3 FILMS by BROUGHTON

For 40 years, San Francisco poet/film maker James Broughton has brought a joyous, whimsical charm to the screen in a series of experimental works. Tonight at 7:30 Filmforum will present Broughton and three of his films at the Wallenboyd Center, 301 Boyd St.

They are “The Pleasure Garden” (1953), “Testament” (1974) and “Devotions” (1983), which is in its local premiere. Broughton is the freest of spirits, and this quality informs all his films. Yet there could surely have been a better choice to represent the Broughton of the ‘50s than “The Pleasure Garden,” a tedious, 37-minute fantasy-comedy set in an ancient English park filled with eccentrics and intended to celebrate the triumph of sensuality over puritanism.

If nothing else, however, “The Pleasure Garden” does demonstrate how greatly Broughton has grown as an artist over the years, for “Testament” and “Devotions” are both dazzlingly inventive, highly personal expressions. The 20-minute “Testament” is a slightly Surreal and quite enchanting film autobiography, in which Broughton traces his life from the time of his birth into a family of Modesto bankers through his proclamation that “I believe in ecstasy for everybody,” and on to his poignant intimations of his own mortality.

Although Broughton’s films have always been charged with sexual ambiguity, one is not quite prepared for “Devotions”--especially since one of the final images of “Testament” finds the graying Broughton posed with a woman and two children, his wife and their offspring. The 21-minute “Devotions,” which Broughton made with Joel Singer, is a celebration of homosexual love, made with such tenderness and affection (and considerable nudity) that it embraces men across the gay spectrum, from the youthful and the mature, from leather guys to transvestites. Yet, as clearly a lover of beauty, Broughton does emphasize the young and the naked! Phones: (714) 628-7331, (213) 387-2000.

In Sharon Sopher’s riveting “Witness to Apartheid,” the most chilling moments are not the newsreel inserts of police brutality toward blacks in South Africa, but a series of casual interviews Sopher conducted with ordinary, youngish white men and women on the street.

Not one of them comes across as a diehard racist, yet all seem sublimely indifferent, willfully ignorant even, of what life for black people is like in South Africa.

Even more courageous than Sopher and her colleagues in making this urgent film are the black people--and a few brave whites committed to change--who spoke freely to her for the record. “Witness to Apartheid” launches “Human Rights in South Africa,” a Tuesday evening series at the Nuart. Phones: (213) 478-6379, 479-5269.

Eric Thiermann’s Oscar-nominated “In the Nuclear Shadow: What Can Children Tell Us?” is a sobering revelation of how conscious and how terrified youngsters are over the prospect of nuclear war. It is one of four documentaries screening Wednesday and Thursday at the Nuart that deal with the threat of nuclear holocaust. The others are “Women--for America, for the World,” “What About the Russians?” and “The Edge of History.” Phones: see above.