Standing in the Shadow of Motown Redux (Sun., May 18, 6:30 p.m., $15, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) Oddly enough for a film about musicians, the least satisfying part of Standing in the Shadows of Motown are the performances themselves. Despite the fact that the Motown sound was primarily a studio creation, the setting for the film's musical numbers still feels airless, artificial: If we're going to see the Funk Brothers step out of the shadows and into the spotlight, we want to see them do it in front of an audience. The movie's already out on fully loaded DVD, but it might be worth bypassing to catch up with the movie at the Prince on Sunday, considering that the movie's two Pennsylvanians, Pittsburgh bassist Bruce Babbit and Philadelphia's own Jack Ashford, best known for his distinctive tambourine playing, will be introducing the movie as part of Blue Sky Art's First Person Festival. (They'll also play upstairs with local musicians and guest vocalists including Carla Benson, Bunny Sigler and Lauren Hart at 9:30 p.m.; $35-$45 admission is separate.) Or, if you just crave a little face time, Ashford will be signing copies of the DVD at the Fourth Street TLA Video on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Chulas Fronteras and Del Mero Corazôn/J'ai Ét au Bal/Last of the Mississippi Jukes ($24.98 DVD) Part of the reason Shadows' performances don't work the way they're meant to is that music can't be understood when it's cut off from the environment that spawned it. Few films express a more profound understanding of that link than Les Blank's Chulas Fronteras, Del Mero Corazón and J'ai été au Bal, all just released to DVD by roots-music label Arhoolie. Chulas Fronteras and Del Mero Corazón, appropriately released on a single disc, were filmed simultaneously in the late 1970s, and focus on the conjunto and norteño music birthed on the Texas/Mexico border. Based around the trill of a button accordion and the thrum of a 12-string guitar, the music of Chulas Fronteras flows out with little introduction; Blank provides context visually, juxtaposing music with people dancing, cooking, living their lives. Without following along in the DVD booklet, you'd never know that the film often bridges the gap between one artist and another by having one perform a song written by the next, but perhaps the connection is felt even if it's not understood. Del Mero Corazón repeats the process, but with the love songs that were left out of the earlier film. The music in Chulas Fronteras has to rank among the most joyful-sounding I've ever heard, up there with the exuberance of klezmer, though oddly it's in the tales of racial injustice and the hardness of border life that it most comes alive; Del Mero Corazón's love songs are melancholy, subdued affairs by comparison. (It's more powerful when the two combine in Flaco Jiménez's ÒUn Mojado Sin Licensia,Ó the story of a man who's prevented from marrying by his inability to get a driver's license.) Featuring legends like Lydia Mendoza and Narciso Martínez (both seen to even greater advantage in the half-hour of deleted scenes), Chulas Fronteras is the perfect introduction for the uninitiated, next step for the curious, or treasure chest for the aficionado.

J'ai été au Bal repeated the process with Cajun and zydeco music, though the use of narration cuts down on the you-are-there feeling. Robert Mugge's Last of the Mississippi Jukes (reviewed in this column some months back) may not have the sense of uncovering an otherwise forgotten culture -- for one thing, the focus on a single Jackson, Miss., joint cuts down on the quality of the artists captured -- but you can still smell the sweat and beer in the air. Both discs include further performances for new converts.

Amos Gitai: Exile ($99.95 DVD) Every disc in Facets' five-film set opens with the warning: "The following film contains dialogue in many languages. Please turn subtitles on." It might be boilerplate, but it seems an apt introduction to the Israeli-born Gitai's work, which has much to do with the proliferation of voices. (His most recent feature, Kedma, is essentially a collection of monologues set in a dramatic context.) Beginning as a documentary filmmaker, Gitai turned to features with this box set's five films, of which the first, Esther (1986), is the most satisfying. Though the film sticks close to the Biblical story of the woman who saves the Jews from extermination by the evil Persian Haman, Gitai complicates its message: His Esther is played by a Moroccan; his defiant Mordecai, by a Palestinian. Replete with Brechtian devices, the film climaxes by explicitly comparing the one-time persecution of the Jews with contemporary persecution of Palestinians, and features cast members walking through the modern-day streets while voiceovers recount their personal histories. No wonder Gitai's found it more comfortable to work outside his homeland. (A friend says that exiting a screening of Kedma at New York's Jewish Film Festival, he overheard a perturbed patron exclaim, "Why didn't they just show a Palestinian movie?")

Unfortunately, the succeeding films show Gitai moving further and further from reality, climaxing in the often-baffling Golem trilogy: Birth of a Golem (1991), Golem: The Spirit of Exile (1992) and Golem: The Petrified Garden (1993). Though like the other films in Facets' box, Spirit features luminous cinematography by grand master Henri Alekan (La Belle et la Bète, The Wages of Fear), its retelling of the story of Ruth (featuring fairly pointless cameos by Sam Fuller and Bernardo Bertolucci, and Hanna Schygulla as a PVC-clad golem) packs none of Esther's punch. At least Petrified Garden recovers Gitai's sense of humor, with American Jerome Koenig as an art dealer slogging through Siberia in search of an inheritance that just might include the remains of a golem. The less said about the self-indulgent Birth of a Golem, which features a mud-streaked Annie Lennox crawling out of the earth, the better.

At least Berlin Jerusalem (1989), which interweaves the stories of German poet Else Lasker-Schuler and Russian revolutionary-turned-kibbutznik Tania Shohat, is half great. The Berlin sequences are flat, but the portrait of life in the earliest days of collective farming surpasses Ken Loach's Land and Freedom in its clarity and compassion.

The Films of Taran Davies (Mon., May 19, 9 p.m., Sundance Channel) Sundance Channel's two-hour program gathers up three documentaries by this former investment banker who's also been making films in the Middle East and Asia since the mid-1990s. The best, Afghan Stories, examines the reactions of Afghans both abroad and at home to the events of Sept. 11. The exiles' vituperation can be a shock: One man Davies interviews says that Afghanistan should simply be bombed to the ground so they can start fresh. In Tajikistan, refugees pine for their homeland, while in Afghanistan, during (but not near) the American bombing, people simply do their best to navigate the rapidly shifting landscape. Mountain Men and Holy Wars, which traces the continuing importance of a legendary Islamic revolutionary to the present-day Chechen conflict, doesn't have the same impact but still provides a stinging rebuke to simplistic explanations of terrorism. Land Beyond the River is more of a travelogue, following a 1,200-mile bike race along the silk road. Sundance Channel's "Portraits of Islam" continues all week, with airings of Samira Makhmalbaf's Blackboards, Youssef Chahine's Silence ... We're Rolling and Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry.