PAUL GLABICKI WORKS AT FILMFORUM

The work of film maker Paul Glabicki, which Filmforum is presenting tonight at 7:30 at the Wallenboyd, reveals the Pittsburgh experimental animator’s passion to render the essence of things and how we experience and perceive them. Luckily, Glabicki is as witty as he is rigorous: his most recent work, the 28-minute “Object Conversation” (1985), is a dizzying, dazzling collage of diagrams, cut-outs, superimposed images and lists of definitions that excites as it confounds. To watch what Glabicki, in “Film-Wipe-Film” (1983), can do with a couple of white lines tossed on a charcoal background like Pickup Stix is to be reminded of those extraordinary films John Whitney Sr. has made for Caltech to express mathematical concepts that cannot be expressed any other way. Glabicki will be on hand to explain how he makes his films. (213) 276-7452, (714) 628-7331.

“Cinema Mexico” continues Tuesday at the Nuart with Bunuel’s mordant “Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz” (1955) and “Pedro Paramo” (1966), Carlos Velo’s eerie, sensual film of Juan Rulfo’s celebrated novel. A young man in search of the father he has never known comes upon a ghost town haunted by the women the father has ruined. The father is played by John Gavin (who was to become U.S. ambassador to Mexico). Gavin, whose mother was Mexican, was equal to this unique opportunity in his career. (213) 478-6379, 479-5269.

“Before Hollywood: Turn-of-the-Century Film From American Archives” continues Thursday at 8 p.m. at the County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater with a program of rare and fascinating films made between 1909 and 1911. They range between such self-descriptive offerings as “First Mail Delivery by Aeroplane” (1911) and “Ancient Temples of Egypt” (1912) to some early Griffiths that reveal clearly that the screen’s first master of the medium towered above his contemporaries from the very first. “The Usurer” (1910) is a primitive hiss-the-villain Victorian melodrama about a greedy banker and his comeuppance, whereas “The Informer” (1912) is a far more complex work of considerable scope and pictorial beauty, a Civil War tale of a man (Henry B. Walthall) who betrays his Confederate soldier brother (Walter Miller) in an attempt to win for himself a beautiful Southern belle (Mary Pickford). Pickford also stars in Thomas Ince’s mischievous “The Dream” (1911), which she also wrote. Quite probably Pickford never before or after seemed so sexy and uninhibited; she and Moore are touching in their youthful vitality and good looks. (213) 857-6010.

The second part of Henri Fescourt’s monumental film of “Les Miserables,” which screens Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater, concentrates on the romance of Jean Valjean’s ward Cosette (Sandra Milovanoff) and the dashing aristocrat Marius (Francois Rozet), which unfolds against the turbulent years of the early 1830s. At first, this portion of the film seems discursive, but gradually Fescourt pulls together all the strands of the Victor Hugo classic for an emotional finish. (213) 825-2345, 825-2581.

Nelly Kaplan’s “Abel Gance and His Napoleon” (1983), which screens Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in UCLA’s Melnitz Theater, was unavailable for preview. It will be followed by Kaplan’s 1971 debut film, “A Very Curious Girl,” a hilarious comedy starring a sly Bernadette Lafont. Kaplan wrote this film with her producer Claude Makovski; she in turn produced and co-wrote Makovski’s “You’ve Got to Live Dangerously” (1974), a wild and witty detective mystery which stars Claude Brasseur and Annie Girardot and screens Sunday at 7:30 p.m. (213) 825-2345, 825-2581.