Dates:	Thursday, April 15 - Monday, April 19, 1999
Location:	The Brattle Theatre 40 Brattle Street, Harvard Square Cambridge, Massachusetts 617-876-6837
Presented by:	Running Arts, Inc. With additional support from The Beacon Cinema Group
Sponsors:	The Sundance Channel Perrier-Jouet Champagne The Charles Hotel The Boston Phoenix Media One Jane Magazine Up Stairs at the Pudding
Audience:	Annual festival attendance is over 3000, and the audience is estimated to be approximately 60-65% women, 75% college educated, and 70 - 75% between 25 and 65 years of age.
Promotions:	The festival is promoted through the Brattle Theatre printed calendar (30,000 pieces distributed, 2,500 through direct mail). In addition, a 24-page program book with a print run of 5,000 is distributed throughout the greater Boston area. The Boston Phoenix provides full and half page advertising for the festival screenings beginning two weeks prior to the opening. Each year the festival secures feature articles in all of the major Boston newspapers and specialized publications with additonal daily printed "picks," on-line support, and radio and television coverage . A press release is sent to over 200 film critics and arts editors.
Presenter:	Running Arts at the Brattle Theatre is a private company owned and operated by Marianne Lampke and Connie White. Since 1986 they have leased, programmed, and operated the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, a 250-seat historic repertory movie house. Under the direction of Running Arts, the Brattle has won several awards and has maintained its rich tradition as a leading showcase for classic Hollywood and foreign movies, independent film, author readings, and limited musical and theatrical performances. In 1996, Lampke and White formed the Beacon Cinema Group, offering programming and marketing services to other independent film exhibitors including the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Festival History: The festival was founded in 1993, at the initiative of Brattle Theatre co-directors Marianne Lampke and Connie White. From 1993 through 1997 their company, Running Arts, produced the festival and co-presented it with the Boston Film/Video Foundation. Sponsors of the festival have included the Sundance Channel, Perrier-Jouet Champagne, The Boston Phoenix, The Charles Hotel, and Continental Cablevision. In its first year the festival gained instant critical acclaim, winning a "Best Festival Award" from the Boston Society of Film Critics. Over its' six year history, the Boston International Festival of Women's Cinema has developed as a leading showcase for commercial and independent works by and about women. Each year the festival secures "sneak preview" screenings from prominent art film distributors including Miramax Films, Fine Line Features, October Films, Sony Pictures Classics, and others. The festival also launches world and Boston-area premieres of independent works and has helped to secure theatrical film and cable television distribution for independent filmmakers. Many premieres from the festival have received important critical recognition including reviews in Variety. Guests of the festival have included producer Dolly Hall (The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, All Over Me), director Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman), producer Christine Vachon (I Shot Andy Warhol), director Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol), director Claire Denis (I Can't Sleep, Chocolat, No Fear No Die), director Beeban Kidron (Swept From the Sea, Great Moments in Aviation, Used People, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit), director Alison Anders (Mi Vida Loca, Gas Food Lodging), and several others. In 1997, the festival won its second "Best Festival" award from the Boston Society of Film Critics and was hailed by critics across the city: "As the seven-day International Festival of Women's Cinema opens its fifth edition at the Brattle Theatre, the exciting thing is that it refuses to be defined, or settle comfortably into any particular niche...The best films in the festival aren't just fresh and edgy. They resist categorization, bending genders, genres, narrative styles, even subjects...the rest of the film world should be as alive as the women's festival." - Jay Carr, the Boston Globe "Most of the best movies to be seen this week locally will be screening at the Brattle Theatre in the Fifth Annual Boston International Festival of Women's Cinema. Always a fascinating film event, the festival has grown from an expression of a genuine if limited agenda to a harbinger of hope for the future of cinema." - Peter Keough, the Boston Phoenix "This year's Boston International Festival of Women's Cinema is much rawer and edgier than in years past, featuring films that will challenge even the hippest of art house audiences." - Dan Kimmel, Variety "The fifth annual Boston International Festival of Women's Cinema opening this weekend and running to May 1 at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge offers some of the most compelling, contemporary and original new films to be screened anywhere...women filmmakers, whether veterans or young directors unveiling their first films, are making movies with more confidence and complexity than ever before about women's sexuality, independence and choices. The results are nothing short of amazing." - Loren King, Bay Windows