Sigourney Weaver Makes Surprise Return Engagement

Actress Sigourney Weaver, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals' Woman of the Year, returned to Cambridge last Sunday as an audience member.

Weaver, who received her Pudding Pot on Feb. 9, came to see the show with her husband, theater director Jim Simpson, and 8-year-old daughter Charlotte.

Along with the parade that she grand-marshaled on the 9th, she was also treated to a half-hour preview of this year's Pudding production, Paradise Lost-and-Found: A Bermuda Love Triangle. She wanted to see the rest of the show, however, and purchased tickets through the Hasty Pudding box office (495-5205).

Weaver also showed her appreciation to the company by purchasing a four-layer wedding-style cake, which was shared at the reception for their Tuesday charity performance for the Learning Center for Deaf Children. The icing inscription read: "Dear Stud Muffins, Break those beautiful legs! XXOO, Sigourney."

The show runs through March 17.

Arab film series to be held by student group

A film festival will be sponsored this month by the Society of Arab Students to help raise awareness of Arab culture. All films are subtitled. The festival takes place in Harvard Hall Room 201 at 7:30 p.m.

The schedule is as follows:

March 9: The Silence of the Palace (free admission) Winner of the Camera D'or at the Cannes Film Festival, the film is directed with loving attention to the details of women's lives and to the political realities which they survive with courage, comradeship, and resourcefulness. Tunisia in the 1950s is the sumptuous setting for this drama of memory and motherhood, of political and sexual power.

March 16: Canticle of the Stones. The film tells the story of two Palestinians, now in their 40s, who had barely fallen in love nearly 20 years earlier when he was imprisoned for political activity and she ran off to the United States to overcome her grief. Years later, she comes back to Jerusalem to study the Intifada's impact on Palestinian society only to find him released from prison. Against a backdrop of resistance and repression, they fall in love again.

March 30: Nasser 56. The film is about the days before and after the nationalization of the Suez Canal by the Egyptian President Nasser that resulted in the 1956 Suez war. The film was a great hit when it was shown in the Arab world.

For other films to be show during the festival, see the Web page at www.hcs.harvard.edu/~arabs/eventspring98/films.html.