John Rothermel as Mamie Eisenhower in the 1971 short film 'Tricia's Wedding,' which screens Thursday in the 'To Save and Project' series. Frameline

To Save and Project: The 10th Annual International Festival of Film Preservation

Museum of Modern Art
Through Nov. 12

Anyone could get a fulfilling summary of "the movies" by attending the month of screenings that light up this celebration of film preservation. The kaleidoscopic variety of programs touches on everything from the 1920s costume drama "The Spanish Dancer" (starring Pola Negri, with an early look at James Wong Howe's cinematography) to Harry Hurwitz and Loreen Yerby's great lost 1970s satire "Richard" (with "Richard M. Dixon" impersonating the 37th President of the United States) and Milton Miron's short "Tricia's Wedding," a send-up of the 1971 White House nuptials.

In an unexpected twist, Thursday's screenings focus on New York, just as Hurricane Sandy has flooded parts of the city, bringing national media attention to bear on scenes of water-logged avenues and exploding power stations. "Orchard Street," an early short in the career of Ken Jacobs, shot in 1955, captures the filmmaker's perspective of the legendary mercantile neighborhood.

Sharing the bill, "The Dancing Soul of the Walking People" is Paula Gladstone's hourlong study of a New York landmark. It's about what happens mostly under the boardwalk at Coney Island, where the native daughter spent the summer of 1980 crouched with a Super-8 camera, filming as bathers walked, ran, danced and cavorted through the sand. Sunlight poured through the wooden slats overhead, creating abstract patterns in constant motion. Other sections of the film explore the beach, or take in the movement of kids leaping in slow motion, suspended in the joy of an eternal summer. The soundtrack is also important in a film with no natural sound. Ms. Gladstone cues up lyrical melodies from Duke Ellington and the cosmic swirl of Alice Coltrane, reads her own erotic poetry and throws in snippets of audio from old Hollywood movies—perhaps a nod to fellow Bay Area visionary Bruce Conner. Often it makes for a tonal contrast to what's on screen. Sometimes it's a rousing cue, as when a burst of composer Anthony Braxton's boisterous take on Sousa marches, "Creative Orchestra Music," accompanies barefoot frolic. Taken altogether, it's a perfect Coney Island anthem.

Silent-era restorations always make for some of the bigger discoveries of the festival. This year, a pair of Italian films from 1915-16 also revisit the seductive luster of Pina Menichelli, an actress who was catapulted to fame playing a man-eater in "Il Fuoco" and "Tiger Reale," both directed by future husband Giovanni Pastrone. Philip Carli will accompany screenings of both films on piano.

Hip-hop artist Kanwer Singh, aka Humble the Poet, in a film by Brendan Nahmias at the Sikh International Film Festival. Brendan Nahmia

Sikh International Film Festival

Asia Society
725 Park Ave.

With five world premieres among its 15 features and shorts, this ninth annual festival devoted to the culture of the world's fifth-largest religion packs a lot of movie into a single day and evening. The global perspective draws in a variety of narratives. "Humble the Poet" introduces a Toronto-based Sikh hip-hop performer who combines his experience as an immigrant with rhyming skills. "Sikhs@War" explores the untold story of 100,000 Sikhs who served England in World War II, seen through the eyes of a teenage Sikh in need of inspiration. Other titles examine topics ranging from sexism in the Sikh community to the significance of traditional headwear in the social-network-themed "#MyTurban."

A Quick One, While the Who Are in Town

Friday-Nov. 15

"Hope I die before I get old," the classic declaration from the Who's 1965 anthem "My Generation," sounds a tad disingenuous these days. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, the half of the epic British band that didn't kick off prematurely, will likely rock 'til they drop. But music is only part of their legacy. To celebrate the group's revival of its 1973 album-opera "Quadrophenia" Nov. 14 at the Barclays Center, BAM hosts a Who mini-festival. Enjoying a one-week run, Franc Roddam's 1979 movie version of the mods-vs.-rockers drama still has style to burn, tracking the eruption of "the '60s" from the hormone and amphetamine-addled mind of Jimmy (Phil Daniels), a manic-depressive mod on the make. For all its zoot-suit flash and motorbike vroom, the film keeps a foot in the kitchen-sink school of British realism, even limiting the Who's soundtrack to a kind of internal musical monologue. Completists can also look for Jeff Stein's 2003 documentary "The Kids Are Alright," Ken Russell's baked-bean fantasia "Tommy" and his equally nuts "Lisztomania," with Mr. Daltrey as the composer Franz Liszt.

Gregory Crewdson : 'Brief Encounters'

Film Forum
Through Tuesday

Portraits of the artist at work can feel awfully rote. It's one of the most common kinds of documentary, often slipping into fan worship or a didactic parade of talking heads. Ben Shapiro's profile of photographer Gregory Crewdson avoids that. First, it really is brief: 77 minutes. Second, much of that time is spent at the subject's elbow, observing as the Park Slope native composes the images for his series (and book) "Beneath the Roses," shooting transcendently gloomy tableaux of the American underclass in western Massachusetts, where economic depression has a haggard human face. Anyone haunted by Mr. Crewdson's photographs, each one as complex in orchestration as a movie scene, will be compelled as the methodical process is revealed. A childhood obsession with his father's psychoanalytic practice and an adult encounter with David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" help explain some of the influences at work, although the penumbral aura of Mr. Crewdson's photographs evoke mysteries that are uniquely their own.

Luis Buñuel in Mexico

Spectacle Theater
124 S. Third St., Brooklyn
Through Nov. 29

One of the great filmmakers of the 20th century, Luis Buñuel already was living in self-imposed exile in New York when he fled again for Mexico in 1946. The heavy hand of the Franco regime made his native Spain unappealing, and his bid for American citizenship was derailed when onetime friend Salvador Dalí exposed him as an atheist and a communist. Buñuel left behind a job at the Museum of Modern Art and went south of the border. Over the next two decades, he averaged a new film every year, including several of his best, like "Los Olvidados" and "The Exterminating Angel." This compact series focuses on a quartet of films from the early 1950s, some of the surrealist director's more vividly melodramatic work, including "Susana" (1951), "A Woman in Love" (1952), "El Bruto" (1953) and "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz" (1955).