TODAY AT AFI FESTIVAL

Following are The Times’ recommendations for today’s schedule of the American Film Institute Los Angeles International Film Festival (AFIFEST), with commentary by the film reviewing staff. Information: (213) 480-3232 or (213) 520-2000.

Recommended:

“FOUNTAIN”(U.S.S.R.; Director: Yuri Mamin. Cineplex Odeon Fairfax, 9:15 p.m.). Wildly satiric, no-holds-barred, post- perestroika comedy: a Kazakstanian peasant grandfather, put in charge of a Moscow apartment house water pipe room, pulls the whole house into chaos--with a little help from bureaucracy, inefficiency and social malaise. All are amply ridiculed. ( Michael Wilmington ) “AMERICAN STORIES”(U.S.; D: Chantal Akerman. Cineplex Century Plaza 2, 9:15 p.m.) Bizarre Jewish-American vaudeville from the Belgian art film director of “Toute Une Nuite”--which, formally, this film resembles. A series of sketches, mostly taken from old ethnic jokes, are done black-out style against outdoor New York City backgrounds. Strange, sometimes stiff, intermittently touching. (Michael Wilmington)

“CIRCUS BOYS”(Japan; D: Kaizo Hayashi. Century Plaza 2, 7 p.m.) Beautiful black-and-white images, charmingly archaic, adorn this archetypal fable of two boys, good and bad, whose paths cross and diverge in the circus. (Michael Wilmington)