Does the movie-saturated Hub require yet another festival? If we mean the Independent Film Festival of Boston, in its first incarnation this weekend, May 1 through 4 at the Brattle Theatre, the Somerville Theatre, and the Coolidge Corner, then the answer is a resounding " Yes! " With the tiniest amount of funding and an all-volunteer crew, the Independent Fest (www.iffboston.org) has plunged ahead with an admirably ambitious, pleasingly artistic program of recent US-made indies — features, shorts, documentaries — none of which has earned theatrical distribution.

But out-of-state distributors should consider a pilgrimage. After sampling a dozen pictures, I can endorse the Boston Independent Film Festival as a significant showcase for underappreciated film and video work from across America. For area moviegoers, this festival is a bargain: films are $5 a ticket; festival passes (www.ticketweb.com) are $50 for individuals, or two for $80; and student passes are a sinfully low $30.

Unlike the Boston Film Festival, whose non-distributed movies often feel like videos the phlegmatic staff found in a shoebox, the Boston Independent Film Festival has been curated with a keen æsthetic vision. Credit Jason Redmond, the fest’s executive director, for putting in place Adam Roffman as a discerning program director (he’s a production designer and property master on both large-budget and independent films). When we met for a barbecue lunch near his Somerville residence, he explained, " I’ve gone to the Boston Film Festival on occasions where there were no filmmakers present, no functions of any kind, and the movies would open anyway in theaters in the following weeks. For the Independent Film Festival, we want to show films that people might not get a chance to see anywhere else, films that are both innovative and crowd-pleasing. We’re also trying to create a festival atmosphere. We’re going to have parties each weekend night, and panel discussions, and filmmakers will be in the theaters, around the theaters, and at the parties, where people can interact with them face to face. We’re expecting 30 to 40 directors, producers, actors. "

Here’s another difference from the Boston Film Festival: the Independent Fest has three official Competitions, giving prizes for Best Narrative Feature, Short, and Documentary. Roffman assembled three juries of pedigreed film persons to see all the movies in their categories and select winners. The Narrative jury, for example, comprised Linda Moran, producer of L.I.E.; DeMane Davis, director of Lift; and Matthew Ross, managing editor of Filmmaker magazine.

As for the movies I previewed, here’s the skinny:

Ivans XTC (2000; 91 minutes; May 3 at 7:30 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre and May 4 at 7 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre). It’s a brazen idea that almost works: filmmaker Bernard Rose moves Tolstoy’s masterly novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich to today’s Hollywood. The individual in mid life who succumbs is no longer a wealthy Russian family man and conformist but Ivan Beckman (Danny Huston), a whoring, coke-imbibing LA bachelor and agent. It’s Beckman who’s diagnosed with lung cancer in the middle of a typical whirlwind wheeler-dealer week in which he beds down several blondes and persuades an actor heavyweight (Peter Weller, convincing as a piggish sexual adventurer) to jump over to his agency. Huston, with his Jack Nicholson–devil eyebrows and desperate grin, is terrific as the fast-lane, fast-dying Beckman, but there’s little that he (or a movie?) can do to approximate the tormented internal life of Tolstoy’s Ilyich. And there’s no parallel in LA to match Tolstoy’s blazing Christian-spiritualist conclusion.

Nothing So Strange (2002; 85 minutes; May 2 at 4 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre and May 3 at midnight at the Coolidge Corner Theatre). It’s the perfect title for Brian Flemming’s brilliant, one-of-a-kind faux documentary, which begins with Microsoft’s Bill Gates getting gunned down at the bandshell of LA’s MacArthur Park. Is the killer the black man who’s shot dead in turn by the LAPD? Or someone unknown? This movie traces the search, over several years, by a left-liberal don’t-trust-the-police ad hoc group called Citizens for Truth to find out what really happened. Nothing So Strange is in no way a " mockumentary " : the search is a straightforward affair, and it’s completely credible, the people on screen being immersed in their obsession. You almost have to pinch yourself to say, " Wait a minute, Bill Gates is alive! " But he’s stone dead in this movie’s meta-universe, which extends into the end credits, where we’re told the " characters " played themselves and reminded that they’re all members of Citizens for Truth, for which there is a solemn Web site.

Rhythm of the Saints (2003; 85 minutes; May 2 at 6:30 p.m. and May 3 at 2 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre). Director Sarah Rogacki assembled a commendably multicultural cast of New York teenagers, but the acting of these young amateurs can be awkward, especially when they’re put in the service of a predictable melodrama in which an enabler mom goes off to work while her deadbeat scummy boyfriend makes passes at her teenage daughter and finally rapes the youngster. There’s the expected revenge and some routine TV-movie police work, though Sarita Choudhury and Daniella Alonso come through as the mother and daughter.

" Soft for Digging " (2001; 40 minutes; May 2 at midnight at the Coolidge Corner Theatre and May 3 at 9:30 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre). In JT Petty’s minimalist, almost-without-dialogue horror movie, a ghostly old man (Edmond Mercier) who lives in the country chases after his runaway cat and becomes witness to the brutal murder of a little girl. The police come, but there’s no body. One day, he digs up a girl’s pink hand; the cops arrive again, again no body. The movie is a bit of a stretched-out short, but the tension does pick up when the old man takes to the road and heads for a very gothic orphanage and a confrontation with the murderer and the little girl. The latter isn’t the lamb-like creature he’d imagined; think The Exorcist.

" The Hunger Artist " (2002; 16 minutes; May 2 at 10 p.m. and May 3 at 5 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre). Tom Gibbons’s short is a delicately crafted animated rendering of Franz Kafka’s sublime short story about a man whose carnival act consists of sitting in a cage and (he never cheats) not eating a thing, day after day after day. What’s confusing is why Gibbons, having set the story up so persuasively, then shies away from Kafka’s peerless ending, in which the (true) artist starves to death unnoticed and the jubilant crowds return when he’s replaced by a shiny, showy jungle beast.

Decasia (2002; 70 minutes; May 2 at 10:30 p.m. and May 3 at 10 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre). Bill Morrison’s ingenious movie is a morbid, elegiac parade of 35mm nitrate images lifted from eroding silent films that rot before our eyes, lethal chemicals turning the already archaic visuals into shadows and potholes and water-bug blobs. The theme couldn’t be dramatized better: those preening actors — stern cowboys, religious zealots, hilarious comedians, etc. — are turned to celluloid mush. O mortality! All is vanity, all is dust.

" Met State " (2001; 10 minutes; screens with Decasia). In local filmmaker Bryan Papciak’s mini-masterpiece, a camera flies about an eerie, unearthly, abandoned mental institution. Papciak’s freeze-frame march across the terrain of skeletal furniture feels like an ominous, long-lost chapter of Fantasia.

" Populi " (2002; eight minutes; May 2 at 9 p.m. and May 3 at 5 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre). Set to the " Mars " section of Gustav Holst’s The Planets, David Russo’s jam-packed time-lapse short is a visual poem in which a wooden-head totem is juxtaposed with what seem like a thousand other clashing bits of imagery. Grand moviemaking by a technical virtuoso and genius.

The King of 6th Street (2003; 65 minutes; May 3 at 5 p.m. and May 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the Brattle Theatre). This is Charles Burmeister’s colorful, affectionate homage to Gerry Van King, an obstinate, self-absorbed, self-destructive, marginally talented Austin street musician. Van King’s funk repertoire of eccentric songs makes him a local institution à la Cambridge’s Little Joe Cook, and both sing their limited repertoire thousands and thousands of times. The occasion of the movie is Van King’s chance, at last, to make a CD preserving his songs. The dramatic question: will he screw up and be back with his bass guitar and a hat on the ground for dollars on East 6th?

Reconstruction (2001; 90 minutes; May 2 at 10 p.m. at the Brattle Theatre and May 3 at 5 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre). I’ve already reviewed Irene Lusztig’s superb film, which shows the Newton-based filmmaker learning Romanian so she can travel to Bucharest and learn the truth about her Romanian-Jewish bank-robber grandmother. This is a disturbing, important exposé of Stalinist terrorism.

Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House (2002; 56 minutes; May 2 at 5 p.m. and May 3 at 12:30 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre). This one’s a reprise of Deborah Dickson’s stirring audience favorite from the Boston Jewish Film Festival and the Provincetown Film Festival. Ruth and Connie were Brooklyn-Jewish friends, both married with kids in the 1970s, who fell in love. They’re still together, 25 years later, and the ferocity of their amour, and their passion and openness as " out " lesbians, is so strong and romantic that, as the saying goes, there won’t be a dry eye in the house.

Speedo (2003; 78 minutes; May 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre and May 4 at 5 p.m. at the Brattle Theatre). Jesse Moss’s energetic documentary is a real Independent Film Festival discovery, the complicated, bad-boy story of Ed " Speedo " Jager, a macho, trophy-winning demolition driver who has slept on the couch for years, estranged from his disapproving wife. Moss’s film takes you smack dab into the eye-opening redneck world of demolition derbies, but it moves just as easily into the personal, where Speedo fights with both dignity and stupidity to patch up his messed-up life. Can he retain the love of his two sons while running off with a new woman who understands his demo-derby needs? Can he ever move up to the next level, dignified NASCAR racing? That’s like a porn person taking his act to holy Hollywood.

" Have You Seen This Man? " (2003; 16 minutes; May 2 at 2:30 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre and May 3 at 2:30 p.m. at the Brattle Theatre). Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck made this delightful, bemused portrait of Geoff Lupo, a New York conceptual artist who put up posters with his telephone number offering to sell mundane items — thumbtacks, toothpicks, pen caps — for 25 cents each. The camera tags along when Lupo travels to clients’ apartments to make the transactions. The art, says this modern-day Duchamp, is in the " play-acting, the mutually agreed-on absurdity, the arbitrariness of artistic value. "

Gerald Peary can be reached at gpeary@world.std.com.

Narrative features