We inhabit a culture in which cinematic output is monopolized by Hollywood. The sad thing is, most of the world is similarly swamped by Tinseltown trash. These huge-budget, bloated-star juggernauts based on comic-book heroes so dominate the world's screens there's hardly any room left for art.

Here in San Francisco, a defiant outpost of dissident film, hard-bitten programmers persist in screening vintage, silent, independent, and on all-too-rare occasions, foreign films. When the op arises, you must seize it. So it is with the single-day mini-fest of Dino Risi films at the Castro Theatre this Saturday.