NEW YORK: Over the course of a remarkably long career, Sidney Lumet has taken a crack at directing just about every kind of movie, while making a certain kind of film — the high-energy, acting-centered New York melodrama — his own. Last year he enjoyed a bit of a comeback with his 44th feature film, Before the Devil Know You're Dead, so the career retrospective at the Film Forum that kicks off this Friday with the 1976 Network couldn't be more timely. Highlights include Long Day's Journey into Night starring Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, and Dean Stockwell, the greatest production of Eugene O'Neill ever caught on film and the high point of Lumet's sideline as a TV-trained specialist in filming plays; The Hill (1965), The Anderson Tapes, and The Offense, all of which feature powerfully charged performances by Sean Connery, an actor who Lumet was prescient in seeing as having the potential to be more than James Bond; and of course the two "based on a true story" films co-starring Al Pacino and the city of New York, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, which had such an impact that Lumet and his star could have practically taken out a copyright on Fun City in the seventies. Also, from 1939: One Percent of a Nation, a little-seen, independently produced New York film that includes the only record of the director's work as an actor. (He was fifteen at the time.) On Monday, February 11, the director will appear in person to discuss his career in "An Evening with Sidney Lumet", to be moderated by historian Foster Hirsch.

On the afternoon of Sunday, February 10, the Museum of the Moving Image will host "A Tribute to St. Clair Bourne", in honor of the documentary filmmaker, who died last December. The critic Armond White, film and literary scholar Clyde Taylor, Black Enterprise columnist George Alexander, and journalist and poet Esther Iverem will discuss the filmmaker's career and show clips of his work.

PORTLAND: The 31st Annual International Portland Film Festival opens Thursday, February 7 and runs through the 23rd, offering more than two weeks worth of jam-packed programming of feature films and shorts from around the world, in the city that Scott Favor and Bob Pigeon were proud to call home.