FILM/SNEAK PEEK: ALL SINGING, ALL DANCING.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski

The guilty pleasures of movie musicals get their due over the next eight weeks in UCLA Film and Television Archive's latest series, ``Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance: Musicals From Around the World.''

The 33-title series opens Tuesday, when director John Landis will appear for the screening of his personal favorite, Vincente Minnelli's ``The Pirate.'' The 1948 MGM musical starring Gene Kelly and Judy Garland features the song ``Be a Clown.'' It will be followed by another Minnelli classic, ``Kismet,'' chosen by Francis Ford Coppola.

On May 9, director Randa Haines is scheduled to screen her choice, Minnelli's 1943 feature directing debut, ``Cabin in the Sky,'' with Eddie ``Rochester'' Anderson, Lena Horne, Ethel Waters and Louis Armstrong.

The series does deliver foreign titles as promised. Among them is the Soviet Union's ``Volga, Volga'' (May 13), released in 1938 at the peak of the Great Purge and said to be a personal favorite of Joseph Stalin. It depicts a Soviet view of paradise: factory workers singing in blissful union.

France's contributions to the series includes ``Sous les Toits de Paris (Under the Rooftops of Paris),'' the 1930 film that marked silent movie director Rene Clair's first production with sound. It will be screened May 18.

Who'd have thought Hong Kong action director John Woo had a soft spot for musicals? He does, and he showed it in his own 1975 musical, ``Princess Cheung Ping,'' a romantic tale set in the end of the Ming Dynasty and based on a well-known Cantonese opera. ``Princess Cheung Ping'' will be shown May 23.

All screenings will be at the James Bridges Theater on the northeast corner of the UCLA campus. Tickets are $6 general admission, $4 for students and seniors. For more information, call [phone] or go to www.cinema.ucla.edu on the Web.

First look

An up-and-coming Spike Jonze or Chloe Sevigny might be discovered this weekend at the USC School of Cinema-TV's semiannual ``First Look Festival,'' where 33 student films are being screened.

The shorts - dramas, comedies and documentaries - are being shown at the Norris Theatre Saturday and Sunday in two-hour blocks starting at 1 and 3 p.m. each day. The Norris Theatre is located on the campus, south of Jefferson Boulevard near the intersection of Trousdale Parkway and Childs Way.

Larry Auerbach, associate dean of student industry relations, said, ``It's an opportunity to look at the talent of tomorrow in the world of entertainment, which is why we get audiences comprising studio executives, independent filmmakers, agents and managers as a result.''

There is no admission charge, but reservations are being taken at the festival hotline, [phone].

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Photo: Gene Kelly and Judy Garland in ``The Pirate,'' part of ``Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance'' at UCLA.