Reps Etc.

STANFORD

221 University (at Emerson), Palo Alto, (650) 324-3700, www.stanfordtheatre.org. $6. This handsomely restored neighborhood palace usually (but not always) screens pre-1960 Hollywood fare in the best available prints, with excellent projection. This spring's series emphasizes James Stewart, detective films, and Hollywood 1934-38.

WEDNESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY (March 17-19): Charles Laughton essays an English butler Americanized into Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1934; 7:30 p.m.). Fred MacMurray is an honest lawyer and Carole Lombard his lying wife in True Confession (Wesley Ruggles, 1937; 5:55, 9:10 p.m.).

SATURDAY & SUNDAY (March 20 & 21): The least of the James Stewart-Anthony Mann collaborations, Thunder Bay (1953; 4:15, 7:30 p.m.), finds Stewart drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. It screens with Think Fast, Mr. Moto (Norman Foster, 1937; 6:05, 9:25 p.m.), first in a popular series with Peter Lorre as a milk-drinking, cat-loving Japanese detective.

VICTORIA THEATRE

2961 16th St. (at Mission), 863-7576. This venerable old house frequently rents itself out for special screenings.

DAILY: Big Noise, a "not-for-profit, all-volunteer collective of media-makers ... dedicated to circulating beautiful, passionate, revolutionary images," screens the local premiere of The Fourth World War (2003), "the untold human story of men and women who resist being annihilated in the current global conflict," nightly through April 4. $10 7, 9 p.m.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS

701 Mission (at Third Street, in Yerba Buena Gardens), 978-2787, www.YerbaBuenaArts.org. $6 save as noted. This venue's Screening Room is a home for film and video programs of all sorts.

WEDNESDAY (March 17): Film Arts Foundation screens Jack Walsh's The Lost Generation (2004), a personal essay on the "unresolved issues" of the filmmaker and his (1970s) generation. $7 7:30 p.m.

THURSDAY (March 18): Barbara Hammer's Resisting Paradise (2004) raises contemporary political questions about responsibility and art. Filmmaker in person. $7 7:30 p.m.

FRIDAY (March 19): The 2004 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival screens here Fridays in March. Tonight, War Takes (Patricia Castano, Adelaida Trujillo, Colombia, 2002; 7 p.m.), built from the video diaries of three journalists caught up in unending civil war, and Elaine Epstein's look at AIDS in South Africa, State of Denial (South Africa, 2002; 8:30 p.m.).