Latino film festival at Creative Alliance

The Buzz

Viva el Cine Latino!, a celebration of Latin-American filmmaking, brings a pair of Mexican films to the Creative Alliance. Tonight, Walter Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) chronicles young med students Che Guevara (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Alberto Granado (Rodrigo De la Serna) as they ride through South America and develop a distaste for social injustice and a taste for socialism. Showtime is 8 p.m., and tickets are $8, $6 for alliance members. Tomorrow, short comedies starring comics Cantinflas (Mario Moreno) and Chespirito (Roberto Gomez Bolanos), originally shown as episodes of the Mexican sitcom El Chavo del Ocho, will be screened beginning at 7 p.m. Free. The Creative Alliance at the Patterson is at 3134 Eastern Ave. Information: 410-276-1651 or creativealliance.org.

Pratt film talk

Spanish director Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive (El Espiritu de la Colmena), the tale of young girls so impressed by a showing of James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein that they set out to find the monster, is the subject of this month's Film Talk at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral St. Showtime is 10 a.m. tomorrow in the library's Wheeler Auditorium, with discussion to follow. Admission is free. Information: prattlibrary.org or 410-396-5430.

Sunday with Berry

Director Susanne Bier's Things We Lost In the Fire, starring Halle Berry as a recent widow looking to pick up the pieces of her life (with help from her late husband's best friend, who has moved in with her and her children), is this weekend's scheduled Cinema Sundays offering. Showtime is 10:35 a.m. at the Charles, 1711 N. Charles St. Doors open at 9:45 a.m. Tickets are $15. Information: 410-727-3456 or cinemasundays.com.

Russian fantasy

Russian Fantastik Cinema, a retrospective of classic Russian fantasy and science-fiction films, continues this weekend at the Charles with Vladimir Chebotaryov and Gennadi Kazansky's The Amphibian Man (Chelovek-Amfibiya). The 1961 film, described by visual-effects master Robert Skotak as an "enchanting hybrid of The Little Mermaid and The Creature From the Black Lagoon," centers on the title character, who has lived underwater since a childhood operation replaced his bad lung with a shark's gill. Showtime is noon tomorrow at the Charles, 1711 N. Charles St., with encores set for 7 p.m. Monday and 9 p.m. Thursday. Tickets are $6 tomorrow, $8 other times. Information: 410-727-3456 or thecharles.com.

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