‘FIVE NEW PICTURES’ BY UCLA GRAD STUDENTS

“Five New Pictures,” a 90-minute program of highly varied and promising films by UCLA graduate students, screens tonight at 8 in Melnitz Theater. They’re not as polished as the recent offering of advanced work at USC, but they are impressively personal and ambitious.

Serving as a curtain-raiser is Dominic Polcino’s “The New Snurfs,” a witty 90-second demolition of the Saturday-morning kiddie-show mentality.

Robin Schorr’s 30-minute “Fill My Living Room,” which she wrote with Eric Finck, offers an amusing commentary on consumerism. Displaying admirable self-restraint, a young woman (Robin Harvey) resists splurging on a credit card for which she is never billed. With only a weekend left before it expires, she can’t help telling her best friend (Molly Cleator) and her boyfriend (Robert Mangiardi) about it--with disastrous results.

“Fill My Living Room,” which is by far the most mainstream of the evening’s offerings, presents a very well-drawn portrait of an intelligent and sensible young woman struggling against temptation. It is skillfully made and well acted.

Credit Omega Hsu with a truly original work: The nine-minute “Dawn: The Invention of Language” is a poetic fable incorporating dance and mime in which an Asian Tarzan (Tom Lue) and a beautiful girl (Teresa Lam), delicate as a Kwan Yin, suggest how written language evolved. “Dawn” has a briskness and lightness that saves it from being either pretentious or precious.

Lisa Patten’s 14-minute dark comedy, “The Danger of Doing Dishes,” starts out on a bizarre note: A woman washing dishes is electrocuted when her wandering food processor tumbles into the sink. Unfortunately, Patten doesn’t sustain this inspired opening; she allows the impact of this absurd death upon the woman’s daughter (Doria Valen) to dissipate into a contrived business about Valen searching for her “feminine intuition.”

When Hanna Elias is able to replace his makeshift subtitles and spoken narration for “The Roof,” it should gain considerably in clarity and involvement. Shot entirely in a Palestinian village in Northern Israel, this 30-minute drama depicts a primitive, timeless life of hardship and oppression as it focuses on two young people impatient for change.

“The Roof” takes its title from an ancient custom that dictates that a man must be able to provide a roof over a woman’s head before he can marry her. It has been shot in rich colors and benefits greatly from its highly sensual Arabic music; indeed, “Fill My Living Room” and “Dawn” are equally notable for their effective scores.

Since seating is limited for “Five New Pictures,” reservations are advised: (213) 821-2337.