ALL THINGS TO ALL MOVIEGOERS AFI FEST OFFERS STAR VEHICLES, FOREIGN GEMS AND NEW-MEDIA FLICKS.

Byline: BOB STRAUSS

>FILM WRITER

This year's American Film Institute Los Angeles International Film Festival begins early with a scream.

Tonight at 8, there's a free Halloween screening of "Psycho" at the festival's main venue, the ArcLight theaters in Hollywood (tickets, available at the box office at 5 p.m., are first-come, first-served, two per person).

The starry official kickoff comes Thursday, with the North American premiere of Robert Redford's war-on-terror debate-athon "Lions for Lambs," starring Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep along with Mr. Sundance himself.

The festival proper commences Friday, with a lineup of some 148 films from 37 different countries, and runs through Nov. 11. As always, there will be special programs, including tributes to actresses Catherine Deneuve and Laura Linney, and assorted presentations (concerts, panel discussions, video projections, parties you can't get into ...) at the Rooftop Village headquarters atop the ArcLight's parking structure.

L.A.'s 21st AFI Fest continues a long-standing tradition of presenting exciting new cinematic talents from around the world in its International Feature, Documentary and Shorts competitions, while showcasing recent works of established cinematic masters and presenting first-look opportunities to see some anticipated awards contenders before they start their commercial runs.

The latter is something festival director Christian Gaines acknowledges could have a negative connotation in the publicist-manipulated, year-end awards season. Other Southern California film fests have been known to devolve into celebrity-fawning schmoozepaloozas between October and February. But Gaines makes the case that, even with an opening-night gala that Cruise pals Posh and Becks could attend, AFI Fest's emphasis remains on showcasing quality cinema, stars or not.

"We really focused on that," says Gaines, who's been running this show since the start of the century. "But I'll tell you, if you're a film festival during the awards season, you can just stand there like a piece of flypaper and all these films will just stick to you. It's too easy to do that.

"So we take our own programming effort very seriously. But, by the same token, there are a lot of awards contenders that have not been released yet and are very anticipated, have had great success at other international film festivals and deserve to be seen. So it's not like we turn our back on them, but it really is about balance."

AFI Fest's new artistic director, Rose Kuo, was ultimately responsible for this year's exploratory efforts. A veteran of both the movie business (she's produced, done post-production work for the likes of Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann, and worked for legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler) and the festival circuit (Mill Valley, Santa Barbara, San Francisco), Kuo not only led the programming staff's hunt for great films but spotted themes and trends emerging on the international movie scene.

"Certainly, there are a lot of films at the festival this year that address the conflict in the Middle East, both indirectly and directly," Kuo notes. "There are also three Middle Eastern films that have women in key creative roles: 'Persepolis,' 'Jellyfish' and 'Caramel.'

"We have three films that involve music: documentaries about Sigur Ros and Public Enemy and John Sayles' 'Honey-

dripper,' " Kuo adds.

"Then there is a very strong selection of films about filmmakers and the entertainment industry. And there's more experimental work this year; unprecedented for us, we have a work by a performance artist named Jennifer Reeves that's a multi-projection, not-to-miss live event."

New works by acclaimed filmmakers will include "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" and "Princess of Nebraska" (both by Wayne Wang), "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" (Cannes Film Festival award-winner Cristian Mungiu), "The Duchess of Langeais" (Jacques Rivette), "The Flight of the Red Balloon" (Hou Hsiao-Hsien), "The Last Mistress" (Catherine Breillat), "Mad Detective" (Johnnie To), "Searchers 2.0" (Alex Cox), "Smiley Face" (Gregg Araki) and "Silent Light" (Carlos Reygadas).

A special section of milestones, honoring the cinematic giants who passed away this year, features Ingmar Bergman's "Shame," Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Passenger," Ousmane Sembene's "Faat Kine," Edward Yang's "Terrorizer" and the Laszlo Kovacs-photographed "Torn From the Flag."

And those interested in what's going be yakked to death around Hollywood for the next couple of months may want to catch early screenings of upcoming releases "Juno," "Love in the Time of Cholera," "The Savages," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "Margot at the Wedding" and "The Band's Visit."

And if all this sounds too arty for you, the fest's psychotronic Dark Horizons section is coming back in full, mind-blowing force again this year.

Of course, there are oodles of other things, including a two-day DigiFest celebrating interactive media at the Linwood Dunn Theatre across Sunset Boulevard from the ArcLight.

"Our job is to bring world cinema to Hollywood, and vice versa," Kuo sums up. "Some film festivals have one specific agenda, but ours is actually all-encompassing. Hopefully, we create a room in which there are Oscar filmmakers standing next to world cinema masters standing next to a guy from Atlanta who's made his first film in a garage."

For passes, tickets and more information, go to AFI.com 24/7; [phone] 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week; or the box office at the Rooftop Village, 7th floor of the ArcLight parking structure behind 6360 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. Box office hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday through Nov. 10, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Nov. 11.

Bob Strauss [phone]

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A free screening of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," starring Anthony Perkins, kicks off the 21st AFI Fest tonight.