TODAY AT THE AFI

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 , unless otherwise noted, are at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 800 Sunset Blvd. Information: (213) 466-1767. Highly Recommended:

“THE WEDDING”(Poland, 1972; director Andrzej Wajda; 1:50 & 7 p.m.). Andrzej Wajda’s turn-of-the-century wedding reception--a boisterous affair based on the classic, symbolic verse drama by Stanislaw Wyspianski--takes its place alongside Vincente Minnelli’s, Robert Altman’s and Krzysztof Zanussi’s (in “Contract”) as one of the cinema’s top nuptial bashes. In this heavily political/allegorical piece, a naive bourgeois Krakow poet (Daniel Olbrychski) marries a country farm girl in a futile attempt to bridge classes. When peasants and literati meet at the frenetic party, the stage is set for minor clashes and major explosions. Bursting with life and ideas; moving from a convulsive, bawdy, tumultuous opening to a chilling finale; packed with many of Wajda’s favorite actors (including Maja Komorowska and Wojciech Pszoniak), this is one of the great Wajda films.

Recommended:

“PAINTED SKIN”(Hong Kong; King Hu; 4 & 9 p.m.). The new Hong Kong martial arts fantasies and supernatural epics have moved into such wilder pyrotechnics than the classics of King Hu (“A Touch of Zen”) that, comparing a film like his latest--in which demons battle monks over a gorgeous runaway ghost--to “Peking Opera Blues,” would be like stacking “Jesse James” against “The Wild Bunch.” Yet Hu retains his narrative flow, charm and sense of batty fun. He also has Jackie Chan’s only contemporary peer, Samo Hung, as a kick-tail monk.

“MISSOURI 149”(U.S.; Brooks Bushnell; 4:15 & 9:15 p.m.). Basically a diary film, in which, on a shoestring budget, Indiana director Bushnell examines the lifestyle--both physical and spiritual--of his relatives, the Turners: a Missouri farming family who live and work along the highway of the title. Perhaps it’s only for a special audience, but this film’s qualities of compassion and clarity, as well as its lucid record of generational divisions and a vanishing way of American life, deserve recognition.