TODAY AT AFI FESTIVAL : F<i> ollowing are The Times’ recommendations for today’s schedule of the American Film Institute Los Angeles International Film Festival, with commentary by the film reviewing staff. Information: (213) 466-1767. </i>

Highly Recommended:

“1871”(Britain; Ken McMullen; AFI Warner, 9 p.m.). Perhaps the best film yet by painter-turned-filmmaker Ken McMullen: an intensely theatrical piece, centering on a famous actress-courtesan who joined the Paris Communards. There’s a vein of dry wit that lets the political ideas flash out like lightning. (McMullen will introduce the film.)

Recommended:

“ZINA”(Britain; Ken McMullen; AFI Warner, 6:45 p.m.). The psychological malaise of Trotsky’s daughter, played by Domiziano Giordano--magnetic star of Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Nostalghia”--in a bio-drama drawing heavily on Tarkovsky’s style: slow, mystical, full of sharp images and inexorable tracking shots. A matter of taste; it was to mine. (McMullen will introduce the film.) “STRUCK BY LIGHTNING”(Australia; Jerzy Domaradski; Nuart, 7 p.m.). Some remarkable learning-impaired actors and Australian comic Garry McDonald, as their alcoholic director, put some life and wit into this obvious but smoothly done misfits-versus-institution comedy-drama.

“KILLING A SUNDAY”(Czechoslovakia; Drahomira Vihanova; AFI Warner, 8:45 p.m.). Banned since 1969, a quintessential ‘60s Czech New Wave film: a high-style dissection of self-destructive machismo, about a day in the life--the last--of a brutal, guilt-ridden soldier. Showing with it is the finest short in the festival: Jan Svankmajer’s banned 1969 bop Kafka fable “The Flat.”