It’s ‘First Sight’ for Young Filmmakers

Filmforum winds up its fall season with “First Sight Scene” (at 8 tonight at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), composed of five films by young Southern California artists. All five are marked with a strong sense of the visual and an awareness of the camera’s limitless potential for expression.

The most ambitious is Gary Kibbins’ dryly amusing “Mead Lake,” in which a pair of linguists (Philip Littell, Lisa Stark) endlessly dissect a newspaper editorial and later a speech by President Bush, showing their formidable mastery of precise description. Yet they are so oblivious to the actual world around them that they are startled and inept when it intrudes upon their wonderful world of words.

Many young filmmakers hit upon the elderly as subjects for documentaries, but Steven Rothblatt’s “My Grandma Flora” is one of the very best, a thoughtful, detached yet clearly loving portrait of an octogenarian of wit, wisdom and self-reliance. (You have the good feeling that Rothblatt actually cared about his grandmother long before he wanted to make a movie about her.)

Molly Strange’s “Dream of the Unbroken” is a subtle reflection of the aftereffects of incest and is candid in its suggestion that in such situations attraction can, in fact, be mutual.

Striking rather than satisfying are Javier Gomez Serrano’s “An Unhappy Ending,” which makes fresh, dramatic use of L.A. locales in its telling of a tragic love story, and David Hamlin’s “Horse,” whose title has a double meaning: A young woman recalls her lifelong love of horses while she shoots up with heroin.

There will be a potluck party with the filmmakers following the screening. Information: (213) 663-9568.

Focus on Pressman: The American Cinematheque’s “A Weekend With Ed Pressman: Independent Producer” (at the Directors Guild, 7920 Sunset Blvd.) calls attention to one of Hollywood’s most venturesome and diverse filmmakers. This is the man who gave us both “Conan the Barbarian” (Friday at 9:30 p.m.) and “Reversal of Fortune” (Sunday at 7 p.m.).

Among the eight features and one short being shown, “Bad Lieutenant” (Friday at 7:30 p.m.) and “Paris by Night” (Saturday at 9 p.m.) couldn’t be more different.

“Bad Lieutenant” is sure to either turn you on or turn you off--no middle ground here. Only Abel Ferrera, the maestro of urban violence, and Harvey Keitel (at full throttle) could hope to get away with a raw, raging fable about a coke-sniffing, crack-smoking, heroin-shooting, whiskey-swigging New York cop. In the midst of his epic self-destruction, he becomes obsessed with avenging a nun who has been raped on the altar of her church.

“Paris by Night,” written and directed by British playwright-filmmaker David Hare, for all its contemporary cool, is at heart a ‘40s woman’s picture. It’s easy to imagine Barbara Stanwyck (who frankly would have been more fun) in the role played by Charlotte Rampling. In his portrait of a coldly ambitious politician whose miscalculation threatens to unravel her life, Hare takes far too seriously what at heart is so clearly a melodrama.

Playing with “Paris by Night” is Paul Williams’ beguiling 12-minute “Girl” (1966), which marked Pressman’s producing debut. Composed mainly of stills with voice-overs, it tells of a young man and a young woman who, crossing paths, commence experiencing remarkably similar fantasies about each other.

Other Pressman productions to be screened: “Sisters” (Saturday at 5 p.m.), “Badlands” (Saturday at 7 p.m.), “True Stories” (Sunday at 5 p.m.) and “Wall Street” (Sunday at 9:30 p.m.). Information: 466-FILM.

‘Mexican Film’ Concludes: The UCLA Film Archive’s “Contemporary Mexican Film,” one of the most enjoyable movie series of the year, concludes Sunday at 7:30 p.m. in UCLA’s Melnitz Theater with a sentimental and amusing charmer, “My Dear Tom Mix,” written by Consuelo Garrido and directed by Carlos Garcia Agraz.

Set in a quaint town in the early ‘30s, it stars Ana Ofelia Murguia as an elegant spinster in her 60s who worships Hollywood cowboy star Tom Mix, to whom she is forever writing fan letters. Just as a group of bandits are about to invade her village, a handsome, silver-haired stranger (Federico Luppi) happens to be passing through. Will Murguia’s craving for real-life adventure and romance be at last fulfilled?

Information: (310) 206-FILM.