Tonight, in the first of three programs of new work and highlights from the past year, we present a group of recent short works that variously explore family and friends, and the delicate ways that film and video can express feelings of loss. Carolyn Faber's Iota (1998, 6 mins) sensuously explores a found instance, captured in an amateur super-8 film. Tony Gault's The Gift (1997, 11 mins) is a haunting meditation on a family marked by alcoholism. A mother lost to Alzheimer's is sung to by her daughter while a young boy talks to a camera in Vincent Grenier's intimate Brendan's Cracker (1999, 8.5 mins). Sara Takahashi uses hand-processing and echoing phrases to excavate her past in the raw and moving Cut, Cut, Re-Cut (2000, 32 mins). Ximena Cuevas's Soulmate (Alma Genela, 1999, 2 mins, Video) reflects on a moment of her childhood, while Jenny Perlin's Lost Treasures (1999, 2.5 mins) uses hand-processed film as an elegy for three women. In Jane Geiser's exquisite Lost Motion (2000, 11 mins) a man wanders through a landscape haunted by emotion and populated by toys and figurines.-Kathy Geritz