WINNING PAIR LEAD OFF GAY FILMS

The fifth annual Los Angeles International Gay and Lesbian Film/Video Festival opens Friday at the Four Star Theater with a pair of winners. Gus Van Sant’s low-low-budget, strikingly black-and-white “Mala Noche,” stars Tim Streeter as a warm, smiling liquor-store clerk on Portland’s Skid Row who falls hard--but with eyes wide open--for a macho teen-aged Mexican illegal (Ray Monge). The wit and wisdom, tenderness and spontaneity of this film give it the perspective and universal appeal of “My Beautiful Laundrette.” Playing with it is Lea Pool’s “Anne Trister,” a somber, delicately nuanced story about a young Swiss art student (Alvane Guilhe), shaken by her father’s death, who goes to Quebec only to find herself unexpectedly attracted to an assured, older woman (Louise Marleau), a psychologist working with disturbed children.

Among Saturday’s offerings is Wieland Speck’s “Westler” (9:30 p.m.), a love story involving two young male Berliners living on different sides of the Wall whose predicament becomes a forceful commentary on the pain and paranoia of a divided Germany. A Derek Jarman retrospective gets under way Sunday at 7:30 p.m. with “Angels and Apocalypse.” For full schedule information, including seminars: (213) 273-2675; the Four Star, (213) 936-3533.

UCLA Film Archives’ “Homage to the Cinematheque Francaise” commences Thursday at 5:30 p.m. in Melnitz Theater with a clutch of films that are as rare as they are charming. Maurice-Andre Maitre’s 77-minute “Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ” (1913) is, with its Christmas card angels on painted clouds, as naive in its conception as it is sophisticated in its execution. The 7:30 p.m. program, “Primitives, 1903-12,” offers an extravagantly declamatory, 68-year-old Sarah Bernhardt in a 12-minute (!) condensation of her old standby, “La Dame aux Camelias” (1912), and the pert, vivacious Rejane in her big hit “Madame Sans-Gene” (1911), in which she rises from washerwoman to duchess--in 20 minutes flat--during the reign of Napoleon; both were directed by Andre Calmettes. These and other brief condensations of the classics in the program are essentially illustrated tableaux; among the gems is Melies’ gaily tinted, frenetic 10-minute “La Legend de Rip Van Winkle” (1905), as irresistible as the lacy antique valentines it resembles. Information: (213) 825-9261.

In the Lhasa Club’s mixed-media festival, screening Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., the films are as exciting as the video offerings are dreadful--you might well consider skipping the videos entirely. Matt Day’s “Robotdog” is a knockout, a pastiche of animation and reprocessed images that emerges as a kind of history of aggression, suggesting that it is inherent and apparently inescapable in our natures. Somewhat akin to it in spirit, though distinct in style, is Lea Beatriz Zagury’s “Instituto Animal,” an elegant animated essay reflecting the points of view of four animals in a lush Rousseau-esque jungle setting. Peter Brancaccio’s “My Pal Nancy” sends up ancient Ernie Bushmiller “Nancy” comic strips in film noir fashion, and Caroline Skaife’s “Tissue Experience” experiments with light and texture with stunning beauty and sensuality. Todd Romelle’s 8-millimeter “It Wasn’t My Fault, I Swear” is an effectively stylized break-dance ballet, as if “Slaughter on 10th Avenue” had been updated. Information: (213) 461-7284.