5 & 7 pm / Movies

The third annual City of Angels Film Festival kicks off with two screenings of Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 classic “City Lights.” The festival, sponsored by Fuller Theological Seminary and other educational and religious organizations, screens quality movies, new and old, that are deemed to raise vital moral issues. The theme of this year’s festival is “Seeking to Connect: Outsiders and Communities on Screen.” Other films being screened at the festival, which continues through Sunday, are Lasse Halstrom’s “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” (1993), Yasujiro Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” (1959) and Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.”

* City of Angels Film Festival, Directors Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. Also Saturday and Sunday. Single tickets are $5 for students with identification and $7 for all others. Festival passes are also available. (818) 304-3775.

8 pm / Dance

Dancer-actress Janet Eilber joins composer-guitarist Allen Krantz at Occidental College for an unusual program of dance and chamber music inspired by American poetry. Allen Gross of the Oxy music department conducts. A former leading dancer with the Graham company, Eilber is currently co-director of the acclaimed American Repertory Dance Company. Krantz is composer-in-residence for the Philadelphia-based chamber ensemble “1807 and Friends” and for the Music at Gretna Festival. Their program includes works based on William Carlos Williams’ “Advice to the Players” and e.e. cummings’ “anyone lived in a pretty how town.”

* Eilber, Krantz and Gross, Thorne Hall, Occidental College, 5151 Campus Road, Eagle Rock. Also Saturday, 8 p.m. $10-$20. (213) 259-2922.

3:30 pm / Ballooning

Celebrate Veterans Day weekend in Indian Wells Valley at the Ridgecrest Balloon Festival. More than 60 hot-air balloons will take part in balloon races. Other events include Veterans Day ceremonies, a model aircraft aerobatics show, classic car show, country-western concert, a return to the 1950s party, tours of the area, shopping for local arts and crafts, food vendors and children’s activities. The festivities kick off Friday afternoon when the gates to the Balloon Festival Park will be open so visitors can see the balloons as they are inflated. At 6 p.m., there will be a candlelight ceremony at the Vietnam Memorial Traveling Wall, situated behind the Maturango Museum.

* Ridgecrest Balloon Festival, Balloon Festival Park, two miles south of Inyokern on Brown Drive, about 160 miles north of Los Angeles in Ridgecrest. Veterans ceremonies begin at 6 p.m. behind Maturango Museum, 100 E. Las Flores Ave., Ridgecrest. Balloon viewing begins Friday at 3:30 p.m.; continues Saturday and Sunday, 4 a.m.-4 p.m. Evening activities at various venues. Balloon Park admission, $5; children under 5, free. (760) 375-UPUP.

8:15 pm / Music

The highly regarded Chamber Orchestra at St. Matthew’s, conducted by Thomas Neenan, mixes the familiar with the less-so: Soloist Deborah Buck-Mathews plays Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto; Neenan leads the Sinfonietta Giocosa by Martinu and a suite from “Much Ado About Nothing” by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

* The Chamber Orchestra, St. Matthew’s Church, 1031 Bienveneda Ave., Pacific Palisades. $12. (310) 573-7787, Ext. 2.

8 pm / Theater

High-flying Cathy Rigby re-creates her Tony Award-nominated role of “Peter Pan” in a new staging of the James M. Barrie musical, which is headed for Broadway following a national tour that begins at La Mirada Theatre.

* “Peter Pan,” La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, 14900 La Mirada Blvd. Regular schedule: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sunday and Nov. 15-16, 22-23, 2:30 p.m.; Nov. 16, 23, 7:30 p.m. Ends Nov. 23. $33. (562) 944-9801, (714) 994-6310.

7:30 pm / Movies

“A Beat Weekend” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art includes seven film programs and a live performance Saturday of Beat poet Michael McClure accompanied by keyboardist Ray Manzarek, a founding member of the Doors. Along with vintage Beat generation documentaries and related films, “A Beat Weekend” will feature the world premieres of two one-hour documentaries, Renee Tajima-Pen~a’s “The Last Beat Movie,” in which the filmmaker attempts to interview key Beat figures, and William Tyler Smith’s “The Third Mind,” a celebration of the McClure-Manzarek collaboration. (See Screening Room, Page XX.)

* “A Beat Weekend,” Bing Theater, LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. Friday at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday at 5 p.m. $6; $4 for museum members, AFI members and students. (213) 857-6010 or Ticketmaster, (213) 480-3232.

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FREEBIE: Pasadena Community Orchestra, First Church of the Nazarene, 3700 E. Sierra Madre Blvd., 8:15 p.m. (626) 445-6708.