Preceded by short: You Can Drive the Big Rigs (J. Leighton Pierce, U.S., 1989). An impressionistic documentary on small-town cafes which captures the beautiful stillness of the rural Midwest in the hum of a dripping air conditioner. Winner of awards at the Sinking Creek and Bucks County film festivals (not to mention Oberhausen, Atlanta, and Athens!). (15 mins, Color, 16mm, From Leighton Pierce) ---------------------------------------With her first feature, Allison Anders had a niche of one's own-the place of place in women's lives. What Mi Vida Loca would do for the girls of an L.A. barrio, Gas Food Lodging did for those of the drained-of-life town of Laramie, New Mexico, where a family of women are tenuously dedicated to the proposition that their lives are not a truck stop. "Anders, a protegée of Wim Wenders, is committed to a different view of America. Nora (Brooke Adams)'s easygoing, semi-hardscrabble life is one Thelma and Louise would recognize, or any of Gus Van Sant's yodeling wanderers....Anders prefers to dabble in reality, magic reality at times, but with a smack of the world about it, in a place where lovers spend the night in caves, a young girl learns to dance from a deaf-mute matron, and someone is always looking for a tampon."-Kelly Vance, Express