Circle Diaries (Sat., Sept. 10, 7 p.m., $7, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542) Filmon Mebrahtu's portrait of three Sudanese "lost boys" resettled in the Philadelphia area gets a final screening before its Sept. 14 premiere on WYBE. Like Megan Mylan and Jon Shenk's Lost Boys of Sudan, Mebrahtu's Circle Diaries is an eye-opening status report on the United States' ability to live up to its own ideals. For Joseph, Mike and Abraham (not, of course, their African names), the U.S. is a land of opportunity, but also responsibility; Mebrahtu films Deng Kuol, Abraham's brother, walking the city as he listens to a taped message from the elders of Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, reminding him that he has come here to send money back home. It is also a place where the strong ties that bind them to their culture and each other are always under attack. While one African-American girl in Mike's Central High class laments the slave master's success at severing tribal and familial loyalties — "When we were brought here, we were, like, so much stronger than we are now" — another informs him, "The point of America… is to do what's best for you, not everyone else."

Diaries, some of which was shot by its subjects, is more intimate than other documentaries on the subject, although narration (by Joseph) and computer graphics provide background on the magnitude of the refugee crisis. (The Bush administration continus to drag its feet on aiding the approximately four million Sudanese refugees.) As Joseph presses a succession of diplomats to take action in Sudan, or Abraham applies for U.S. citizenship, they span a spectrum that includes Philadelphia's 80-some lost boys, its 55,000 African immigrants and countless more across the country whose lives are, as Joseph puts it, "on hold." Of course, these days, the U.S. is only a way station for refugees, a temporary holding place until we deem it safe for their return (or inconvenient for them to remain). But it's telling that Joseph sees it that way as well. The U.S. is a nice place to visit, but he wouldn't want to live there.

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek ($14.99 DVD) The 1944 release of Preston Sturges' gimcracking comedy caused James Agee to remark that the production code had been "raped in its sleep." The story of a small-town girl (Betty Hutton) who goes to a G.I. dance, hits her head, and wakes up the next morning married to a man whose name she can't remember struck at every sacred cow there was, and in wartime, yet. While hardly as corrosive as Billy Wilder's contemporary Double Indemnity, Miracle was more recognizably set in the real world; as Hutton and her hapless 4F suitor Eddie Bracken stroll through their picture-postcard small town, the camera takes in the lifelike backgrounds in unbroken tracking shots, the longest of which lasts almost four minutes. Of course, no one was likely to confuse Miracle with the postwar realism The Best Years of Our Lives; Hutton and Bracken were constantly trying to out-mug each other (according to a featurette on Paramount's DVD, the rivalry was not always friendly), and as Hutton's preternaturally astute, sexually precocious younger sister, Diana Lynn may be the most eerily sexualized tween in Golden Age history. But where some of Sturges' social satires move so fast they never touch down, Miracle slows up just enough to leave skid marks on Main Street. There's still too much swinging for the cheap seats, especially by William Demarest as Hutton's lawman father, whose serial pratfalling simply falls flat. But Sturges' production code work-arounds, put into context by a helpful featurette, are nothing short of ingenious. It was unacceptable to show minors drinking alcohol, so he had Hutton quaff "victory lemonade"; skirting the structure against premarital sex, he thrust her into the most perfunctory and intangible of unions (although he was still forced to hide her swollen stomach in the final scenes). The censors never realized that their restrictions only gave Sturges' rebellion added kick.