Preceded by short: So, You Want To Be Popular? (Jeanne Finley, 1988): The personality traits of unpopular children are weighed against those of the well-adjusted in this serio-comic work about acceptance and self-worth. (19 mins, 3/4" video, From Video Data Bank) During a bout with a recurrent illness, Joan Braderman, artist, teacher and stand-up theorist, immersed herself in the depths of the televised image: television every day, all day, broken only by the reading of forty-seven celebrity bios. A self-avowed "mediaholic," Braderman rose from her sickbed to make the hilarious Joan Sees Stars, a freewheeling feminist critique of celebrity culture. Projecting herself over images of Liz Taylor, Vivien Leigh, Audrey Hepburn and others, Braderman riotously rants about the celebrity conspiracy, a matrix of plastic surgery, hyper-romance, manufactured crisis, miraculous desire, sculpted bodies. "It must be against the law for a woman over forty to appear on television with her own face," she declares, flames flaring from her mouth. Braderman raves with humor and outrage over the power of the "TV figure fascists and aerobic storm troopers" who exercise such weighty influence over the lives of women. Never tight-lipped, Joan Sees Stars adds a few critical wrinkles to the face of celebrity.-Steve Seid