WEDNESDAY: The fifth annual S.F. Independent Film Festivalcontinues here with Heart of America (Uwe Boll, Germany, 2003), about teenagers planning a Columbine-type massacre 12:30 p.m. J.T. Kelly's $6,000 horror film Soft for Digging (2002) 2:45 p.m. A drama of pregnancy, Expecting (Deborah Day, Canada, 2002) 5 p.m. Nothing So Strange 7:15 p.m. Headspace 9:15 p.m.
THURSDAY: IndieFest -- Missing Persons 5 p.m. "Salinger's Sort" (shorts about teens) 7:15 p.m. Heart of America 9:30 p.m.
FRIDAY: IndieFest -- Hell's Highway 5 p.m. Soft for Digging 7 p.m. Gollum, Gollum! Peter Jackson's uncensored splatter comedy Brain Dead (New Zealand, 1992) 9:15 p.m. From Japan, the "most offensive" of the five or six films Takashi Miike dashed off in 2001, Vistor Q 11:30 p.m.
SATURDAY: IndieFest -- Jay Lee's thriller Noon Blue Apples (2003) noon. A horror film, with big black goats, Horror (Dante Tomaseli, 2002) 2:15 p.m. A rediscovered unreleased horror oddity from 1977, George Barry's Death Bed -- it's about a bed that eats people 4:30 p.m. Killers just want to be Alive (Ryuhei Kitamura, Japan, 2002) 7 p.m. A cartoonist's life is taken over by a dead dog in Lucky (Steve Cuden, 2002) 9:30 p.m. Walerian Borowczyk's art porn The Beast (France, 1977) 11:30 p.m.
SUNDAY: IndieFest -- Xan Price's unclassifiable Nitwit (2002) noon. Horror from Hong Kong, Cheng Wai Man's Sleeping With the Dead (2002) 2:15 p.m. A rediscovered film by horror maestro Mario Bava, Kidnapped (Italy, 1974/2002) 4:30 p.m. Elvis and JFK hang out in the old folks' home in Don Coscarelli's Bubba Ho-Tep (2001) 7 p.m. A cult favorite about carnage in a prison, Riky-Oh (Nam Nai Cho, Hong Kong, 1993) 9:15 p.m.
MONDAY: A B-movie exploitation double bill offers Steve Sekely's Women in Bondage (1943; 6, 9:15 p.m.) and William Rowland's Women of the Night (1948; 7:25, 10:35 p.m.), both dwelling on Nazi mistreatment of women.
TUESDAY: Andre de Toth's swamp melodrama Dark Waters (1944; 8 p.m.), with Merle Oberon, screens with George Sherman's The Lady and the Monster (1944; 6:15, 9:40 p.m.), with Erich Von Stroheim putting a criminal's brain into his assistant's cranium.
SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE
S.F. Art Institute, 800 Chestnut (at Jones), 822-2885, www.sfcinematheque.org. $7 save as noted. The San Francisco Cinematheque specializes in avant-garde, historical, and experimental films at venues around the Bay Area, including the Yerba Buena Center (see separate entry).
SUNDAY (Feb. 16): "Graphic Sonic," a program of works set to music by composers including Paul Bowles, Johann Strauss, and the Beatles, includes Romance Sentimentale (Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Alexandrov, Switzerland, 1930), Nathaniel Dorsky's Night Waltz, "Lanky" Stu Bircke's Primal Scene, Abigail Child's 8 Million, Stan Brakhage's ... (Reel 5), and more 7:30 p.m.
SHATTUCK
2230 Shattuck (at Kittredge), Berkeley, (510) 843-3456, www.landmarktheatres.com. $9. This venerable theater assigns one of its eight screens to repertory programming. For the rest of the Shattuck's schedule, see our Showtimes page.
WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY: Alex and Andrew J. Smith's The Slaughter Rule (2002). See Ongoing for review. Call for times.
FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY (Feb. 14-20): Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark (Russia, 2002). See Opening for review. Call for times.
STANFORD
221 University (at Emerson), Palo Alto, (650) 324-3700, www.stanfordtheatre.org. $6. This handsomely restored neighborhood palace usually screens pre-1960 Hollywood fare in the best available prints, with excellent projection and a courteous staff.
WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY: Warren Williams is a shyster lawyer as The Mouthpiece (James Flood and Elliott Nugent, 1932; 7:30 p.m.) and a manipulator of Skyscraper Souls (Edgar Selwyn, 1932; 5:40, 9:05 p.m.) in these Pre-Code dramas.
FRIDAY THROUGH SUNDAY: Rita Hayworth puts the blame on Mame in Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946; 7:30 p.m.; also Sun 3:55 p.m.), screening with Max Ophuls' excellent domestic noir The Reckless Moment (1949; 5:55, 9:30 p.m.), with Joan Bennett as a housewife whose daughter is being blackmailed. (This film's source novel was recently remade as The Deep End -- this one's better.)
MONDAY & TUESDAY: Theater closed.
YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS
701 Mission (at Third Street, in Yerba Buena Gardens), 978-2787, www.YerbaBuenaArts.org. $5 save as noted. This venue's Screening Room is a home for film and video programs of all sorts. Closed Mondays.
DAILY: Continuous loop screenings by Swedish video artists through April 13 -- On Wednesdays, Annka Ström's The Artist Live; on Thursdays, Ström's Ten New Love Songs; on Fridays, Anneè Olofsson's Ricochet and The Thrill Is Gone; on Saturdays, Annika Larsson's Cigar; on Sundays, Larsson's 40-15; on Tuesdays, Anneè Olofsson's You Need Her and You Want Her Golden Hair. Free with gallery admission 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
WEDNESDAY (Feb. 12): The S.F. Latino Film Festival screens Too Much Love (Demasiado Amor, Ernesto Rimoch, Mexico, 2001), about two sisters who move from rural Mexico to the Spanish coast. $7 7:30 p.m.
THURSDAY (Feb. 13): The San Francisco Cinematheque screens a rarely available classic of experimental French silent film, Marcel L'Herbier's The Late Mathias Pascal (1927), from a novel by Luigi Pirandello about a librarian (legendary actor Ivan Mosjoukine) who attempts to forge a new identity. Recommended! $7 7:30 p.m.
FRIDAY (Feb. 14): The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival screens here this week and next. Tonight, James Longley's Gaza Strip (2002; 7:30 p.m.), a cinéma vérité look at ordinary Palestinians, and Avi Mograbi's August (2002; 9 p.m.), a portrait of Israel in August 2001. $6.
