Mark Lapore's exquisite films straddle the avant-garde and ethnography. Like Trinh Minh-ha, he is concerned with looking at other cultures, and also with what it means to make images in another culture. Following the trajectory established by the Lumière Brothers, his observational images are often camera-roll in length. Within the fixed frame, minute gestures become riveting. The duration of our gaze, the duration of the everyday activities depicted emphasizes the act of looking; are these films about the "other," ourselves, or the maker? Both Medina and Sleepers are part of a loose trilogy of work made in Sudan. Sleepers looks back on the experience of going to Sudan twice; images of New York's Chinatown are intercut with those of North Africa. Yet, like the three figures depicted lying in different beds, sleeping or reading, the "consciousness" of these cultures is inaccessible to us, the viewers. We also include Lapore's Sudan Rolls, which originally were filmed as part of an ethnographic project. Only later did he realize that the complexity inherent in these simple shots was an area he wished to purposefully explore.-Kathy Geritz