"But without verticality,...the ethical order of love cannot take place among women." -Luce Irigaray. The tracing of connections between mothers and daughters traditionally has held little social meaning. In fact, repression of this bond has been seen as a necessary step toward becoming a woman. Naming and inheritance, law and social standing have customarily descended along paternal lines. Tonight's selection of films emphasize the vertical nature of female genealogy, and the possibility of speaking in terms of different origins. In Roberta Cantow's Clotheslines (1981, 32 mins, Color/B&W), a domestic task, the hanging of laundry, takes on social and symbolic significance as a ritual passed from mother to daughter, binding them to each other. Lynn Kirby calls her Love, Lynn (1982, 1 min,) "a poem to my Mother and Grandmother." In Tooth and Mask (1987, 12 mins), Pola Rapaport's mother, the artist Marjorie O'Brien Rapaport, recollects stories connected to two pieces of her jewelry. In The Body Beautiful (1991, 23 mins), Ngozi Onwurah sees her professional role as a black model as raising complex issues in relationship to her mother, who has recently had cancer. Peggy Ahwesh's Martina's Playhouse (1989, 20 mins, super-8mm) envisions a motherhood of fluid roles as Martina and her mother invent new paradigms for mother/daughter relations. -Kathy Geritz