MFA has new take on the art of war

"War and Discontent," a new exhibit that opens Tuesday at the Museum of Fine Arts, features an array of the institution's war-themed work: Édouard Manet's "Execution of the Emperor Maximilian ," selections from Goya's early 19th-century "Disasters of War" series, and the 1999 piece of the same name by brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman , for instance. Also in the show are works by Pablo Picasso, Keith Haring , and Andy Warhol.

Featured alongside all the big names are two works by Boston video artist Suara Welitoff : her mesmerizing 2002 "Airplanes," a continuous loop of World War II bomber planes done up in candy-tinted sepia, which was bought by the MFA in 2002 when Welitoff won the Maud Morgan Prize highlighting a Massachusetts artist in mid-career, and a new piece called "The Song That Makes You Cry."

" 'Song' is so simple and bewitching and understated, as Suara's work is," says Cheryl Brutvan , the Beal Curator of Contemporary Art for the MFA, who put the show together. "It's appropriated imagery, as she does, of American soldiers in desert camouflage, loading an artillery rocket -- working together, firing, and going back to do it again -- and it's slowed down, so it's like a dance." It's a kind of counterpoint, she says, to the Manet piece, which depicts the moment of execution by gunfire -- shocking, immediate, a burst of action.

Also included is a seven-hour (yes, hour) video loop by 36-year-old British video artist Phil Collins called "They Shoot Horses ," of a dance marathon. "It's a metaphor of endurance," says Brutvan, who saw the piece last year when she first began thinking about the MFA show. The video was at the Tate Gallery in London, where Collins was a finalist for the Turner Prize for modern art.

"War and Discontent" runs April 10- Aug. 5. Information is at 617-267-9300 and mfa.org.

SNEAK PEEK AT MORRIS PROJECT: Local director Errol Morris, whose 2003 film "The Fog of War," about former U S Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Vietnam War, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, is at work on another war film. This one about the prisoner abuse by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib U S military prison in Iraq.

Called "SOP: Standard Operating Procedure," the movie is being produced by Sony Pictures Classics and is scheduled to be released next year.

Morris will speak for the first time in public about the film and present a sneak peek of rough cuts on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Wasserman Cinematheque at Brandeis University in Waltham. The event is free. Information is at 781-736-2270.

NEW FILM OFFICE WEBSITE: The Massachusetts Film Office, which restarted in January with the appointment of Nick Paleologos as its executive director, has finally begun rolling out a new website, mafilm.org. Skimpy right now, the site has a quick overview of the tax-credit law that sweetened the deal for last year's Disney projects "Game Plan" and "Gone, Baby, Gone" -- both shot in the state -- and the Sony movie based on the book "Bringing Down the House," which has been filming in town, and includes a nod to Oscar-winner "The Departed," set and partially made in Boston.

The text pours it on a little thick when talking about local crew talent, saying, "The Athens of America has now become Hollywood East as graduates of MIT, Harvard, Tufts, Emerson, Boston University apply their unique skills to the ever changing technologies of modern filmmaking."

The site debuts a new logo for the office and new promotional video.

CONVERSATIONS WITH: The documentary "Knowledge Is the Beginning," about the founding of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra for Arab and Israeli youth, will get its area premiere tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at Studio Cinema in Belmont. The orchestra was founded by conductor Daniel Barenboim and the late writer Edward Said . Said's widow, Miriam , will speak at the event. Information is at studiocinema.com and 617-484-1706 .

Cambridge's Dorothea Gillim will present favorite episodes of her cartoon series "Hey Monie" on Thursday at 7 p.m. at MIT, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Room 6-120, in an event put on by Women in Film & Video/New England. The show , about a vivacious black woman, aired on both the Oxygen network and BET. Gillim, who works through the Soup2Nuts production company in Watertown, got her start with the animated show "Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist" and is now at work on a new cartoon called "WordGirl," featuring a supergirl with a monkey sidekick. "WordGirl" debuts on PBS this fall. Information about this week's presentation is at 781-788-6607 and wifvne.org.

"[Expletive]: Vandana Shiva, Environmental Activist and Nuclear Physicist" looks at Dr. Vandana Shiva , a physicist and ecologist in India and author of "Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge " (a book put out by Cambridge indie publisher South End Press). Swedish documentarian and film codirector Suzanne Khardalian will be at a Friday screening at 7 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts to talk about the movie and Shiva's work. The movie also plays four additional dates through May 3. For details, call 617-267-9300 or go to mfa.org/film.

Also at the MFA this week: Cambridge filmmaker and Harvard faculty member Allie Humenuk will introduce her "Shadow of the House" on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. It follows Cuban-born photographer Abelardo Morell , who now lives in Boston, as he travels to Berlin and then to Cuba, which he left as a teen in 1962. Morell will also be at the screening.

And former long time Cambridge resident John Bush's "Yatra Trilogy ," a collection of three meditative travelogues produced between 2004 and 2006 about the religious traditions of Laos, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Java, and Tibet, will be screened back-to-back for the first time in Boston on Saturday starting at 3:45 p.m. at the MFA. Bush will be present for the third of the films, "Vajra Sky Over Tibet ," at 7:15 p.m. Presentation of the trilogy, both together and in separate pieces, continues through May 6; check the museum schedule for exact dates.

KAZUO MINI-FEST: Four movies by Japanese director Hara Kazuo play next Friday and Saturday at the Harvard Film Archive. Says the HFA: "Kazuo has produced a series of shockingly personal documents which challenge the mores of postwar Japanese society through stark, revelatory modes of presentation." Says Kazuo: "I make bitter films. I hate mainstream society." (617-495-4700 and hcl.harvard.edu/hfa).

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