Around the world on the silver screen

You havent seen big hair until youve seen Hairdo, a short look at the sculptured creations African-American women wear in New Orleans, one of this years festival presentations.

Films about body art, Gypsies, technology and tradition, community spirit and identity and gender once again, the Margaret Mead Traveling Film and Video Festival brings fascinating stories of peoples lives and experiences to the University of Pennsylvania Museum.

Highlights include To Walk Naked, a 1995 film that revisits a 1990 incident in which South African women stripped to protest the destruction of their squatter settlement by the Nationalist government; Village of Widows, Peter Blows 1999 documentary about the Sahtu Dene of Deline, Canada, and their tragic connection to the victims of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki; and Women of the Wall, Faye Ledermans 1999 look at the Jewish immigrant women who challenged the Orthodox ban on women leading prayers at the Western Wall.

--S.S.

MARGARET MEAD FESTIVAL: 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 17 and Friday, Feb. 18, and 11 a.m., 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 19, in Harrison Auditorium, University of Pennsylvania Museum, 33rd and Spruce streets. Admission for each evening screening $6, students/seniors/Museum members/PennCard holders $3; Saturday morning and afternoon screenings included with Museum admission ($5, students/seniors $2.50, Museum members/PennCard holders free). Half-price admission for opening night available through a Go West! 3rd Thursday promotion; visit www.gowest.org or call 1-888-GOWEST-7 for details. A complete schedule and description of films is available at www.upenn.edu/museum on the World Wide Web.