Top Ethnographic Pictures Crisscross the Country

MARKING its 17th anniversary, the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival expanded its program to 60 works this year, chosen from more than 400 submissions. Many world and United States premieres are among the selections, which ran last month at New York's American Museum of Natural History and are now touring the country.

In addition to fostering interest in documentary and ethnographic filmmaking, the Mead festival provides an important showcase for works by independent film and video artists working outside the commercial mainstream. This year's offerings are organized into four categories: Cross-Cultural Encounters, Latin American Visions, Women's Stories, the Environment, and Indigenous Media.

The 1993 festival is now showing at the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley, Calif. It will travel to the University Museum in Philadelphia next January and February; the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, in February; the Memorial Museum in Austin, Texas, in February; and Webster University in St. Louis next April.