EIKO ISHIOKA is a revolutionary artist whose internationally acclaimed work for stage, screen, advertising, and print media has made her one of the premiere visual artists of the 20th century. Best known as the Academy Award winner for costume design for Bram Stokers Dracula, Eikos provocative and shockingly beautiful vision can be seen in The Cell, http://www.downtownvancouver.com/directory/2006-cirque-du-soleil-varekai/http://www.mtlweblog.com/cgi/review.cgi?id=194 http://www.newline.com/nlcauction/eiko_interview.html Before you confront her influences, philosophical constructs and musical theories, you have to confront the voice. Its an instrument that is seductive and serene, a voice of rapture tempered by intellect. Singing a cappella, in multi-tracked harmonies and counterpoint, over sinuous drones, its the voice of promise and mystery.Sheila Chandra captured the Zeitgeist of modern vocal music with her 1992 album, WEAVING MY ANCESTORS VOICES. She wrapped her extraordinary instrument around themes from Ireland and India as well as mediaeval Gregorian chants. In the process, Chandra embodied a more archetypal sound. WEAVING was the first in a trilogy of recordings with THE ZEN KISS and ABONECRONEDRONE. If those were definitive statements, then the music heard here, recorded before and after the trilogy, is of an artist on an odyssey of discovery, with ancient maps, tarnished signposts and cloudy prophecy.Although WEAVING MY ANCESTORS VOICES illuminated Sheila Chandra as a beacon of vocal exploration, she had already spent a decade exploring many of the sounds that would become codified on the trilogy.ROOTS AND WINGS paved the way for the trilogy where Chandra perfected her vocal drone concepts and global connections. In a 1993 interview for the radio program, Echoes, she said:I was intending to highlight the spiritual ancestors that Ive claimed rather than my actual ancestors. It might be a great soul and gospel singer or it might be an Andalusian singer or it might be an Indonesian singer, or it might be Gregorian chant or Bulgarian music. Any of the things which I think are very, very skilful and ornate but also heart-rending. Those are the things that Ive listened to and just been compelled to try and sing.And thats where Sheila Chandra has always worked, beneath the surface, deeper than the soothing tones of New Age divas, more emotionally resonant. Her radiant voice lures you in with its sensuous, soothing tones and perfect pitch technical mastery, then unfolds a world of archetypal connections and emotional nuance. Sheila Chandra creates a music that touches the spirit, that speaks to a primal source within us.John Dilibertohttp://www.sheilachandra.com/albums/retrospect.htmlhttp://www.sheilachandra.com/ Feminist Film Theoryby Anneke SmelikIntroduction Feminism is a social movement which has had an enormous impact on film theory and criticism. Cinema is taken by feminists to be a cultural practice representing myths about women and femininity, as well as about men and masculinity. Issues of representation and spectatorship are central to feminist film theory and criticism. Early feminist criticism was directed at stereotypes of women, mostly in Hollywood films (Haskell 1973/1987, Rosen 1973). Such fixed and endlessly repeated images of women were considered to be objectionable distortions which would have a negative impact on the female spectator. Hence, the call for positive images of women in cinema. Soon, however,