Response Builds for Third Pan African Film Festival : Movies: Nearly 60 movies will be shown at the third annual event, which begins tonight at Sunset 5.

With the third annual Pan African Film Festival running tonight through Oct. 26 at the Sunset 5, its director Ayuko Babu says, “We feel good about where we are. Hard economic realities have made us more realistic. We get a tremendous response--there’s a hunger in the black community for this festival, and we’re getting a lot of white voices on the phone asking for a screening schedule.”

A tall, bearded man of much warmth, Babu, 50, is a local attorney long involved in black political and cultural causes. He has good reason to take pride in the festival, which this year will offer nearly 60 films and an array of special events, in contrast to last year’s scaled-back presentation.

Tonight’s opening will present three outstanding features in separate auditoriums at 8 p.m.: Roger Gnoan M’Bala’s “In the Name of Christ,” in which an Ivory Coast village outcast comes to believe himself a new Messiah; Raoul Peck’s intricately structured “The Man by the Shore,” in which the terror of Haiti’s Tonton Macoutes is seen though the eyes of an eight-year-old girl; and Mohamed Chouikh’s “Youcef” from Egypt, about an amenesiac Algerian freedom fighter (Mohamed Ali Allalou) who awakens to find his country independent of France but in the grip of totalitarianism.

Babu is also enthusiastic about a Black British Film Night (Friday at 8 p.m.), which will be sponsored by the UK/LA Festival and will be composed of five short films, two of which were directed by Isaac Julien, who made “Young Soul Rebels” and “Looking for Langston.”

“Only since 1945 has there been a permanent black community in Britain,” said Babu. “It’s a kind of Afro-Caribbean-British mix, and this offers a different take on the black experience. The energy coming out of their films is exciting.”

This year the festival will attempt to bring more than 2,000 students from throughout Los Angeles to see one of the 12:30 p.m. daily screenings, The first, on Friday, is Isaac Mahibra’s “More Time,” a film from Zimbabwe dramatizing the need for AIDS education. Babu promises that it combines “the energy of ‘House Party’ with a political, cultural and health message.”

At the same time he is discouraged that so far, of the 200 letters the festival has sent to corporations asking for contributions to pay for transporting the students, he has received fewer than 10 responses.

Although always on the lookout for corporate sponsors, the festival is backed by the government of Burkina Faso, Air Afrique and the City of Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs Department. As of now, Babu describes the festival’s financial status as “50-50,” meaning that it yields enough revenue to pay for about half its costs. Even so, Babu believes, with proper nurturing, he has a hit on his hands.

* The Pan African Film Festival runs tonight through Oct. 26 at the Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd. (at Crescent Heights). Festival information: (213) 896-8221.