How Experimental Film Makers View ‘That Damned’ TV : Movies: The UCLA Film Archive continues its John Cassavetes retrospective and Roman Polanski’s ‘Macbeth’ plays in a Shakespeare festival.

“Turn That Damned Thing Off!,” a survey of the amusing, tantalizing--and sometimes merely obscure--ways in which experimental film makers have made use of television over the decades, will be presented by Filmforum tonight at 8 at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE).

Of the shorts available for preview, the most impressive is Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley’s early feminist film “Schmeerguntz” (1966), which contrasts the flawlessly sleek image of women created by commercials, beauty contests and the like with the often unappetizing realities of women’s actual daily existence. Similarly, in “Who Do You Think You Are?” (1987), film maker Mary Filippo deals with the role of TV in creating and perpetuating the kind of stereotypical images of women which make difficult and absurd-seeming her oft-declared goal: “I want to be a hero!”

On the other hand, Al Razutis’ “The Wildwest Show” (1980) cuts out a city’s billboards and replaces them with TV tubes that give us glimpses of the Vietnam War, old movies, World War II newsreels, etc., suggesting the tremendous bombardment of images that shape our view of reality and history. David Rimmer’s “As Seen on TV” (1986) offers, among other whimsies, solarized images of the Lennon Sisters. Information: (213) 276-7452.

The UCLA Film Archive’s John Cassavetes retrospective continues Saturday in Melnitz Theater at 5 p.m. with “At Work and Play With John,” a panel discussion by Cassavetes’ co-workers Seymour Cassel, Ted Allan, Ben Gazzara, Elaine May and Peter Falk. Ray Carney, author of “American Dreaming,” a book on Cassavetes, will be moderator of this admission-free event.

Screenings commence at 7:30 with “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974) and “Minnie and Moskowitz” (1971). The first is one of Cassavetes’ most important films, thanks to the powerfully authentic portrayal of Gena Rowlands as a woman who returns unsteadily to her blue-collar family--Falk plays her loving but exasperated husband--after a mental breakdown. Around the edges there are some self-consciously amateur performances, but finally nothing can detract from Rowlands’ luminous, harrowing presence. There’s a light-hearted charm to “Minnie and Moskowitz,” but it takes a huge leap of faith to believe in the unexpected romance of Rowlands’ museum curator and Cassel’s zany parking-lot attendant. There are also some nifty Hollywood locales. “Minnie and Moskowitz” repeats Sunday at 2, followed by “A Woman Under the Influence.”

“Husbands” (1970), which screens Sunday at 7:30 p.m., is one of Cassavetes’ most fully realized and satisfying achievements, depicting his usual everyday world filled with lonely people desperately clutching at life, which they sense is moving away from them with increasing rapidity. In “Husbands,” set in New York, Cassavetes examines the impact upon his best friends of the death of a 40ish man, and in doing so deals with the failure of American men to grow up. Harry (Ben Gazzara), Archie (Peter Falk) and Gus (Cassavetes), neighbors in a commuter suburb, hold a wake in a Manhattan bar and commence a beery odyssey that takes them on a bittersweet London spree. “Husbands” will be followed by “Gloria” (1980), a giddy action-comedy that brought Rowlands an Oscar nomination as a hard, glamorous Manhattan gun moll on the lam with the small child she tries to regard as excess baggage. Information: (213) 206-8013, 206-FILM.

Roman Polanski resumed his career after the murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate by the Manson family in 1969 with a fine 1971 film version of “Macbeth,” which screens Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m. in the Shakespeare series at the Monica 4-Plex.

While it is tempting to see the film as a catharsis for Polanski, particularly in the instance of the cruel fate of the family of Macbeth’s adversary Macduff, there is nothing self-indulgent about this very spare, straightforward rendering of Shakespeare. The Macbeths (Francesca Annis, Jon Finch) emerge as a very ordinary young couple who haven’t a glimmer of the horrors to be unleashed when Macbeth slays King Duncan. Information: (213) 478-1041.