an American women determined to invoke the Irish tradition of women asking men to marry them on Leap Year Day to get her beau to the altar.
  • Daybreakers – Lionsgate, 89 mins.
  • Youth in Revolt – Weinstein/Dimension, 90 mins.
  • Crazy on the Outside – Freestyle Releasing
  • Bitch Slap – Freestyle Releasing, limited – Tough female characters in a knockoff sexploitation satire.
  • Pyaar Impossible – Yash Raj Films, limited – Anvita Dutt Guptan wrote the lyrics for this Bollywood romcom.
  • Wonderful World – Magnolia Pictures, 95 mins., limited
  • Waiting for Armageddon – First Run Features, limited – Kate Davis co-directs this documentary about fundamentalists who believe the End of Days is in the near future.
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Jennifer Merin

Jennifer Merin is the Film Critic for Womens eNews and contributes the CINEMA CITIZEN blog for and is managing editor for Women on Film, the online magazine of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, of which she is President. She has served as a regular critic and film-related interviewer for The New York Press and About.com. She has written about entertainment for USA Today, The L.A. Times, US Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Endless Vacation Magazine, Daily News, New York Post, SoHo News and other publications. After receiving her MFA from Tisch School of the Arts (Grad Acting), Jennifer performed at the O'Neill Theater Center's Playwrights Conference, Long Wharf Theater, American Place Theatre and LaMamma, where she worked with renown Japanese director, Shuji Terayama. She subsequently joined Terayama's theater company in Tokyo, where she also acted in films. Her journalism career began when she was asked to write about Terayama for The Drama Review. She became a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor after writing an article about Marketta Kimbrell's Theater For The Forgotten, with which she was performing at the time. She was an O'Neill Theater Center National Critics' Institute Fellow, and then became the institute's Coordinator. While teaching at the Universities of Wisconsin and Rhode Island, she wrote "A Directory of Festivals of Theater, Dance and Folklore Around the World," published by the International Theater Institute. Denmark's Odin Teatret's director, Eugenio Barba, wrote his manifesto in the form of a letter to "Dear Jennifer Merin," which has been published around the world, in languages as diverse as Farsi and Romanian. Jennifer's culturally-oriented travel column began in the LA Times in 1984, then moved to The Associated Press, LA Times Syndicate, Tribune Media, Creators Syndicate and (currently) Arcamax Publishing. She's been news writer/editor for ABC Radio Networks, on-air reporter for NBC, CBS Radio and, currently, for Westwood One's America In the Morning. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association in the Film, Documentary and TV branches and a voting member of the Black Reel Awards. For her AWFJ archive, type "Jennifer Merin" in the Search Box (upper right corner of screen).