UCLA STUDENT FILM PROGRAM WILL SCREEN

There’s so much first-rate work in “New Visions 87,” a two-hour, 21-minute program of advanced and graduate UCLA student films to be screened Monday, that it’s unfortunate that its selection wasn’t more rigorous. The elimination of several less-than-wonderful offerings would make a more even and effective presentation and a shorter running time. The screening will be at 7 p.m. in Melnitz Theater, UCLA.

On the whole, the straightforward narrative dramas are the evening’s most impressive offerings, which is encouraging because telling a story with a camera remains the medium’s greatest challenge, a test of the film maker’s imagination and control. In this category are several splendid achievements. Christine Roum’s 20-minute witty, compassionate “Belinda in the Water” is perhaps the best, a vignette about a pretty but massive young woman’s struggle for self-acceptance. Roum has both a strong sense of style and an ability to direct actors that shows a true talent for the cinema and, beyond that, taste and judgment in dealing with material that so easily could have been crass and cruel. She and actress Ann Farthing, who plays Belinda, have created a small gem.

Chihyen Yee’s 27-minute “The Grasshoppers” looks just as good as it did when it was screened earlier this year. Exquisite as a Chinese scroll painting, it’s an anti-war fable involving two small Chinese children (Jennifer Chao, John Chen) and the wounded American pilot (David Carl) they encounter somewhere in Northern China near the end of World War II. In plot, Bradley Silberberg’s 29-minute “Repairs” is elliptical to the point of vagueness, but visually it’s dynamite and so is Kathleen Wilhoite as a conscientious young auto mechanic whose abilities to advise others with their problems is about to finish her off--until she’s counseled by The Voice (supplied by Whoopi Goldberg, no less). Husky-voiced, she’s possessed of a natural screen presence.

Outstanding among the various animated films are Helen Igoe’s four-minute “Postcard,” in which the old-fashioned tinted, linen-finish picture post card is paid nostalgic tribute; Bridget Murnane’s “Tournants,” a whimsical tour de force involving the use of decoupage to survey of the history of concert dance in a joyous six minutes; David James’ 3 1/2-minute “Primary Search,” an ingenious evocation of the tormented psyche of artist Edvard Munch; and Dolminic Policino’s “The New Snurfs,” a hilarious send-up of children’s Saturday-morning TV programs.

Less impressive are Lynda Toth’s awkward, melodramatic 16-minute “Second Chance,” about a middle-aged Japanese-American’s self-redemption; Jeanine Moret’s 28-minute documentary “Banderani,” a beautifully shot but otherwise unfocused study of daily life in a Peruvian Indian village high in the Andes; and Seth Olitzky’s “Flashpoint,” a monotonous experiment in computer animation. Information: (213) 825-2581.

A program of student films not included in “New Visions 87” screens tonight at 7 in Melnitz Theater.