FRIDAY, APRIL 4
TAZZA: THE HIGH ROLLERS When Goni comes up short at a card game, he lifts a sackful of money from his sister, and loses that, too. Vowing to win it back fivefold, the young man hits the road, gradually acquiring a mentor, a partner, and a glamorous if not necessarily trustworthy girlfriend. Then Goni's teacher turns up dead, and vengeance is required. Based on a Korean comic book, Choi Dong-hoon's film combines the gangster and martial-arts genres, with Goni a novice who learns how to finesse a deck of cards rather than a gun or a sword. The flashback-heavy structure can be perplexing, and it probably would help to knows something about hwatu, Goni's game of choice. But the film's energy and bright, saturated colors are irresistible. (2006, 139 min) 7 pm, Freer/Sackler Galleries, 12th & Independence Ave SW. Free; tickets distributed one hour before screening.
THE HOMECOMING Peter Hall directed this intentionally stagey film of Harold Pinter's play about a professor and his wife, readjusting to London after a stint in the U.S. (1973, 114 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.
ALL ABOUT EVE Bette Davis's exemplary role, as an actress battling a starlet who wants to supplant her. (1950, 138 min) (also April 5-6, 8) 7 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
DASEPO NAUGHTY GIRLS With abject apologies to Disney, Korea director Lee Je-young's comic-strip-derived farce could be retitled High School Musical. Sex is more important than scholarship at No Use High, where a tip on which teacher has syphilis clears a classroom, a poor girl turns to prostitution because "virginity doesn't pay the bills," one of the prettiest students is saving for a sex-change operation, and the principal is possessed by a supernatural avenger who tries to save the school by restoring the kids' innocence. Although it bumps up against some serious issues -- bullying, poverty, and that Korean-cinema perennial, overseas adoption -- the movie is more frisky than scandalous. (The teen hooker, for example, never actually has to engage in sex with her harmlessly kinky clients.) And, yes, the kids do break into song periodically, complete with yodeling by Anthony, the dreamy Korean-born "transfer student from Switzerland." The film is not for the sober-minded, but some if its buffoonery does double as social comment. 9:45 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
SATURDAY, APRIL 5
6TH ANNUAL NATIONAL CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL ANIME MARATHON This tour of Japan's biggest nonedible cultural export features Jungle Emperor Leo (from a manga by the genre-creating Osamu Tezuka), Atagoal: Cat's Magical Forest (a magical parable about a fat feline), 5 Centimeters per Second (love and loss and the speed of a falling cherry blossom petal), and Appleseed: Ex Machina (in which peaceful cyborgs are turned bad). 11:30 am-8:30 pm, Freer/Sackler Galleries, 12th & Independence Ave SW. Free; tickets distributed one hour before screening.
HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr are a Marine and a nun, respectively, trying to outfox a Japanese patrol on a Pacific island during WWII. (Also April 7) 1 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
LE COCHON Made two decades before Gaspar Noé began his sensationalist accounts of horse butchery, Jean Eustache's matter-of-fact documentary observes the killing, gutting, and rendering of a pig in rural France. Co-directed by Jean-Michel Barjol and shot in antique-looking black-and-white, the film seems like a dispatch from much earlier times. (1970, 50 min) Shown with LE JARDIN DES DELICES DE JEROME BOSCH, an analysis of the famed proto-surrealist triptych. (1979; 33 min) 2 & 4 pm, 2 pm, National Gallery of Art, East Building auditorium. Free.
SUNDAY, APRIL 6
ANDY WARHOL'S SLEEP The first of Andy Warhol's long films, this five-hour portrait of snoozing poet John Giorno was meant to document a single uneventful event, but actually was constructed from many takes. (1963, 321 min) Noon-5:30 PM, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 7th St & Independence Ave SW. Free.
I'M A CYBORG, BUT THAT'S OKAY Oldboy director Park Chan-wook dials back the ferocity with this account of romance in an asylum. 2 pm, Freer/Sackler Galleries, 12th & Independence Ave SW. Free; tickets distributed one hour before screening.
MAX & CO. In this stop-motion animation fable for children, a 15-year-old seeks his long-missing father, but is sidetracked by a job at Bzzz & Co., a flyswatter firm about to be roiled by new management. (2008, 76 min) 3 pm, La Maison Francaise, 4101 Reservoir Rd NW. $8. Reservations required: e-mail culturel.washington-amba@diplomatie.gouv.fr
THE SUNDOWNERS Robert Mitchum paired with Deborah Kerr again for this tale of a couple of Australian sheepherders who plan to abandon the peripatetic life. (1960, 133 min) 3:45 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
UNE SALE HISTOIRE Jean Eustache's "nasty tale" treats the same scenario, twice, once as documentary, once as fiction. (1977, 52 min) Shown with LES PHOTOS D'ALIX, in which an actress uses a photo album to illustrate her life (1978, 18 min); and LE PERE NOEL A LES YEUX BLUES, with Jean-Pierre Léaud as a thief and part-time Santa Claus. (1966; 47 min) 4:30 pm, 2 pm, National Gallery of Art, East Building auditorium. Free.
CRIES AND WHISPERS One of Ingmar Bergman's most lacerating dramas. As one sister dies, the two others review their troubled lives. (1972, 91 min) (Also April 8-9) 6:30 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
THE PASSION OF ANNA Shot on Ingmar Bergman's beloved Faro Island, this four-person drama is interspersed with the actor's comments on the characters they're playing. (1969, 101 min) 8:30 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
MONDAY, APRIL 7
GERMANS IN AMERICA: INTO THE PROMISED LAND, THE PRICE OF FREEDOM Part of a European TV series, these two episodes consider the history of German immigrants to Texas, and follow some Americans of German descent from Missouri to the Rhineland. 6:30 pm, Goethe-Institut, 812 Seventh St NW. $6.
TUESDAY, APRIL 8
BETRAYAL Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, and Patricia Hodge star in Harold Pinter's account of an affair, recounting in chronological reverse. (1982, 95 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.
WRESTLING GROUNDS: "THE CALL OF THE ARENA" Cheikh Ndiaye's film shows the significance, and the local quirks, of Senegalese wrestling. (2006, 105 min) 7 pm, S. Dillon Ripley Center Lecture Hall, 1100 Jefferson Drive SW. $13. Reservations: 202 633 3030 or Smithsonian Resident Associates.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9
ANITA O'DAY — THE LIFE OF A JAZZ SINGER A documentary that reconstructs the life of "Jezebel of Jazz." (2007, 90 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.
STELLA DALLAS The title character of this silent melodrama is a boorish, small-town woman who demonstrates her nobility by sacrificing herself for her daughter she had with a wealthy New Yorker. (1925, 110 min) 7 pm, Films on the Hill, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, 545 Seventh Street, SE. $5.
CITY OF THE SUN Four unemployed Czech pals scuffle to survive, and risk sacrificing their friendship, as they undertake a serious of dubious money-making ventures. (2005, 95 min) 8 pm, Avalon Theater, 5612 Connecticut Ave NW. $9.75
THURSDAY, APRIL 10
FILM WITHIN A FILM CONFESSIONALS This program pairs two 2006 films about family situations. British director Joanna Quinn's DREAMS AND DESIRES — FAMILY TIES gets frisky at a wedding. Brazilian director Joao Salles's SANTIAGO investigates a late, but still powerful, presence from his childhood. 8 pm, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 7th St &