From Sundance to Park Slope: Craig Macneill's Late Bloomer (Photo: BICS)

On the off-chance that you are not among the frothing masses planning to stalk tonight's King Kong premiere in Times Square, you can always head over to the inaugural installment of the Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series at Park Slope's Barbes performance space. Sure, you will not get the overwhelming plaster-gorilla-on-Military-Island flava you have been dying for, but on the other hand, you ARE likely to get a few decent films.

New York filmmaker Joe Pacheco--who has touring film festivals with his documentary As Smart As They Are--is curating the monthly program, sort of an offshoot of Barbes's regular Traveling Cinema series. "I've been hearing about all these other great movies out there," Pacheco told The Reeler late last week. "I was talking to Olivier, who owns Barbes, about all the films I've been seeing on the circuit, and he asked me to curate a series with more contemporary indpeendent stuff. Basically, that's how it started. A lot of the films we're going to be programming are ones that I have been wanting to see on the circuit but haven't gotten a chance to. It's as much for me to see the films as everyone else in Brooklyn."

Well, hey--at least the guy is honest. David Dixon's documentary/narrative hybrid Unloosened and Root opens the series tonight, preceded by Craig Macneill's Sundance short Late Bloomer and Seth Lind's Barbara Leather. All three films' directors will be on hand for Q&A's follwing the screenings.

And best of all--the event is free to attend and free to submit to. And it's about half the length of King Kong. If I weren't petrified of leaving Manhattan, it would be the quintessential win-win situation. For the rest of you, however, the fun starts at 7 p.m.