Life, Death in Provocative ‘Finished

Experimental filmmaker William E. Jones will appear at the American Cinematheque’s Alternative Screen presentation today at 8 p.m. at Raleigh Studios with his impressive and reflective “Finished.” In it, he probes the life and death of Alan Lambert, a handsome French Canadian porn star with whom Jones became infatuated but whom he never met.

As Southern California, and later Montreal, vistas unfold, Jones tells how he discovered that Lambert committed suicide as part of his half-baked messianic Marxism. Lambert also thought that, having reached the height of physical perfection, he could only decline.

“Finished” draws provocative parallels with Frank Capra’s “Meet John Doe,” but Lambert also recalls Yukio Mishima in his self-destructive mix of mystical radicalism and concern for physical perfection.

The Cinematheque’s “A Weekend With Su Friedrich,” a program of four films by the acclaimed experimental filmmaker, commences Friday at 7 p.m. at Raleigh Studios with the Los Angeles premiere of “Hide and Seek,” a fresh, exquisitely wrought 63-minute evocation of young girls coping with adolescence in the ‘60s. The film is intercut with interviews with lesbians, who in turn, recall the advent of puberty in their lives and their growing awareness of their sexual orientation. Information: (213) 466-FILM.

Doug Witkins’ “No Ordinary Love,” the second film in the Music Hall’s Gay Cinema series screening Friday, is a minor effort, a somewhat awkward tale of edgy relationships among housemates further complicated by the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of one of them. Information: (310) 274-6869.

American Cinematheque

REFLECTIVE: “Finished” examines the life of Alan Lambert.