Film Kitchen's call for first and early films by local artists has turned up some gems, but nothing else quite like Billy Jackson's 30 seconds of footage from 1977. Jackson, then living in Boston, was hired to shoot a TV spot with heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali hyping his own charity exhibition bout benefiting a local performing-arts school for black youths. Jackson and an assistant shot it in Ali's hotel room, in a few takes with just one camera setup. "He was really a personal, accessible human being, really a beautiful brother," recalls Jackson. The series' May 10 screening also includes such older and newer work as: Jackson's 1970s-era PSA for a national runaway hotline; Brady Lewis' "Colliding," an expressionistic 1977 portrait of artist Robert Breer; Luke Ohlson's artful, and art-themed, stop-action animation "Boomtown"; and work ranging from abstract explorations by Bob Buncher and Sam Boese to short documentaries, rap-video parodies and more by Tess Allard, Frank Caloiero, John Cantine, Liebel Cohen, Emily DeMarco, Andy Kelemen, Michael Lies and Film Kitchen curator Matthew R. Day himself. 8 p.m. Tue., May 10. Melwood. $5. 412-691-9500
