Friday | July 2, 1999 7:00 pm

Lena's Dreams

Screening on Film

Directed by Heather Johnston and Gordon Eriksen.
With Marilyn Forte, Gary Perez, Susan Peirez.
US, 1998, 35mm, color, 85 min.

As the driven-to-distraction New York actress, Lena, Marilyn Forte delivers a stormy tour-de-force performance in the Cassavetes vein, with almost all the shooting in master shots, allowing Forte to go all out. The tryout scenes for this Cuban-American thespian are especially heartrending and on target, as she keeps being pushed toward demeaning roles as Latino spitfires and domestics.

PRECEDED BY

Go to Bed, Darling! He's Not Going to Call...

Directed by Ines Hofmann.
US, 1999, video, color, 10 min.

A clever conceptual short in which a young woman waits obsessively at a telephone for "him" to call her up. The filmmaker, from former East Germany, works at WGBH.