Trenton Film Festival (Fri.-Sun., May 5-7) Now in its third year, the Trenton Film Festival has established itself as a small but potent contender. This year's focus is overwhelmingly on documentaries, which take up seven of the 10 slots devoted to new features. (There's also a two-film tribute to the late Gordon Parks, including Shaft and The Learning Tree, and a pair of shorts programs, one comprised of this year's live-action Oscar nominees.) The fest opener is Gary Tarn's striking Black Sun (Fri., 7:45), an impressionistic portrait of artist Hugues de Montalembert, who was blinded when a burglar threw paint thinner in his eyes. De Montalembert, whose face is never seen, relates his experience in calm, even tones as Tarn deploys a wealth of lyrical imagery, inspired by his subject's remark that, after he was blinded, he started "making movies" in his mind's eye. An immersive experience, Black Sun's imagery is sometimes more prosaic than poetic, but it's still a bold choice for an opening-night film.

My Dad Is 100 Years Old

Other highlighs of the three-day festival include Joel Engardio and Tom Shepard's Knocking (Sat., 3:40 p.m.), an even-handed look at the world of Jehovah's Witnesses, and the closing-night screening of Marshall Curry's Street Fight, which may look totally different now that embattled mayoral candidate Cory Booker is the front-runner and not the underdog. Curry and Tarn will both attend their screenings. Further details are at www.trentonfilmfestival.org.

My Dad Is 100 Years Old (Mon., May 8, 7 p.m., Sundance Channel) Directed by Guy Maddin, My Dad Is 100 Years Old is Isabella Rossellini's tribute to her late father, Roberto, whose centenary arrives in 2006. Rossellini, who wrote and plays every role (except her father, who is represented by a talking stomach), mounts a touching appreciation of her father's oeuvre and his contentious relationship with contemporaries like Hitchcock and Fellini (whose heirs, rumor has it, don't appreciate the ribbing). Rossellini's re-creations are mainly played for comic effect, though they double as surprisingly cogent criticism, but her encounter with the image of her late mother, Ingrid Bergman, is enough to reduce the hardiest postmodernist to tears. Although Rossellini's twin sister, Ingrid, has grabbed headlines in the last few weeks with complaints that My Dad is insufficiently respectful of her father's legacy, it's hard to imagine a more deeply felt tribute. The 17-minute film will be followed by Rossellini's Rome, Open City.