Series Opener Stars Athletic Shorts : Film: Huntington Beach Art Center’s diverse ‘Sports in a Different Light’ ranges from fistfighting to ‘Sex Games.’

The new Huntington Beach Art Center launches a weekly film and video series tonight with a sports lineup that veers from the punchy to the provocative.

“Sports in a Different Light,” a program of four shorts, includes a nostalgic look back at the famous Jack Dempsey/Louis Firpo fight of 1923 as well as an avant-garde exploration of “family, loss and sexuality” with baseball as the overriding metaphor.

The diversity is intentional, said Tyler Stallings, the center’s educational director.

“There’s a loose theme, which is sports, but we want to present a bunch of different views,” he explained. “We don’t know exactly what our audience is going to be (so we’re) trying to go in various challenging directions and create different types of dialogue.”

But why begin with a sports theme--especially at a fledgling center devoted to progressive art? Stallings’ answer is that the program reflects Orange County, the center’s primary audience.

“This community, especially Huntington Beach, is very sports-active,” he said. “There’s surfing, skateboarding, lots of parks, lots of (interest in) fitness. . . . We’d love to draw folks from sports bars” as well as those accustomed to more personal, even visionary work.

For die-hard sports fans, the vintage film of the Dempsey/Firpo bout may be attractive. Seven minutes long, the newsreel highlights the battle, including the blow that sent Firpo through the ropes.

The program takes an artier turn with Vanalyne Green’s “A Spy in the House That Ruth Built.” The 29-minute video, made in 1989, represents an expressionistic journey for Green, who examines her family while interpreting baseball as a “strange wonderland, devoid of women,” Stallings said.

“It’s quite well-known in art circles,” he added. “I like it because it uses a lot of humor (in showing) how women are not in (professional) baseball. At one point, (Green) takes the shape of a baseball diamond and superimposes a womb on it. . . . She inflates our perceptions that way.”

*

Brady Lewis’ “Quick Opener” may bring baseball loyalists back down to earth. Made in 1987, the five-minute film focuses on Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente and the 1960 World Series between the Pirates and New York Yankees. Stallings said, “It’s a pure celebration of baseball.”

The final offering is “Sex Games,” a 26-minute, 1994 documentary examining the issue of gender testing for female Olympic athletes.

“It’s a straightforward film that goes into an area that’s just not talked about,” explained Stallings. “It looks at how many women (athletes) have been told that they aren’t really women. It’s about how we define gender (and) how gender identity is constructed.”

Stallings said future programs, to be offered most Fridays, will feature themes ranging from “love and war” (including the screening of “Hiroshima, Mon Amour,” Alain Resnais’ full-length 1959 romance set in postwar Tokyo) to an examination of anthropology.

*

The next, scheduled for May 12, is “Animals and Their Uses,” featuring six shorts that deal, both directly and tangentially, with how society views animals. The documentaries include a look at photographer William Wegman and his favorite subject, his dog Man Ray, and coverage of the 1989 trial in Long Beach of two Cambodian immigrants charged with killing a dog for food.

Most of the films have been in circulation for some time, but Stallings said the center also hopes to premiere new works, including those from Orange County. With that in mind, Stallings welcomes any film or video submissions, no matter how experimental or mainstream.

“The field is so wide out there, I mean what is being produced,” he said. “We’re open to students, to professionals, anybody.”

* “Sports in a Different Light,” four short films, will screen tonight at 7 at the Huntington Beach Art Center, 538 Main St., Huntington Beach. $6 ($5 for museum members). (714) 374-1650.