NEW YORK: “Pictures from Life’s Many Sides: The Films of Jim McBride”, which runs April 8 through April 13, gives fans of the director Jim McBride, an affable figure who emerged from the '60s underground scene and who has won some attention for his work through the years without ever managing to parlay his successes into a sustained movie career, the chance to catch up with some of his least-seldom screened works. These include his debut, David Holzman's Diary, a prescient look at the dangers of eager aspiring filmmakers winding up with too much filming and not enough life; his hour-long "fictional documentary" My Girlfriend's Wedding (1969); the post-apocalyptic Glen and Randa (1971), featuring Shelley Plimpton and Garry Goodrow; and the 1974 softcore teen comedy Hot Times. There's also one of McBride's weirdest and most audacious flings as a Hollywood operator, the 1983 remake of Godard's Breathless, which, depending on who you ask, is either a garish travesty, the best showcase the young Richard Gere ever had for his self-infatuated strut, or both. The director himself is scheduled to appear Friday, April 10, to participate in a conversation with Jonathan Demme and L. M. Kit Carson, who starred in David Holzman's Diary and wrote Breathless.

For nine days starting April 8, Film Forum offers audiences a rare chance to see Masaki Kobayashi's legendary epic Thu Human Condition (1959-1961), a three-part, almost ten-hour long World War II film much celebrated for its scope and its central performance by Tatsuya Nakadai (whose brave, steady performance is all the more amazing considering that, during the extended filming process, he also appeared in a dozen other movies, including Kon Ichikawa's The Key, Kurosawa's Yojimbo, and Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. Film Forum is charging separate admissions for each of its long three parts, but if you're looking to save on cab fare, they are showing the whole thing back to back on Saturday, Sunday, and the the close of the engagement on Thursday, April 16.

The 16th Annual New York African Film Festival, running from April 8 through the 14th, includes 15 fifteen films from a continent that remains sorely underrepresented in the regular international distibution chain. The opening selection is Jihan El-Tahri's Behind the Rainbow, which uses the evolution of the relationship between two prominent ANC members, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, to trace the last few decades of South Africa's political history.