"A conductor must be a genius and a woman is not a creative genius": thus spake the great Arturo Toscanini in a less than sagacious moment. His opinion is shared today by a surprising number of people in the music world, but Christina Olofson silences all doubters with her exuberant documentary, A Woman Is a Risky Bet... This is a film that responds to, as it describes, the musical genius and passion of six women symphony conductors: Kerstin Nerbe and Ortrud Mann of Sweden; Americans Victoria Bond and Joann Falletta; in the Soviet Union, Veronika Dudarova; and in Norway, Moscow-born Camilla Kolchinsky. Olofson's intuitive and inquisitive direction opens up for us the process of conducting-a process so mysterious to the uninitiated. With cinematographer Lisa Hagstrand, she explores music as a language at once intensely personal and universal; a language made up not only of notes and sounds but of body movements and facial expressions as well. The personalities of the six women are as different as their styles of conducting, but all come across as wise, humorous, and charged, by sheer love of music, with the power to make their way in a male-dominated field.