FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18
"SHARED EXPERIENCE: TELLING OUR STORIES" Twelve short films from Longhouse Media's Native Lens program, which teaches digital filmmaking to young Native Americans. Every day except Wednesday, though Feb. 28, 12:30 & 3:30 pm, Rasmuson Theater, National Museum of the American Indian, 4th Street & Independence Ave SW. Free.
BELISSIMA Luchino Visconti's show-biz satire features Anna Magnani as a fervent stage mother who pushes her young daughter into a Cinecitta Studio competition to pick a new child star. (1953, 114 min) 2:30 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
FRONTIER BLUES Set along Iran's northern border with Turkmenistan, director Babak Jalali's home region, this absurdist comedy features such eccentric characters as a farm worker whose best friend is a donkey, a man studying English to marry a woman he doesn't really know, and a traditional musician who's not sufficiently folksy for the photographer documenting him. (2009, 98 min) 7 pm, Freer/Sackler Galleries, 12th & Independence Ave SW. Free; tickets distributed one hour before screening.
GREASE SINGALONG Join all the other good girls and bad boys in singing this doubly nostalgic musical's fake-'50s hits. (1978, 110 min) 7 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $11.
INCENDIES This screening is sold out. In this French Canadian film, two siblings head to the Middle East to learn more about a secret family history just bequeathed them by their mother. (2010, 130 min) 7 pm, Grosvenor Auditorium, National Geographic Society, 1600 M St NW. $8.
SOMEWHERE IN TIME Obsessed with an older actress, a playwright tries to leap back in time to romance her younger self. A treat for fans of Victorian architecture, if nothing else. (1980, 103 min) 9:20 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $11.
THE LOLLIPOP GIRLS IN HARD CANDY 3D Porn, apparently. Midnight, Landmark E Street, 11th & E Sts NW.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH The earlier of Hitchcock's two versions of this tale, starring Leslie Banks and Edna Best as British tourists who bump into big trouble at a Swiss casino. With their daughter being held hostage, they return home and try to unravel the mystery without police assistance. (1934, w, 75 min) 1 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $11.
442: LIVE WITH HONOR, DIE WITH DIGNITY This documentary reconstructs the history of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the most decorated U.S. regiment during WWII. The film includes archival footage and interviews with such 442 veterans as U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye. A discussion with director Junichi Suzuki follows the screening. (2010, 88 min) 2 pm, Carmichael Auditorium, Museum of Natural History, 14th & Constitution Ave NW. Free.
WITHOUT PITY In this wartime tale of cross-cultural attraction, an American GI falls for a young Italian woman while she's searching for her missing brother. Directed by Alberto Lattuada, from a script by Federico Fellini. The woman is played by Carla Del Poggio, Lattuada's spouse; her friend by Giulietta Masina, who married Fellini. (1948, 95 min) 2 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
THE WOMEN Adapted by director George Cukor and scriprer Anita Loos from Clare Boothe Luce's play, this is the tale of a Manhattan society dame (Norma Shearer) who confronts the shopgirl (Joan Crawford) who's dallying with her husband. With Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, and Marjorie Main. Cedric Gibbons designed the stylish sets. (1939, 133 min) 2:45 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $11.
THE OVERCOAT Italian director Alberto Lattuada transplants Gogol's satirical tale to Italy: an office worker (comedian Renato Rascel) improves his social position by purchasing a natty coat. (1952, 99 min) 4 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
ZEITGEIST: MOVING FORWARD Peter Joseph's documentary feature argues for shifting to a "resource-based economy." 4 pm, Sankofa Books and Cafe, 2714 Georgia Ave NW. Free.
IN A BETTER WORLD This screening is sold out. Two boys's friendship goes wrong in this film from Danish writer-director Susaane Bier (Brothers, After the Wedding). 5 pm, Grosvenor Auditorium, National Geographic Society, 1600 M St NW. $8.
ROBERTA In a pinch in Paris, a bandleader (Fred Astaire) tries to recruit a boutique clerk into his act, only to discover that her imperious, Polish-accented customer (Ginger Rogers) is actually his old hometown flame. (1935, 106 min) 5:30 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $11.
GREASE SING-ALONG See Feb. 18. 7:45 & 10 pm, AFI.
BIUTIFUL This screening is sold out. Click here for my NPR review of this globalized melodrama. 8 pm, Grosvenor Auditorium, National Geographic Society, 1600 M St NW. $8.
THE LOLLIPOP GIRLS IN HARD CANDY See Feb. 18. Midnight, E Street.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20
NUMBER 17 Named for a deserted house, this early Hitchcock crime drama observes a cast of unscrupulous characters, all casing a stolen necklace and making plans to escape with it to the continent. (1932, 63 min) 1 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $11.
PERSPECTIVES ON ALGERIAN CINEMA A discussion with actor Danny Glover; Ahmed Bedjaoui, director of National Algerian Cinema; film scholar Manthia Diawara and visual culture historian of Nicholas Mirzoeff, both of New York University; and former Black Panther Party member Kathleen Neal Cleaveron. 1 pm, National Museum of African Art, 10th & Independence Ave SW. Free.
DOGTOOTH This screening is sold out. The Greek contender for the best foreign-film Oscar is an intriguingly perverse domestic tale. Dad, who runs a factory, has kept his three young-adult children (and their mother, apparently) confined to an estate for their entire lives. He imprisons them primarily by instilling terror of the outside world and its threats, chief among them cats. He also has forbidden them TV, telephones, and videos — except for home movies of their own childhoods. Each kid can leave home, he explains, when his or her first dogtooth falls out. Eccentrically witty and coolly elegant but also sometimes disturbingly violent, Dogtooth would be a minor work if it were only the tale of a nuttily nuclear family. But the scenario is quietly evocative of religious cults and totalitarian states — or just the weird beliefs that "normal" people try so hard to inculcate in their children. (2010, 94 min) 2 pm, Grosvenor Auditorium, National Geographic Society, 1600 M St NW. $8.
FRONTIER BLUES See Feb. 18. 2 pm, Freer.
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH See Feb. 19. 2:30 pm, AFI.
FOLLOW THE FLEET On shore leave in San Fran, a sailor (Fred Astaire) tries to reconcile with his former dance and romance partner (Ginger Rogers). Songs by Irving Berlin. 4:15 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $11.
SUNDAY IN AUGUST This unruffled tale of a day at Ostia beach, a favorite spot for the Roman working class, draws on director Luciano Emmer's documentary background, and features a mix of professional and nonprofessional actors (including Marcello Mastroianni in one of his first screen appearances). (1950, 88 min) 4:30 pm,National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
GREASE SING-ALONG See Feb. 18. 6:30 pm, AFI.
ROBERTA See Feb. 19. 6:30 pm, AFI.
OUTSIDE THE LAW This screening is sold out. A revolution, as you may heard, is not a dinner party. That's certainly true of Algeria's war of independence, as The Battle of Algiers demonstrated, and Rachid Bouchareb's Oscar-nominated film seconds, on a much broader scale. This stirring epic follows three brothers from 1925 — when their family is evicted by the French from land it's held for generations — to Algerian independence in 1962. By then the three men — a soldier, a leftist intellectual, and an apolitical hustler who keeps getting drawn into his brother's campaign — have suffered heavy losses. The three brothers (played by the leads of the director's WWII drama, Days of Glory) are not fully fleshed creations, and most of the other characters are one-dimensional. What distinguishes the film is the way it connects the Algerian insurgency to other ones, including the French resistance and the Viet Cong, who take the uniformed brother prisoner, and lecture him (and other Algerian POWs) on Third World struggle. It's all rather didactic, but in a useful way. (2010, 138 min) 7 pm, Grosvenor Auditorium, National Geographic Society, 1600 M St NW. $8.
SOMEWHERE IN TIME See Feb. 18. 8:45 pm, AFI.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21
NUMBER 17 See Feb. 20. 1 pm, AFI.
THE RED SHOES Adapted from a Hans Christian Andersen tale, writer-directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's rhapsodic ballet film (sampled last year in Coppola's Tetro) set the standard for dance flicks. (1948, 133 min) 2:30 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $11.
FOLLOW THE FLEET See Feb. 20. 8:45 pm, AFI.
GREASE SING-ALONG See Feb. 18. 7 pm, AFI.
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH See Feb. 19. 5:15 pm, AFI.
SOMEWHERE IN TIME See Feb. 18. 9:20 pm, AFI.