1. Cinema India! Showcase 2004
The Bhangra beat goes on: Beginning April 16, the Asia Society and American Museum of the Moving Image screen six Indian films, including The Speaking Hand, a documentary about tabla phenomenon Zakir Hussain, and I Have Found It, a giddy Bollywood take on Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, scored by A. R. Rahman and starring the lovely Aishwarya Rai.
Fridays through 6/25
American Musuem of the Moving Image
36-01 35th Ave., Astoria
718-784-0077; $10
2. Forever Changes: Polish Cinema Since 1989
Not content to settle for another Kieslowski retrospective, the Film Society uncorks 24 recent Polish films, including twelve debut features you won’t catch anywhere else. The festival begins on April 16 with Anna Jadowska’s debut, Touch Me, a drama about young artists that garnered laurels at the 2003 National Polish Film Festival.
Through 5/4
Film Society of Lincoln Center
65 W. 65th St., plaza level
212-875-5600 or filmlinc.com; $9.
Gen Art Film Festival
Beginning April 14, the ninth annual series features a preview of Saved! (Brian Dannelly’s teen comedy set at a Christian high school attended by Macaulay Culkin and Mandy Moore) and series of films about sex, the visual arts, and celebrity—including the kitschy high-concept film I Am Stamos (which is, yes, a kind of Kaufmanesque Being John “Uncle Jesse” Stamos).
Through 4/20
Gen Art Film Festival
333 E. 47th St.
212-832-1155; $11.
4. Sin and Salvation: The Films of Cecil B. Demille
The American Museum of the Moving Image pays a thirteen-film tribute to the Hollywood icon who proved the box-office potential of Christian sagas long before Gibson. Live music will accompany DeMille’s silents, including The King of Kings, and Charlton Heston’s basso profundo will, of course, score The Ten Commandments.
Through 4/25
American Musuem of the Moving Image
36-01 35th Ave., Astoria
718-784-0077; $10
5. Avignon/New York Film Festival
This French-American fusion screens fourteen shorts and nineteen features, including the 2004 Sundance selections Evergreen (by NYU grad Enid Zentelis), Mon Idole, and Easy, along with Memron, an absurdist satire about a busted dot-com that won this year’s Audience Award at Slamdance.
4/19 to 4/25
Various locations; $10.
See avignonfilmfest.com for more information.