Downtown filmmaker Matthew Harrison had a cult hit in 1994 with “Rhythm Thief,” the story of a bootlegger selling tapes of punk bands.
The flick attracted the attention of Martin Scorsese, who produced Harrison’s 1997 feature “Kicked in the Head.”
Now, two shorts by Harrison are to be shown at the Lower East Side Film Festival, a five-day event in which low-budget flicks are screened on video at a variety of downtown haunts.
The festival kicks off Wednesday at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater (155 E. Third St.) with Glen Trotiner’s “Overnight Sensation,” a Sundance-based comedy about the making of an indie movie. A party will follow at Chaos.
Other programs are set to take place the following three days at Shampu, Den of Cine, Izzy Bar and Collective Unconscious, with a closing-night party on Sunday at Torch.
Harrison will be represented by the four-minute-long “Back to Hell” and the six-minute “Wrist.”
The director describes “Wrist” as a “weird bowling noir” about a “Jersey girl fugitive [played by Laura Heisler] changing her fluids for a new life in big bad New York City.”
“I think it’s my most aggressive and abstract film yet,” Harrison reports. “It’s pure experiment. I’m proud of it.”
He points out that Heisler, in her screen debut, resembles the Jean Seberg of “Breathless.”
What next for the talented Harrison?
He’s finishing work on “My Little Hollywood,” which he calls a “black comedy about a neurotic New York filmmaker who goes to Los Angeles.”
For more on the festival, visit http://www.nylesff.com
* Are Gore and Bush putting you to sleep? Then check out “Linda Lovelace for President” (1975).
The R-rated satire is getting a screening Tuesday at 9 p.m. at Siberia, the dive bar at the downtown side of the No. 1 and 9 subway stop at Broadway and 50th Street. Admission is free.
* Fans of Pauline Kael should read the new issue of Cineaste magazine for a rare interview with the woman whose writing in The New Yorker from 1968 to 1991 set the standard for film criticism.
Now 81 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, Kael hasn’t lost any of her zest. Asked about the Oscar-winning picture “American Beauty,” she told interviewer Leonard Quart:
“I didn’t dislike [the film]. I hated it. It’s not that it’s badly made. It has snappy rhythms and Kevin Spacey’s line readings are very smart, and Annette Bening is skillful in the scene where she beats up on herself. But the picture is a con. Can’t educated liberals see that it sucks up to them at every plot turn?”
* Just how true to life is “Boys Don’t Cry,” the fictional take on Brandon Teena, the young woman who lived like a man?
The answer is to be found in the documentary “The Brandon Teena Story” (1998), unreeling Wednesday at BAM Rose Cinemas (30 Lafayette Ave., near Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn). Information: (718) 623-2770.
V.A. Musetto is film editor ofThe Post. He can be e-mailed atvam@nypost.com.