Panel:
Changing Careers Breakfast 9:00 a.m. Tribeca Grill

Looking to make the leap from screenwriting to producing? Acting to directing? Meet industry insiders who took a chance and made the leap. Get tips on what not to do. Moderator: Perri Peltz. Panelists include: Lindsay Doran, Fisher Stevens, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas and Frank Whaley

Panel:
Simply Put: Making Science More Sexy 10:30 a.m. Embassy Suites Hotel

From "Apollo 12" to "A Beautiful Mind," the entertainment industry has helped science go from geek, to sleek, and in some cases, even made science sexy. How did it happen and what effect does this newfound popularity have on the traditional bastions of science? Moderator: Robert Krulwich. Panelists include: Alan Alda, Brian Greene, Paula Apsell, Ann Dryan.

Panel:
Confusion in a Time of Uncertainty: Life after September 11th 11:00 a.m. Pace Univ. Performing Arts Center

It is a common belief that art has a responsibility to respond to crisis but is there a deadline? Join us for a discussion with filmmakers, musicians, artists, and writers about the pressure to draw conclusions post 9/11. Moderator: Jon Stewart. Panelists include: Karin Batten, Wendy Wasserstein, Spalding Gray and Susan Sarandon.

On the Waterfront (NY) 12:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Scorsese: I was twelve years old when I saw "On The Waterfront." It was a breakthrough for me. Kazan was forging a new acting style; it had the appearance of realism, but actually revealed something in the natural behavior of people that I hadn't seen on the screen before: the truth behind the posture. Kazan and Budd Schulberg create a story of stirring social realism and a Christian allegory. Fallen ex-boxer Terry Malloy (Brando in one of his most powerful and credible performances) overcomes his pattern of self-corrosive compromise and finds redemption in breaking the stranglehold of corrupt union bosses over the longshoremen. In the great tradition of John Ford and Frank Capra, Kazan depicted the American social landscape in a unique and dramatic way. "On The Waterfront" used the legacy of the American gangster film to bring working-class life to the screen. This film leapt into a sense of reality I had rarely seen before in American movies. Like Force of Evil, here I was seeing people I could recognize on the screen: people I knew, who were the real life which surrounded me outside the theatre. It's also the first film in which the music made a strong impression on me. The score by Leonard Bernstein; the beautiful, cold, brilliant photography of Boris Kaufman; the forceful dialogue of Budd Schulberg; and the style of acting - all unite to form a picture that has the feel of realism, yet is also highly stylized. "On The Waterfront: is a milestone picture that has influenced an entire generation of filmmakers. Its visual style, its use of real locations, its modernizing of acting in cinema, and the atmosphere that all these elements helped to create, represent the culmination of Kazan's work. The picture won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Screenplay.

Emmett's Mark (FC) 12:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9, 10:00 p.m.)

That’s My Face (E Minha Cara) (IFS) 1:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

In 1999, filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris journeyed to the city Salvador Da Bahia, the African heart and soul of Brazil, seeking the identity of the spirits who haunt his dreams. Twenty years before, his mother had made a parallel journey when she migrated with the family to Tanzania, East Africa, in search of a mythic motherland. Shot entirely on silent Super 8 mm film by three generations of an African American family, "That's My Face" ("E Minha Cara") creates a mythopoetic feast of self-discovery. Its intricate sound design employs rap and hip hop multi-voice sampling to traverse three continents and thirty years. The collages of footage create a time capsule of the past and its relation to the filmmaker today.

Devil's Playground 2:00 p.m. The Screening Room

(For description see Festival Info for May 9, 8:30 p.m.)

Panel: Featuring Music By 2:00 p.m. Pace Univ. Performing Arts Center

From original scores to existing material, the relationship between the musician and the moviemaker. Moderator: Lisa Robinson. Panelists include: Karyn Rachman, Carter Burwell and Terence Blanchard

Rain (IFS) 2:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

A tragic tale of sex, murder and redemption, written deep within the soil of America's heartland, Rain is a story of forbidden passion and buried sexuality played out against the backdrop of a town where the only place to go crazy is inside. A story of moral ambiguity, Rain covers familiar territory during the opening scene. A young wife, Ellen (Magnolia's Melora Walters), takes retribution upon her philandering husband, Paul, when he returns to their home from an early morning assignation with his lover. Suddenly, Ellen is saddened with the very physical remains of her actions: the bloody, dead body of her husband lies in the middle of her kitchen floor. A classic American tragedy, Rain quickly bursts into a tale of mythical proportions. The small Iowa town that traps Ellen holds also the secrets of those who surround her, including her well-intentioned yet controlling mother (Diane Ladd); the strangely distant town sheriff (Jamey Sheridan); the desperate 'other woman' (Jo Anderson), and the young man who shares Ellen's bed (Kris Park). Katherine Lindberg’s directing debut.

October Sky 2:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Based on Homer H.Hickam, Jr.'s autobiographical book Rocket Boys, "October Sky" recounts the thrilling and touching story of how a teenager in Coalwood, West Virginia, broke away from the tradition of following his father to a lifetime's work in the coal mines to pursue a quixotic dream that changes his life. Challenged and inspired by the 1957 Soviet launch of the satellite, Sputnik, Homer (Jake Gyllenhaal) turns his eyes to the skies, recruits three friends and sets out to build and launch his own rocket. Despite opposition from Homer's father (Chris Cooper) and frequent misfires that nearly get them shut down, the boys' successes inspire the whole town to believe that everyone can shoot for the stars. Director Joe Johnston infuses Lewis Colick's lovely script with an insight, poignancy and warmth that transforms "October Sky" from nostalgia to significant personal history.

Blind Spot (FC) 2:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Seventeen year-old Danny Alton, like so many teens of his generation, is not yet a man but hardly a boy either. Jilted by an older male suitor who briefly showed him a taste of romance and then left him in the lurch, Danny's caught between a rock and a hard place with his insatiable curiosity and unformed sexuality. Played by rising heartthrob James Franco, who starred as James Dean in Mark Rydell's TNT movie on the legendary star, Danny drops out of his elite L.A. boarding school to go looking for the elusive Darcy, an underbelly crime figure with a penchant for stealing vintage cars straight from the lot. Darcy has also stolen hearts other than Danny's, as the desperate young man discovers when he rescues Darcy's spurned girlfriend from a suicidal act. The unlikely duo combs the vast Death Valley desert in search of their mutual love, only to discover a third jilted party, a crime associate whose own relationship to Darcy is as cryptic and ambiguous as their own. In the sparse, moody, sexual slow burn Blind Spot, Toronto native Stefan Woloszczuk combines malevolent Lynchian undercurrents with noir ambiguities to create a new kind of menage-a-trois. His debut feature isn't an easy ride through the desert for his characters, but it's an intoxicating one for us.

Telling Nicholas (S) 2:30 p.m. Tribeca Grand

Within hours of the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2002, fliers of missing loved ones wallpapered New York City. After filmmaker James Ronald Whitney was forced from his home by the debris cloud that rose from the ash of the falling towers, he contacted the family of a missing woman he saw on a flier. She was the mother of 7-year-old Nicholas. Whitney tells the powerful story of Nicholas, whose father waited 10 days before telling him that his mother is dead. "Telling Nicholas" is screening as part of the special 9/11 film program.

Afghan Alphabet (IFS) 2:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

As the world continues to reel from the overwhelming violence unleashed in the previously unimaginable events of September 11, Mohsen Makhmalbaf's "Afghan Alphabet" starkly and shatteringly depicts the pernicious, soul-killing effects of the Taliban's ruthless banning of education for girls and women in a country where - even before the Taliban - 95% of Afghanistan's female population and 80% of its male citizens did not attend school. With his digital camera, Makhmalbaf tracks the children who do not attend school in villages bordering Afghanistan and Iran, and discovers the cultural decimation wrought by the Taliban's repressive dogma. As Makhmalbaf states, "You cannot free a woman who is imprisoned in the burka with a rocket. She doesn't know that she doesn't know. She is imprisoned, but she does not know that she is a prisoner of poverty, ignorance, prejudice, male chauvinism and superstition. The film seeks the lost key to be able to open the lock of the cultural problems of Afghanistan." Farsi with English subtitles

Shorts IV 2:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Ant, directed by Michael Faella, 17 min. A man, whose relationship with his wife is plagued by paranoia and denial, goes on a quest for sustenance and emotional relief. What he encounters in the bowels of his city drives him back

Bamboleho, directed by Luis Prieto, 14 min. Spanish with English subtitles. A kid from a poor family runs away from home one day and decides to live in the rooftops of the city of Barcelona. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s "The Baron in The Trees," the film is based on a true story.

Climbing Miss Sophie, directed by Liat Dahan, 25 min. A street kid, smart at age 10. A decaying beauty fighting the ravages of her age and illness. He collects broken things to fix. If he can fix broken things, can he fix broken people like Miss Sophie?

Magnet Man (Czlowiek Magnes), directed by Marcin Wrona, 20 min. Polish with English subtitles. A story about conflict between a boy and his mystical father, who discovers extraordinary powers. He can cure other people, but he can't resolve his relationship with his family. Based on true events.

Rocks and Chocolate, directed by Teddy Sharkova, 12 min. Bulgarian with English subtitles. In a post-Communist Eastern European country in 1996, the food prices are outrageous and times are tough. A little girl steals from the jar containing her poor family's meager savings. Then she buys a bar of chocolate from the neighborhood store. As the story unfolds, the real intentions of the "little devil" become clear. This is a story about the warm relationship between a little girl and her father in the midst of the difficult conditions in which they live.

Satellite, directed by Trevor Ristow, 17 min. Fifteen year-old best friends, Eddie and Austin are raising money the old-fashioned way: ripping people off. But after three of their recent victims return to settle accounts, Austin ends up in the hospital, and Eddie, paralyzed by fear during the initial confrontation, now incongruously vows revenge. The problem is, nobody believes he has what it takes to follow through. Does he?

Shadowplay, directed by Dan Blank, 16 min. The flash seen over Hiroshima left a city burned, but the shadows, those few places that the bomb's intense light was shielded from, became silhouetted photographs from that single moment of destruction. "Shadowplay" focuses on Akio, the "shadow"of a young boy, as he wanders the decimated city searching for his family and a reason for why his world has crumbled.

Revolution #9 (IFS) 3:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9, 8:45 p.m.)

Hip Hop Hope (D) 3:00 p.m. Tribeca Film Center

Immediately following the devastation of September 11, filmmaker Darrell Wilks captured the realistic yet persevering perspective of a group of New York hip hop artists, a welcome viewpoint not explored on the evening network news. The terrorist attacks simultaneously changed a lot and changed nothing for the spirited artists Wilks interviewed on the streets of Manhattan. One rapper expresses the limitations of his world by commenting that New York seemed just as dangerous for him before the attack. A female singer is grateful, perhaps for the first time, that she lives so far uptown because she knows the terrorists aren't going to be bombing her building anytime soon. A singer on her way to visiting the recovery site, incredulously counts her blessings that she didn't accept an offer to work at a company in the World Trade Center. These artists continue their struggle to address issues of race, class and evolving black culture in America as they help create it. The film offers up two not to be missed performances - one at the mid-point and one at the end - as these artists translate the pain and joy of the soul through the simplest yet most powerful of instruments, their voices.

Shot in the Dark 3:15 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Like many, Adrian Grenier grew up estranged from his father. In an attempt to discredit the stigma of being fatherless, he sets out to question the necessity of having a father in his directorial debut, A Shot in the Dark. Initially, Grenier uses a detached method of research by interviewing and asking fathers and sons, what is a "Father?" But it quickly becomes evident that in order to answer such a question, he must embark on the ultimate quest to his own father's doorstep. By employing his best friend, who offers guidance and perspective layered in a light-hearted outlook, Grenier is allowed to explore this sensitive subject more thoroughly. Together they set out on the journey starting from the outside in, first, by visiting his father's immediate relatives who begin to give shape to this elusive figure, then later, by standing face to face with the man he's only known as his biological father.

Mai’s America (D) 3:15 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Marlo Poras' sharp, rigorously focused, and vastly entertaining first film follows Mai, an exchange student from Hanoi, who comes to America for her senior year in high school. Fueled by images of MTV and Hollywood films, and wanting to succeed and prove herself to her demanding parents back home, the relentlessly positive, energetic, and curious Mai arrives in rural Mississippi to a rude awakening. Placed first with a white self-proclaimed "redneck" family, then with an African American couple with marital problems, she finds herself in an America that eventually proves to be much tougher than Vietnam, despite the good will of those around her. This kind of culture-shock setup is an inherently interesting focus, but what adds another layer of involvement and indeed takes the film to another level is the particular personality of Mai herself. With more American "can-do" spirit than most of the natives, and an extreme perceptiveness and sensitivity, she is someone we both root for and fear for because setbacks in her dream are inevitable. That we can both support her dreams and then come to question them is a tribute to Poras's poignant and evenhanded observation.

12 Hours (12 Horas) (FC) 3:45 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9 3:00 p.m.)

Morlang (FC) 5:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Julius Morlang is an artist in his twilight years whose immense photo-realist canvasses have made him an art-world sensation and a wealthy man. Married for fifteen years to Ellen, his muse and personal manager, Julian's comfortable life starts to unravel after his wife admits to an affair with an up-and-coming performance artist whose negligible work has captivated Julius' agent - at the expense of his established client's diminishing stardom. Dejected and disillusioned, Julius flees to a remote Irish hideaway where he embarks on an affair with a younger admirer until he learns that Ellen has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Julius attempts to nurse Ellen during her painful journey toward death while Ellen's performance-artist lover proceeds to stalk her - or so we are lead to believe. Tjebbo Penning's feature debut examines the artistic temperament in its most wrathful state, conjuring up a tortured, conflicted soul whose determination to create is exceeded only by his ravenous will to succeed, and to wreak havoc on anyone who stands in his way. Equal parts character study and psychosexual revenge drama, Morlang makes riveting use of the flashback to elicit suspense out of a narrative (and protagonist) that are far more complex than meets the eye.

Panel: In Love, In the Movies 5:00 p.m. Pace Univ. Performing Arts Center

"You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie"—Becky (Rosie O'Donnell) to Annie (Meg Ryan) in "Sleepless in Seattle." Throughout history, movies have taken, and even set, the cultural temperature about love. This panel will explore how our ideas about love—what it is, what is should be, what it can be, often come from the screen. Moderator: Nora Ephron. Panelists include Lauren Bacall, James Harvey, Jennifer Westfeldt and Paul Rudnick

From the Ashes: 10 artists (S) 5:30 p.m. Tribeca Grand

(For description see Festival Info for May 9 2:30 p.m.)

Nine Good Teeth (D) 5:45 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Mary Mirabito is 96-years-old and still cooking. In this loving portrait of a feisty Italian American matriarch, filmmaker Alex Halpern (the grandson) journeys into his Nana's past, uncovering family secrets and the universal ties between parents and children. Described as a "pistol," "a tiger" and the "Rock of Gibraltar," Mary is a formidable screen presence, the sort of blustery grand dame embodied by Italian screen queen Anna Magnani. A miraculous collection of home movies, historical footage, and old photographs brings the family's formative years to life, including early black and white footage of Mary as a young, headstrong woman. Halpern jumps swiftly through the decades, revealing the truths behind such family legends as the scar on his great-grandfather's cheek, her great-grandmother's affair, and Nana's own one-time infidelity. Murder, the mob, Jack Kerouac, and the Mirabito homeland (Stromboli Island off Sicily's coast), all find their way into Nana's rich past, but the film's power comes from the recognition that sooner or later, our loved ones will all leave us. Like Martin Scorsese's own classic 1974 family portrait, Italianamerican, Halpern's sometimes irreverent, sometimes poignant chronicle is a powerful testament to the cycle of life.

Party Girl (FL) 6:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

If Daisy von Scherler Mayer's Party Girl had done nothing else besides giving the incomparable Parker Posey her first starring role, that would be plenty. Posey had made a strong impression in supporting roles - most notably in Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused" - but Party Girl marks the real beginning of her reign as the undisputed Indie Queen of the Nineties. In Party Girl Posey is an effervescent delight as the Holly Golightly-esque Mary, a club promoter who views New York as her own personal playground. But happily, there's more to Mayer's film than one memorable performance. It's a zippily paced, open-hearted valentine not only to the giddy hedonism of Mary's past, but also to the more quotidian turns her life takes. When Mary is arrested for throwing a party without a permit, she turns to her librarian godmother (played by Sascha von Scherler, the director's mother) for help, and soon finds herself working as a most unlikely library clerk. Other films and filmmakers might have portrayed the library as a place to escape from, but there's an inspired reversal in the screenplay by Mayer and Harry Birckmayer. Instead of being oppressed by this environment, Mary is liberated by the Dewey Decimal system, using it as inspiration to re-categorize her own life. Mayer's vision is refreshingly multi-cultural - Mary ultimately falls for a sweet falafel vendor named Mustafa - and the downtown world she inhabits is realistically diverse as well. It's no surprise that Party Girl became an indie hit, even spinning off a TV sitcom.

The Kid Stays in the Picture (IFS) 6:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(No description available)

Happy Times (IFS) 6:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

In Zhang Yimou's new bittersweet comedy, Zhao is a poor, aging bachelor who thinks he has met "the" woman. Leading her to believe he's wealthy and agreeing to a wedding far beyond his means, Zhao's best friend Li hatches an idea to raise money - refurbish an abandoned bus and rent it hourly to young couples starved for privacy - the "Happy Times Hotel." But Zhao is too old-fashioned and the plan goes awry. Zhao meets his intended spouse's spoiled son and blind stepdaughter Wu, who dreams of having her eyes fixed. The stepmother sees Wu as a burden, insisting Zhao give her a job at the "Happy Times Hotel" to rid her. Reluctantly, Zhao takes Wu, finding the bus being hauled to the dump. Zhao's compassion increases for Wu. He maintains his lie of being a wealthy hotel manager, enlisting his friends to build a "massage room" in an abandoned warehouse, "another one of his hotels" where his friends pose as customers. Wu eventually senses something is wrong. Zhao is compelled to come clean with everyone when he discovers that his fianceehas been cheating on him, planning to marry another man - a rich one - leaving a strong bond between Zhao and Wu. Mandarin with English subtitles.

Elling (IFS) 6:45 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Academy Awards and directed by Petter Naess, Elling is an odd couple comedy about two misfits trying to find their place in society. Elling is a middle-aged man who has spent his entire life sheltered in his childhood home. After his protective mother dies, Elling is sent to a state home and shares a room with Kjell, a hulking man. After two years in which the shy, neurotic Elling and the loud, sex-obsessed Kjell become close friends, the pair are released into the real world. In their state-funded apartment, Elling's fear of abandonment consumes him. He refuses to leave the apartment or answer the telephone, and will only let Kjell make short trips to the store. When Kjell strikes up an unexpected relationship with a neighbor, Elling feels threatened. One night, Elling befriends an aging poet who encourages him to write. Elling begins slipping copies of his verses into sauerkraut packages at the supermarket, where he becomes an underground sensation as "the Sauerkraut Poet." This newfound form of expression thrills Elling, but it is a memorable trip to the country that ultimately forces him to come to terms with the fact that he must overcome his fears to begin his journey towards happiness. Norwegian with English subtitles

Killer’s Kiss (NY) 6:30 p.m. Stuyvesant High School

Stanely Kubrick's brisk second feature is a taut film of unsettling mood and ripe visual invention. This is the story of a lonely boxer against the ropes who sparks with a nightclub dancer. The possessive and jealous club owner tries to destroy the relationship and pursue combat with his rival outside the ring. Even then a true independent, Kubrick served as writer, director, producer, cinematographer, editor, and sound man and shot many scenes clandestinely. Casting his own very distinctive eye on the streets and settings of Manhattan, Kubrick 's film has dispassionate clarity, tabloid immediacy, and numerous surrealistic flourishes, especially in the final exciting confrontation in a mannequin-strewn warehouse.

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (IFS) 7:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

A man approaching middle age decides to change his life. A rising young attorney's plans are thrown into disarray. A woman faces her husband's infidelity. An envious businessman seeks revenge and an optimistic young cleaning woman awaits a miracle. Just the ebb and flow of New York life: chaotic, isolated, diffuse. Or is it? How can we know what effect we have on a passing stranger? What if the smallest gesture can change the course of someone's life? Perhaps fate is in fact the product of our choices - how we choose to accept seemingly random events whether or not we opt to see the interconnectedness of things. Perhaps, too, there really is a light at the end of the tunnel, even if we can't see it yet. Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, directed by Jill Sprecher, weaves five contemporary stories together into a single tale that examines the dramatic impact people have on one another. With a narrative that crisscrosses in time and doubles back on itself, the film offers an unusual glimpse into each character. The ideas it explores - the meaning of true happiness, the notion of karma, the eternal power of hope - strike with particular relevance in our increasingly frenetic, disjointed world.

Spellbound (D) 7:00 p.m. Tribeca Film Center

Each year more than nine million junior high school students compete at the local and regional levels for 249 slots in the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C., a nationally televised competition in which white-knuckled parents and their nerve-addled progeny grapple with words like "logorrhea" and "hypsometer" in hopes of claiming the title of America's most gifted young speller. In Spellbound, filmmaker Jeffrey Blitz tracks eight students through the year-long selection process, profiling such economically disparate youth as Ashley, an inner-city black girl raised by a single mom; April, the daughter of blue-collar underachievers who operate a tavern in Ambler, PA, and Neil, a first-generation Indian immigrant from San Clemente, CA, whose motivationally obsessed entrepreneur father forces his son to rigorously practice his spelling finesse for hours each day alongside various tutors and coaches. Blitz unveils a motley crew of young contenders, their parents, teachers and coaches, plucked from an American melting pot in which competition, knowledge and victory intermingle to create a slew of real-life Lisa Simpsons whose voracious capacity for rote learning often threatens to compromise an idyllic youth. Engrossing, suspenseful and only slightly unsettling, Spellbound limns a young America of overachievers who are innocent yet freakishly beyond their years.

The Cloud of Unknowing (FC) 7:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Richard Sylvarnes' debut feature as a dreamy mantra of hope and happiness in a (Miho Nikaido) appears at a hospital one day after a suicide canvas of blurred lights and lonely people - she is finally drawn to the apartment of Dr. John Bennett (DJ Mendel), a man haunted by memories of his Japanese wife's drowning three years before. Adding levity to this lyrical ghost story, Thomas Jay Ryan (Henry Fool) plays a hack fortuneteller who helps Bennett try to overcome his past. Shot on digital video, writer-director (and composer) Sylvarnes uses the medium in evocative new ways. You won't find the kind of bland, celluloid mimicry found in so many independent movies; here lies an entirely innovative palette, where traces of movement leave an eerie smear after they're gone. Carefully composed color-tinted frames and phantom-like out of focus shots also give the viewer a visceral sense of what is meant by the cloud of unknowing.

The Importance of Being Earnest (IFS) 7:30 p.m. Pace Univ. Performing Arts Center

Oliver Parker's The Importance of Being Earnest comes to the screen with a sterling double pedigree: based on the most famous and beloved play by Oscar Wilde, it is also the first film since 1959 to bear the logo of legendary Ealing Studios, home of such classics as Passport to Pimlico, The Lavender Hill Mob, and The Ladykillers. Termed "a trivial comedy for serious people," Earnest tells the tale of two dashing British gents in the 1890's whose lives of longing, ambition and the search for love in the midst of their stylish universe provide the basis for an effervescent exploration of money, manners and mores. Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Dame Judi Dench, Reese Witherspoon, Frances O'Connor and Tom Wilkinson give sparkling - and, perhaps, definitive - performances as Wilde's most delectable creations in Oliver Parker's first film since his superb adaptation of Wilde's An Ideal Husband (1999), also starring Rupert Everett. As Parker says, "True to the paradoxes he is master of, Wilde is never more insightful nor profound than when his touch is at its lightest."

Jimmy Scott: If You Only Knew? (D) 8:30 p.m. Tribeca Grand

Legendary jazz vocalist Jimmy Scott, still going strong at 76, guides director Matthew Buzzell through each chapter of his musical history and personal journey in this entertaining portrait that gives equal time to Scott in performance past and present. Scott's magical falsetto singing voice, a result of the puberty-stalling hereditary hormonal deficiency Kallmann's Syndrome, has made him a favorite of music giants like Ray Charles, Charlie Parker, Lionel Hampton, Lou Reed, Madonna and Doc Pomus, each of whom he collaborated with along the way. He's more recently been discovered by filmmakers and appeared in the final episode of Twin Peaks and in Ethan Hawke's Chelsea Walls, in which he reprises his cover of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy." If You Only Knew moves back and forth in time as Scott concludes a 2000 Japanese tour for rapt fans and leads Buzzell on a tour of landmarks from his Cleveland childhood, which ended abruptly with his adored mother's freak death when he was 14. Friends and family add their own perspectives on Scott's start as a teen sensation, disastrous recording contracts, and indomitable spirit as Scott reiterates the life-affirming philosophy that has kept him going and varied concert clips show off his amazing voice and unique phrasings.

Journeys With George (IFS) 9:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9, 2:30 p.m.)

Lawless Heart (IFS) 9:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9, 9:30 p.m.)

Ride Lonesome (R) 9:00 p.m. Stuyvesant High School

Between 1956 and 1960, director Budd Boetticher, producer Harry Joe Brown and star Randolph Scott made six tough, tight, laconic Westerns now known as The Ranown Series -- named from a combination of Scott's and Brown's names. Made in 1959 and written by Burt Kennedy, Ride Lonesome is a film of unassuming proportions, direct observation and unpretentious dialogue that increasingly places its characters in a physical and psychological landscape of complex, threatening predicament. Just as James Stewart's easy-going persona was transformed into a much darker, sometimes shockingly violent figure in the Westerns of Anthony Mann, Randolph Scott, the courtly Virginian, found his most indelible alter ego in Boetticher's films. Stoic, craggy, leather-faced, Scott's characters in The Ranown Series are hard-bitten loners - less heroes than survivors who seek no quarter and rarely give it, but who live their lives by a strict moral code that separates them from the villains they pursue. Boetticher's Westerns are simply more bracing, more fascinating and more essential with each passing year.

Personal Velocity (IFS) 9:15 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Based on writer-director Rebecca Miller's book of short stories, Personal Velocity tells separate tales of the awakening of three women: Delia (Kyra Sedgwick), Greta (Parker Posey), and Paula (Fairuza Balk). Delia is in an abusive relationship with her husband of twelve years. After he brutally beats her one night, she escapes with her three children to reclaim what she has lost. Greta is an ambitious cookbook editor, discontent with her unexciting husband and career, who gradually re-awakens through flashbacks. And Paula is a troubled 21-year-old who has just had a near-death experience. Driving to her mother's house, she picks up a hitchhiker - a badly beaten young boy who helps her discover a new sense of spirit. It is rare for an author of a work in another medium to actually bring that work to the screen as a filmmaker, but Miller does wonders here. Treating these intimate pieces with stylistic verve, she makes an assured advance as a writer/director beyond her already impressive debut with Angela in 1995. Aided by bravura work from her actresses, and wonderfully expressive DV camerawork by the amazing Ellen Kuras, Miller continues to stake a claim as a singular film artist.

G (S) 9:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Richard T. Jones and Blair Underwood star in G, a Gatsbyesque love story set against hip-hop's invasion of the Hamptons. G takes place ten years after a broken love affair, when two lovers are reunited only to find their circumstances have drastically changed. Summer G (Jones), now a rap mogul, has built a family-like entertainment empire with the sole purpose of winning back the love of his life, Sky Hightower (Chenoa Maxwell), now unhappily married to a philandering Wall Street executive (Underwood). Inspired by changes taking place in the Hamptons, where hip-hop has become mainstream, the film explores issues such as race, the division of classes and new money versus old money. At its heart, G, directed by Christopher Scott Cherot, is a tragic love story that reminds us that even a brief moment of true love is greater than never finding love at all.

Interview with the Assassin (IFS) 9:45 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9 6:30 p.m.)

Shorts II 9:45 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Barrier Device, directed by Grace Lee, 26 min. A researcher for a female condom study loses all objectivity when she discovers that one of her subjects is dating her ex-fiance. As the questions and meetings become more intimate, each woman divulges the secrets and fears that drive her.

The Beatle Fan, directed by Peter McArdle, 24 min. Adrama about Albert, a psychotic prisoner in Attica Prison, who is a fierce and devoted fan of John Lennon and the Beatles. He is goaded by the other prisoners in the cells around him into telling the story (shown in flashbacks) of what happened when he encountered Mark David Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon.

The Host, directed by Nicholas Tomnay, 26 min. John has escaped from prison in a stolen car. In a panic he cons his way into a random apartment, where Warwick accommodates him in his suave middle class fashion. Initial pleasantries are shared, yet as the night progresses neither can conceal his true nature. What was assumed is turned upside down. Yet Warwick remains the perfect host.

The Wormhole, directed by Jessica Sharzer, 19 min. Wally decides to search for a wormhole that he believes will lead him back to his kidnapped brother. Wally madly digs a hole in the backyard, and gives up in despair. His grandmother offers one last consolation: the concept of parallel universes. In another universe, he and his brother are still together -- the wormhole is his mind, his memory.

Three Days of Rain (FC) 10:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Lost souls leading lives of quiet desperation with no respite in sight formed the connective tissue of 19th-century Russian storyteller Anton Chekhov's complex web of characters. Writer-director Michael Meredith weaves six classic Chekhov short stories (The Bear, The Cossack, Sleepy, A Father, Misery, The Malefactor) into a debut feature that also resonates with the mood of another maverick artist, 20th-century American painter Edward Hopper, whose own characters seemed suspended in a similar long night of the soul. Set in desolate, rain-soaked modern-day Cleveland over three days of non-stop rain, Meredith weaves a multi-narrative fresco of ten major characters whose distinct lives interact in a subtly connected fashion, as though their hopeless, dead-end plights were functions of the same infernal machine. But Meredith infuses this copious amount of despair--heroin addiction, alcoholism, grief, poverty, general disillusionment--with a pervading sense of hope. With help from a soulfully elegant original jazz score by two-time Grammy nominee Bob Beldon and performances by a gifted ensemble cast, Three Days of Rain never drowns in its own abject misery. Instead it suggests a soulful calm after the storm; for even the most insurmountable situations there are viable solutions that are revealed only after the storm recedes.

The Specimen (IFS) 10:00 p.m. Tribeca Film Center

(For description see Festival Info for May 9, 7:30 p.m.)

OT: Our Town (D) 10:15 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9, 11:45 a.m.)

Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (IFS) 10:15 p.m. Pace Univ. Performing Arts Center

Based on Chris Fuhrman's coming-of-age novel, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys features two charming, irreverent Catholic high schoolers who must inevitably confront the mysteries of adulthood. Francis and Tim see the world as a clear and simple place where it's easy to tell the difference between the heroes and villains who comprise it. Sister Assumpta, the nun who has become their authority figure, is the enemy. Seeing only her daily efforts to subvert their fun instead of the genuine concern she has for their souls, the boys use their artistic talents to create a hard-edged comic book depicting her as a fiendish, motorcycle-riding villain who battles their animated alter-egos. Throughout the story, their fantasy universe comes to life in animated sequences, paralleling the live-action tale of friendship, love and loss. In their real lives, Francis feels the heady sensation of first-love with Margie, his beautiful classmate who has a sad and surprising secret, where he discovers that growing up means learning to depend on yourself. While Francis struggles with his hormonal and emotional confusion, Tim launches a series of boyish escapades with unanticipated consequences, leaving Francis acutely aware of the perils on the difficult journey from innocence to experience. For him, life will never be the same. Aided by stunning performances from his young cast, Peter Care's debut feature is that rare film about youth that possesses both maturity and wisdom.