PROVIDENCE

The 10th annual Rhode Island International Film Festival opens at 7 tonight at the Columbus Theater with a tribute to Rhode Island movie director Michael Corrente and a showing of several short films.

Corrente, who got the current wave of moviemaking in Rhode Island started in 1993 when he shot the film Federal Hill in Providence and is currently casting the Buddy Cianci movie The Prince of Providence, will receive the festival's Creative Vision Award. A retrospective of Corrente's films will also be presented during the festival.

The screening of the short films is also significant, because the festival has become one of only 60 throughout the world qualified to nominate films for the Academy Awards in the short-film category.

Tonight's roster is an eclectic mix, ranging from Heavy Metal Drummer, a look at an Arab music fan trying to reconcile his love for metal in a disapproving environment, to One Rat Short, about how a discarded food wrapper leads a New York City subway rat into an adventure of love and loss.

Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Matchgirl is a six-minute short directed by Roger Allers, one of the two directors of the groundbreaking The Lion King. This melancholy tale, done for the Walt Disney Studios in a traditional 2-D animation, is a lovely film that captures in six short minutes the hopes and the tragedy of Anderson's tale.

The fact that it's set in snowy Moscow and uses the melancholy music of Alexander Borodin underscores the story's sad theme. The little matchgirl of the title sells matches on the city's streets. But when she doesn't sell all of them, she takes the leftovers to an alley where, homeless and cold, she huddles. She lights one match after another which brings both temporary physical warmth and the warmth of her dreams. One lit match brings thoughts of a warm stove. Another of a table laden with goodies. Another of a visit to a magnificent house in the snow -- think Dr. Zhivago -- where a beaming grandmother welcomes her in and takes her to a room where there's a large Christmas tree.

Allers doesn't stint on the tragedy of the story. Yet he offers a surprising touch of hope that leaves it with a surprisingly upbeat ending.

One of the best films in the bunch is Nick Childs' The Shovel, starring David Strathairn as Paul, a man whose life is turned upside down late one night when he investigates why his neighbor is digging a deep hole with his borrowed shovel.

The man says he is digging the hole to bury his dead dog.

But when both the neighbor and the man's wife go missing the next day, Paul's suspicions go into overdrive. He calls the police. But what he gets is a horrible sinking feeling in this tightly woven deliciously concocted turn-the-tables film with a surprising dark twist.

Summer Joy Main's La Cerca is a wistful based-on-a-true story coming-of-age film. Set on a coastal California cattle ranch in 1959, the film follows a 17-year-old boy who has come from Mexico to live with his cowboy father. Tired of the menial chores in a world that is defined for him by the barbed-wire fence that rings the ranch, the boy one day follows a steer who has escaped through a hole in the fence.

What he discovers outside its boundaries is a whole new world that includes the ocean and a limitless horizon. It opens up his world and the possibilities to be found out there.

La Cerca is a lyrical, beautifully photographed film. The characters speak Spanish with English subtitles, but there is unobtrusive English narration, too, by Edward James Olmos.

Also on tonight's program will be Moongirl, about a boy and his flying squirrel who are taken to meet the Girl in the Moon; Film Noir, an animated adventure combined with live footage to create the spirit of a classic noir thriller; The Run, about a scary shadowy figure who begins chasing a man; The Butler of Van der Waal House, about a butler who tries to prevent murder; Rose, about a dateless woman working in a flower shop on Valentine's Day.

mjanuson@projo.com / (401) 277-7276

The Rhode Island International Film Festival runs today through Sunday at venues across the state. For tickets or more information, call (401) 861-4445 or visit www.Rifilmfest.org or www.arttixri.com.

Tickets for screenings are normally $10 each; $7 for Flickers members. Kidseye tickets are $6 for adults; $4 for children. The opening night screenings, beginning at 7 tonight at the Columbus, are $15. Tickets for a VIP party starting at 5 p.m. in the rotunda at One Citizens Plaza Plaza, Providence, with Michael Corrente as guest, preceding the Columbus screening, and a gala "after party" back at One Citizens Plaza, are $100. Tickets to attend the film and after-party gala are $50; $35 for the party alone.