Boston gets a peek at edgy festival

Every year since 1981, the Media Arts department at New Jersey City University has hosted a juried competition of "cutting-edge works from independent film and video makers" and then sent the winners on a national road trip. Although it's called the Black Maria Film and Video Festival , here in Boston it's not a festival but a one-night selection of works. It plays Thursday at 6 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts .

This year's jury included Boston filmmaker and co-curator of the local Balagan experimental series Alla Kovgan , and she'll be introducing the show. Included are new impressionistic pieces by local artists John Warren (the six-minute "Elegy" ) and Robert Todd (the 6 1/2 - minute "Interplay," described, simply, as "a film about summer"). Both Warren and Todd are scheduled to be at the show.

On the program as well is a new work, "My Person in the Water," by Leighton Pierce . Pierce will be teaching a workshop as a visiting filmmaker at Boston University this summer (see bu.edu/summer for details).

Information about the Black Maria program is available from the MFA at 617-267-9300 and mfa.org/film.

CONVERSATIONS WITH: Writer-actor Mike White ("The School of Rock" ) will be at the Harvard Film Archive tomorrow for a 7 p.m. sneak preview of "Year of the Dog," his first film as a director. The movie stars Molly Shannon as a woman reeling after the death of her dog, and Peter Sarsgaard and Laura Dern as the friends who help her. Information is at 617-495-4700 and hcl.harvard.edu/hfa .

Also tomorrow, John Mulholland presents excerpts from his new documentary about the 20-year friendship between Ernest Hemingway and Gary Cooper at 5:30 p.m. at the JFK Library . Maria Cooper Janis , Cooper's daughter, was a consultant, as were members of Hemingway's family.

"Ernest Hemingway and Gary Cooper dealt with [heroism] as no one had before, as no one has since," says Mulholland's website for the movie, "The True Gen ." Hemingway's fiction and Cooper's persona were "not about masculinity as a one-note, smash-mouth force of nature" but "the self-respect that comes from comporting oneself with courage in the face of impossible circumstances."

Both Mulholland and Boston Phoenix critic Peter Keough will be on hand to talk about the men and how the film was researched. Registration is recommended: call 617-514-1600 or go to jfklibrary.org , click on "Site Map" and then "Education & Public Forums."

Los Angeles-based director Rebecca Baron , who shape-shifts her documentaries into experimental films, is a visiting faculty member this year at Harvard and the Massachusetts College of Art. She will present three of her pieces -- about spy cameras, understanding genocide, and a n 1897 polar expedition -- and how she uses still photography in her work, in an evening at Harvard Film Archive Wednesday at 7 .

CAMPUS MOVIEFEST BOSTON IN GEAR: Campus Movie-Fest is a national program in which college students compete to see who can make the best five-minute movie in a week, and it's up and running again this year. Teams from Boston College, MIT, Tufts University, Northeastern University, and Emerson College compete among themselves, with the winners from each school going against each other in a Boston Grand Finale, and those winners up to the national competition. The Boston event will be held in late April, according to campusmoviefest.com . Winning films from past and present can be watched at the website.

SCREENINGS OF NOTE: A celebration called "Muppets, Music & Magic: Jim Henson's Legacy" continues today through Tuesday at the Brattle. More than a dozen movies including "Muppets From Space" and "The Dark Crystal" are scheduled, along with "The Art of Puppetry & Storytelling," a collection of rare behind-the-scenes footage, tonight at 7, and "Muppet History 101," a program of early appearances and commercials, tomorrow at 7:15 p.m. 617- 876-6837 and brattlefilm.org .

"Bacon's Arena," a documentary by British director Adam Low about painter Francis Bacon, plays Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the MFA, and "The Socialist, The Architect and the Twisted Tower," about the controversial 54-story Turning Torso skyscraper in the Swedish city of Malmö, screens Thursday at 3:30 p.m. and Friday at 6:10 p.m. Both are part of the presentation of movies from last year's Festival International du Film sur l'Art, held annually in Montreal.

The 1920 silent film "The Golem" will play at the Regent Theatre in Arlington Saturday at 8 p.m. Sabine von Mering of Brandeis University's Center for German and European Studies will introduce the German expressionist work, which is set in 16th-century Prague. Keyboardist Walter Horn of Arlington and guitarist Jonathan Fixler of Waltham will accompany the movie with live music composed by Horn. Information is at 781-646-4849 and regenttheatre.com.

Also on Saturday, Spike Lee's four-hour post-Katrina opus "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," will play, for free, starting at 5 p.m. at the Harvard Film Archive. Acts One and Two -- the storm and the immediate aftermath -- are presented at 5 p.m., and Acts Three and Four -- the diaspora of evacuees and rebuilding process -- at 8 p.m.

A Globe review from when the film was shown on HBO last August says , "At one point, Lee tells us of a 5-year-old girl whose body was found in March. March. More than seven months after the storm, and they still were finding dead people. It's a fact that comes and goes without much fanfare; there is so much to say here that Lee doesn't dwell on any idea for too long."

Globe writer Joanna Weiss adds , "Lee makes a convincing case that, compared to 9/11, this is the far worse disaster." Musician Terence Blanchard composed the movie's score and appears on screen.

Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com.