In his new Bird Song, Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra makes a deliberately clumsy pageant from the Bible story of the three kings who journeyed across the desert and sea to salute the baby Jesus. Shot in rich, almost gorgeous black-and-white, Bird Song is less about the gifts of the magi than the play of light over barren, nearly lunar, landscapes. Wrapped in bed sheets and wearing pasty crowns, the three kings occasionally recall the Three Stooges. After a while, Serra shifts his attention to the object of their quest: Mary (Victòria Aragonés) and Joseph (film critic Mark Peranson, whose accompanying, dryly comic documentary on the project, Waiting for Sancho, runs Friday through Sunday at 7:15 and 9:15 p.m.). Holed up in the middle of a barren, rocky nowhere, Marys holding a bleating lamb; Josephs mumbling in broken Hebrew. Their baby is unseen, but referred to: He peed on me, Mary remarks. Throughout, Serra remains an intractable practitioner of droll minimalism. J. HOBERMAN
April 24-30, 7 & 9 p.m., 2009
