Experimental Films From the Bay Area

Filmforum presents “Alternative Requirements: Recent Films From Bay Area Film Programs,” composed of 11 films from San Francisco experimentalists, tonight at 8 at LACE. Among the shorts available for preview none is a knockout, but a couple show originality.

In her “A Monumental Landscape” (1989) Marina McDougall suggests how even a small city as charming as San Luis Obispo can lose its identity. Pointing her camera mainly at impersonal shopping malls and other raw, new construction, she observes, “Here is everywhere else, also.” Lidia Szajko’s “A Constant State of Departure” (1989), although overwritten in its narration, is a heartfelt tribute from a woman to a man dying of AIDS; as Szajko’s words are heard on the soundtrack she intercuts between images of a man walking about San Francisco with a woman working in her garden. Al Hernandez’s “Celebrights” (1990) is a joyous collage of various San Francisco gay parades. Information: (213) 663-9568.