Avery Program Will Have West Coast Premiere at LACE

Filmforum presents New York experimental film maker Caroline Avery, tonight at 8 at LACE. She will introduce a 70-minute program of her work in its West Coast premiere.

Avery’s films, as varied as they are, are characterized by capturing random images of everyday life and of natural beauty and reprocessing them in a seemingly infinite number of ways to create visual experiences of tremendous vibrancy and energy.

Avery does just about everything you can do with a strip of celluloid--paint it, scratch it, blow it up, re-photograph it and even cut it up and glue it, patchwork fashion, on another on strip of film (as in her jaunty “Big Brother”).

Her first offering, “Ready Mades in Hades,” has been edited in a Super 8 camera, to zap us with speeded up images of a wash hanging out to dry on clotheslines, which she then contrasts with glimpses of a toddler seemingly trapped within walls of sheets. At the same time the sheets become like sails snapping in the wind, creating an intense sense of speed and movement which typifies much of her work. One of her most beautiful films, “4th of July,” abstracts the movement of dancing feet until the feet streak across the screen like birds on the wing. Ordinary gestures and events in Avery’s hands seem to take on a kind of cosmic beauty and meaning.

In “Sonntag Platz” and especially “Crossroad” Avery plays with layers of color to create hues of the radiance of stained glass. Just as she responds to color and movement, she celebrates the differences in the seasons with “Snow Movies,” a collage of New England winter scenes, and “First of May,” with its shimmering water and the sun filtered by leaves. Her every film attests to Avery’s ability to create images of beauty and vitality with the simplest of means.

Information: (213) 276-7452, (714) 923-2441.

If you missed Whitney Blake’s “Reno’s Kids: 87 Days Plus 11” when it played briefly at the Nuart last January, you will have another chance to see this refreshing film when it screens Tuesday at 8 p.m. at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater as the concluding program of Part I in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Contemporary Documentary series.

The 99-minute “Reno’s Kids” is preceded by George Rosenberg’s 17-minute “Hugh McCabe: The Coach’s Final Lesson” in an apt pairing. Both films center on outstanding, middle-aged male teachers who are admired and cherished by their students and colleagues. But there’s a big difference between Reno Taini, the Daly City high school teacher who has developed a unique program to help troubled kids, and Hugh McCabe, a ninth-grade history and government teacher and senior high school assistant football and track coach in Gaithersburg, Md.

Very early on the likable, burly 47-year-old McCabe reveals that he is under a death sentence, having just learned that he is suffering from inoperable lung cancer, thanks to a 35-year, two-and-a-half-pack-a-day cigarette habit. Rosenberg’s film becomes a flat-out, unflinching record of McCabe’s final six months composed of interviews with McCabe, his colleagues, his students and one of his own two teen-age sons. Produced by the American Lung Association, this film could not possibly be a more effective warning against smoking.

The trim, balding Reno Taini most likely never smoked a cigarette in his life. His passion for mountain climbing and his ability to communicate with teen-agers led to the creation of his Community Educational Environment Program for kids on the verge of flunking out.

Taini has found that combining community service with rugged wilderness outings, requiring much training and preparation, is an excellent way of developing self-confidence and self-esteem in young people. Taini is compassionate but firm, and it’s a joy to see his students, many of them as deep into despair as they are punk hair-styles, respond to his caring.

Part II of the Contemporary Documentary Series commences January 10.

Information: (213) 206-FILM, 206-8013.

Note: six recent films from Romania, which has one of the world’s most unknown cinemas, will commence screening Saturday at UCLA; unfortunately, none is available for preview, although the darkly amusing “Wasp’s Nest” was at the AFI Film Fest.

Information: (213) 206-8013, 206-FILM.