A Sweeping Tribute : American Cinematheque’s ‘Swept Away’ series examines Lina Wertmuller’s work.

The American Cinematheque’s “Swept Away by an Unusual Filmmaker Named Lina Wertmuller,” which runs weekends through Nov. 29 at Raleigh Studios, commences Friday at 7:15 p.m. with a new 35mm print of one of the fiery Italian filmmaker’s best and most popular pictures, “Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August” (1974).

Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato, two Wertmuller favorites, are teamed to deliciously hilarious and finally heart-tugging effect in this bittersweet comedy in a timeless classic manner that combines elements of “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Robinson Crusoe” in a highly contemporary context. The exquisite Melato plays an utterly self-absorbed rich woman on a monthlong cruise with her husband (Eros Pagni, another Wertmuller favorite) and another couple aboard a large yacht. One of its crewmen is Giannini, a Southern Italian Communist and therefore especially sensitive to Melato’s endless right-wing chatter and condescending ways.

Out of boredom, Melato, on one very calm day, asks Giannini to take her on a ride in a rubber raft with an outboard motor. Of course the motor conks out, and soon the ill-matched couple are lost at sea. Wertmuller in her wisdom looks beyond her beautifully orchestrated interplay between the eternal battle of the sexes and equally chronic class warfare to express a philosophical sense of life’s absurdities and to attack specifically society’s unrelenting tendency to alienate people rather than to bring them together. “Swept Away” will be followed by the filmmaker’s rarely seen first film, “The Lizards” (1963), about a group of young men dreaming of better lives in Rome while feeling trapped in their Southern Italian town.

Wertmuller’s finest film, “Seven Beauties” (1976) screens Saturday at 7:15 p.m. with a new 35mm print. Giannini stars as a small-time crook and full-time ladies’ man finagling his way through World War II Italy. A major work, “Seven Beauties” is enduringly memorable for suggesting that freedom may be able to exist only in chaos. “Seven Beauties” will be followed by the Los Angeles premiere of Wertmuller’s latest, “The Worker and the Hairdresser in a Whirlwind of Sex and Politics,” a lively comedy in which a soon-to-be laid-off auto worker (Tullio Solenghi), a proud, loud Communist, experiences instantaneous, overwhelming attraction for a right-wing hairdresser (Veronica Pivetti). Wertmuller is scheduled to attend the weekend’s screenings. (213) 466-FILM.

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The American Cinematheque’s Alternative Cinema series is presenting “Women in Shorts,” seven short films made by women--and one man--at the Huntington Beach Art Center, 538 Main St., Huntington Beach. (714) 374-1650.

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Geoffrey O’Connor’s “Amazon Journal” is so dense with information, so steadfast in its impact, that its myriad and urgent implications deserve the further explication of O’Connor’s book of the same name. O’Connor hurls us into Brazil’s turbulent history of the past decade. Playing with it is the director’s Oscar-nominated 1993 30-minute “At the Edge of Conquest,” a similarly powerful account of an indigenous leader taking on the Brazilian government.

While O’Connor crams a dizzying number of complex issues and developments in a mere one hour, he makes several indelibly provocative points, most notably, that romanticizing indigenous peoples as “noble savages” does everyone and every issue a disservice and, that what drove some 42,000 men to engage in a gold rush highly destructive of the environment and its people was simply grinding poverty.

“Amazon Journal” begins at 11 a.m. Saturday and Sunday run at the Monica 4-Plex and also screens Saturday at 7 p.m. as part of the “Documental” program at the Midnight Special Bookstore, 1318 Third St. Promenade, Santa Monica, (310) 393-2923.

Daniel S. Moore’s 30-minute “The Artists’ Revolution” is a terrifically exhilarating account of a revolution quite possibly unique in human history: Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution, in which students and artists in a mere 10 days managed to overthrow peacefully an oppressive communist regime in 1989. Moore will appear after Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m. screenings at the Sunset 5. (213) 848-3500.

Richard Cohen’s 74-minute “Taylor’s Campaign” cuts right to the heart of the plight of the homeless. The widening gap in America between the haves and have-nots could not be more dramatically demonstrated than in affluent, beautiful Santa Monica, a magnet for the homeless in a community whose initial humane response has withered away to the extent of attempting to criminalize the very state of homelessness, making the already formidable task for the homeless to escape the streets all the more difficult.

“Taylor’s Campaign” screens Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at Petterson’s Coffee House, 10019 Venice Blvd. (at Clarington), Culver City, (310) 839-3359; 6 on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Santa Monica Synagogue, 1448 18th St. (at Broadway), (310) 451-8902; and 7 p.m. at St. Monica’s Church, 725 California, Santa Monica, (310) 458-6042.

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“Archive Treasures,” a series sponsored by exhibitor Ted Mann and his wife, Rhonda Fleming, in conjunction with the UCLA Film Archive, screens tonight at James Bridges Theater in UCLA’s Melnitz Hall Rouben Mamoulian’s “The Mark of Zorro” (1940), with Tyrone Power in the dashing role created by Douglas Fairbanks Sr. 20 years earlier. It will be accompanied by “Zorro” outtakes, and other short subjects.

The Archive’s Jack Arnold retrospective continues Saturday in the Bridges Theater with that terse ‘50s sci-fi classic, “It Came From Outer Space” (1953), which anticipates by three years Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” as a McCarthy-era parable as aliens, having crash-landed, begin taking over the identities of citizens in a small Arizona town. The film is based on a Ray Bradbury story and stars Richard Carlson, stalwart star of Arnold’s “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” and Barbara Rush. Followed by “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957).

Meanwhile, the Archive’s “World Without Pity: Tabloids and Film” series continues Sunday at 7 p.m. in the Bridges Theater with Fritz Lang’s “While the City Sleeps” (1956), featuring an all-star cast headed by Dana Andrews, Ida Lupino and Fleming in a taut newspaper drama involving the pursuit of an elusive crazed killer. (It was one of Lang’s favorite films among his later work.) There’s a memorable climactic sequence in the long-abandoned Pacific Electric tunnel in downtown Los Angeles.

Playing with it is the late Samuel Fuller’s “Park Row” (1952), one of the best newspaper movies ever made, thanks to Fuller’s long, impassioned experience as a New York reporter. Set in the 19th century, it celebrates the birth of modern journalism and freedom of the press and boasts a gutsy, dynamic performance by Fuller favorite Gene Evans as a two-fisted reporter dreaming of running his own paper. The film’s title refers to the street in Lower Manhattan, once home to New York’s key newspapers. (310) 206-FILM.