Etta L. Worthington is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, playwright, and educator. She teaches in the Television Department of Columbia College Chicago. She has produced and directed several short documentaries including “Circus Mom” and “Finding Daddy.”  The documentary “50 at 50” is her first feature-length documentary. It is currently in post production. She has received grants from the Vogelstein Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and a Speaking with an Active Voice Grant. She is a finalist for the Roy Dean LA Video Grant and the 2006 Roy Dean Writer’s Grant. Her short “Smoke” has been in several film festivals and was part of “Brushfires” produced by Split Pillow. That feature-length work has been screened at several film festivals and is in distribution for home video.

A woman gears up for her 50th birthday plagued by memories of her 40th year in which she plummeted from confidence to despair during the course of the year , with the loss of two friends to cancer and her job to a Chapter 11 proceeding. The woman decides to make 50 positive and memorable by tackling 50 new things in her 50th year.

What are the new things? They range from the most serious to the rather frivolous. They including roller blading, having a soul retrieval, selling peanuts at Wrigley Field, jet skiing, taking a sword play class, watching the mating dance of the sand hill crane, creating a Day of the Dead altar, riding in a limo, making a plaster face mask, and more.

“50 at 50” is the documentation of that journey, and her post year reflections and discoveries. Starting out as a documentary about vitality, about getting out of a rut, “50 at 50” becomes more an exploration into change and facing fear.