Women in Film Festival Begins Today : Movies: The opening-night ‘Grand Isle’ featuring Kelly McGillis and ‘The Fool’ with Derek Jacobi are noteworthy.

For the first time, the annual Women in Film Festival will be presented in association with the American Film Institute. Not for the first time--nor the last--have distributors refused press previews for a major offering in the festival, which takes place today through Sunday on the AFI campus, 2021 N. Western Ave., Hollywood.

We therefore can’t tip you off on the merits of Mira Nair’s “Mississippi Masala,” starring Denzel Washington and the director’s first film since her Oscar-winning “Salaam Bombay.” But we can sing the praises of the opening-night attraction, Mary Lambert’s “Grand Isle” (screening at 6:45 p.m. and again at 9:30 p.m. in Goodson Theater) and Christine Edzard’s “The Fool” (10 a.m. Saturday in Library 105 and again at 9 p.m. in Goodson Theater), in which Derek Jacobi gives the same kind of Oscar-caliber performance he gave in the title role of Edzard’s landmark two-part “Little Dorrit.”

Adapted from Kate Chopin’s 1899 “The Awakening,” “Grand Isle” takes its title from a Louisiana gulf resort popular with turn-of-the-century Creole families. Intimate and exquisite, the film charts the sexual and, more important, creative awakening of the beautiful Kentuckian (Kelly McGillis, never better) who has married into the stifling, rigid world of the New Orleans Creole aristocracy.

Like Edzard’s 1988 adaptation of the Dickens classic, “The Fool” brings alive Victorian London in breathtaking detail. Inspired by Henry Mayhew’s classic study of the London poor, it stars Jacobi as an impoverished theater accountant who assumes a second identity as an aristocratic speculator, allowing him to ponder the cruel irony of men who make fortunes on paper while others put their whole bodies and souls into their labors yet can barely feed their children.

Norwegian actress-filmmaker Vibeke Lokkeberg’s “Sea Gulls” (in Library 105, 9 p.m. Saturday and again on Sunday at 10 a.m.) is a Chekhovian study of a landed family facing imminent and desperate poverty and focusing on two young sisters. Set in 1915, a time when many wealthy Norwegian families faced financial ruin, the film needs better English subtitles and a preface in English explaining the historical context for it to have full impact.

One of the highlights of the Gay and Lesbian Festival last July, Monika Treut’s “My Father Is Coming” (Saturday at 7 p.m. in Library 105) is slight and awkward around the edges but is so good-natured as to be as irresistible as its star, the adorable Shelley Kastner. She plays a struggling New York actress who is less than thrilled with the imminent arrival of her German father.

The 13 fiction features are set off with a potpourri of documentaries that vary in quality as much as the fiction features. Rachel Liebling’s “High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass Music” (Saturday at 4:45 p.m. in Goodson Theater) is the very model of good documentary filmmaking: a worthy subject thoroughly researched and brought vividly to life. Liebling does a remarkable job in tracing all the influences that shaped bluegrass music, which first flowered during the Depression, and then matches key bluegrass musicians’ reminiscences and their music to a treasure-trove of archival footage, much of it depicting life in the remotest regions of Appalachia and including even early TV appearances by various bands.

Another splendid documentary is Pamela Beere Briggs’ 46-minute “Funny Ladies” (Saturday at 7 p.m. in Warner 108), which surveys comic strips created by women since the early 20th Century to the present and spotlighting Dale Messick, creator of “Brenda Starr” in 1940 and still glamorous at 83; Cathy Guisewite, creator of “Cathy”; Nicole Hollander, creator of “Sylvia,” and Lynda Barry, creator of “Ernie Pook’s Comeek”--all of whom tell about themselves and their work in wry, delightful fashion.

Playing with “Funny Ladies” is Ilana Bar-Din’s 55-minute “Legends,” which tells of irrepressible Las Vegas promoter John Stuart, creator of the long-running “Legends in Concert” featuring impersonations of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland. Bar-Din, who’s not nearly as incisive and exploratory about her sure-fire subject as she should have been, nevertheless lucked out: several unexpected developments provided the kind of drama and surprise all documentarians pray for.

Anne Stockwell’s 25-minute “High Road, Low Road” (screening Sunday during a 12:15 p.m. program of shorts) is the kind of vignette that makes one sit up and take notice--and sheer pleasure in its imagination and excellence. A miracle of economy, it reveals Stockwell to be a first-rate storyteller on the screen and a consummate director of actors. We’re in Tennessee’s beautiful Cumberland Valley; a mother (Robin Lilly) is trying to drive while her daughter (Aileen Barry, a young Katharine Hepburn) is battling with her bored, trouble-making younger brother (Alex Pasmur) when. . . .

As always, this seventh edition of the Women in Film Festival offers various special programs and seminars--a six-program salute to the AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women, 10 free programs of works on video, seminars on sexual harassment in Hollywood, and with women producers, writers, directors and agents.

Ticket information: (213) 466-1767; other information: (213) 463-6040.