In the delightful collage animation Why? (1994, 12 mins, Color, 16mm), Carol Halstead explains why she enrolled in art school at sixty. In local filmmaker Mark Becker's On This Nice Little Island (1994, 5 mins, B&W, 16mm) we meet Lou Pearson, a 70-year-old San Franciscan sculptor, independent spirit, and trailblazer. In Chapter 20: The Book Club (1997, 18 mins, B&W, 16mm) Joell Hallowell and Jacalyn White construct a warm portrait of a women's book club celebrating its 20th year meeting to discuss books and their lives. One of the delights of the film is that it's often not clear where the books end and life begins. In The Good Wife of Tokyo, Kazuko Hohki, the leader of a three-woman British rock band, comes home to Tokyo to interview women young and old about life in Japan today-and to marry, to please her mother. Kazuko's mother is a priest in the religion known as House of Development, which draws middle-aged women to its creed of laughter and faith, and draws them out in frank discussions. One woman's difficult mother-in-law lived to be a hundred, another tells of her husband's suicide and apologizes for the inconvenience. But change is in the air in a new women's culture.-Kathy Geritz