TODAY AT AFI FESTIVAL

F ollowing are The Times’ recommendations for today’s schedule of the American Film Institute International Film Festival, with commentary by the film reviewing staff. All screenings at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset. Information: (213) 466-1767.

Highly Recommended:

“MY LEFT FOOT”(Ireland, 1989; director Jim Sheridan; 1:50 and 7 p.m.). Daniel Day-Lewis’ multi-award winning performance as Irish poet-painter Christy Brown keys this fierce, unsentimental portrait of an artist whose cerebral palsy spared only his left foot for communication and whose impoverished background left him open to upper-class scorn and condescension. He triumphed over both--though this film doesn’t give us his life’s sadder climax. Based on Brown’s biography; written and directed by Jim Sheridan; with Brenda Fricker, Ray McAnally, Cyril Cusack and Fiona Lewis. Part of the Miramax Tribute. (Michael Wilmington)

“INNOCENCE UNPROTECTED”(Yugoslavia, 1969; Dusan Makavejev; 4:15 and 9:15 p.m.). Dragoljub Aleksic starred in and wrote the 1942 movie, Yugoslavia’s first talkie, that provides the core of this Makavejev collage-documentary. He was a legendary strong man who could bend bars with his teeth and break bricks with his head. His film, shot during Nazi occupation, but not under their control, is a ferociously hammy melodrama with Aleksic battling fiendish villains and rescuing wildly gesticulating damsels, between feats of strength and helicopter derring-do. Makavejev spices it up with hilarious interviews--with Aleksic and his collaborators--and wry, deadpan commentary. It’s a lovably impudent delight. (M.W.)

Recommended:

“THE INLAND SEA”(Japan/U.S.; Lucille Carra; 4 and 9 p.m.). Renowned expatriate film historian Donald Richie, who introduced Japanese cinema to most English-speaking audiences in the ‘50s and ‘60s, joins director Carra to bring to life his 30-year-old travel book. They journey into Japan’s still-beautiful and largely unspoiled Inland Sea region, where, to Richie, the inhabitants are what the Japanese people “ought to be and once were.” Suffused with Richie’s own sense of self-discovery and acceptance: an example of the travelogue at its most personal and evocative. (Kevin Thomas)

“LA VIE DE BOHEME”(Finland; Aki Kaurismaki; 9:05 p.m.). Based on Henri Murger’s novel “Scene de le Vie de Boheme,” Aki Kaurismaki’s acid new film is about three genius wastrel-artists--an Albanian painter, a French poet and an Irish composer--who live in squalor and then blow whatever money comes their way on wild revelry. The dry humor and wacky sense of the absurd here, will appeal variously to the audience; even so, Kaurismaki has made perhaps the definitive anti-Puccini version of this oft-staged romance/tragedy. With Matti Pellonpaa and Evelyne Didi. (M.W.)

Others: “Living Proof” (U.S.; Kermit Cole; 1:40 and 4:05 p.m.). A sympathetic, unexceptional documentary on people living positively, or even vibrantly, despite HIV (M.W.); “Bloody Morning” (China; Lia Shaohong; 1:30 and 6:45 p.m.). Unscreened. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” re-set in rural China.