Selling Democracy: Films of the Marshall Plan 1948-53 (Sat.-Sun., Jan. 28-29, free, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542) The European Recovery Program, best known by the name of its architect, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, pumped $13 billion into a shattered Europe, along with a little advice on how to spend it. Prohibited to U.S. audiences until 1990 and never widely screened, these unabashed, if aesthetically varied, propaganda shorts are a full-throated hoorah for U.S.-style modernization. Life and Death of a Cave City (1949) begins as a homey portrait of an Italian mountaintop village whose inhabitants have found it easier to carve their homes into the soft white stone than hack out blocks for free-standing dwellings. They have "everything that a poor civilization needs," the narrator opines. "Everything but hope." Cue ominous brass and shots of villagers engaged in manual labor—footage that might as easily have found its way into a tourist film on native artisans. Here, though, it's onward and (literally) upward, to the new city atop the hill, whose "modern" structures purportedly dwarf the old.

Curated by Sandra Schulberg (whose father, Stuart, headed the ERP's film arm) and Ed Carter, this 24-film series (culled from more than 260 produced), unapologetically spans the spectrum of Marshall Plan films, from simple celebrations of European reconstruction (the Dutch Houen Zo!) to high-handed free-market parables (The Shoemaker and the Hatter, a brisk animation by the husband-and-wife team behind Animal Farm). Split into four themed programs (shown Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.), Selling Democracy is roughly chronological. "Out of the Ruins" opens with Hunger, a seven-minute fragment designed to show that all Europe, and not just Germany, felt the pangs of post-war deprivation, while "Strength for the Free World," the final program, includes the satirical Do Not Disturb!, in which a buffoonish East German functionary touts the advantages of Communist life as the camera glides over images of tempting West German decadence—including two voluptuous bathing beauties whose skimpy outfits, he reasons, must be the result of a "fabric shortage."

In form, the Marshall Plan shorts mix the rich imagery of prewar documentary (especially the Depression-era films of pioneer Pare Lorentz) with the matter-of-fact commentary of wartime propaganda. (No room for Whitmanesque apostrophes here.) The photography, particularly in the Italian and Dutch films, is often stunning—and in the latter, at least, often left to speak for itself. Island of Faith echoes Joris Ivens' New Earth, as Holland attempts to reclaim its land from the sea and literally make itself whole. Rice and Bulls, directed by American Wesley Ruggles, is nearly as strong in its depiction of French "cowboys" giving up the range life to grow rice for the new France, although English dubbing sadly dents the film's careful authenticity.

As Schulberg notes in her catalog entry (available at www.sellingdemocracy.org), the U.S. is once again engaged in remaking the world—although this time, much of the damage we're repairing is our own. The film series is preceded on Friday by a symposium whose two panels will evaluate the strategies of public diplomacy then and now. Details at www.pgcs.asc.upenn.edu.

Sonic Cinema: The Lodger (Sat., Jan. 28, 8 p.m. and Sun., Jan 29, 3 p.m., $10-$20, Annenberg Center, 3680 Walnut St., 215-898-3900) Nobody would call The Lodger Alfred Hitchcock's best movie, but this 1927 silent gives fascinating hints at Hitch's early influences, not to mention his favorite themes. Cast violently against type, song-and-dance man Ivor Novello plays the title character, a menacing boarder who is suspected of being a Ripper-esque murderer. Positively drunk on Lang and Caligari, Hitchcock initially costumes Novello as a kohl-eyed Nosferatu, only later stirring up doubt as to which Hitchcockian archetype he best fits: the sympathetic killer or the innocent accused. New-music septet Relâche will accompany a DVD projection of the BFI's restored version (better than the public-domain copies on the U.S. market) with a new score by Joby Talbot that tugs at the movie's comic underpinnings, ensuring that even when you're frightened, you're still enjoying yourself.

Occupation: Dreamland (Tue., Jan. 31, 7 p.m., $10, International House) Ian Olds and Garrett Scott's distinctly unembedded documentary hunkers down in Falluja with the 802nd Airborne, whose caustic cynicism gives the lie to Jarhead's equivocation. Fuck "Fuck politics"—these soldiers are too enraged to keep mum, even when their squad leader reminds them that taking sides is "not done on camera." Safely out of earshot, Texan PFC Thomas Turner opines, "War is about money, and I guess as long as we got a fuckin' Republican in office, we can look forward to that," while others hew less surprisingly to the party line. What they share is a common doubt that their actions make a difference, and that anyone knows or cares what they're doing. "People want steak," Staff Sgt. Chris Corcione says, "but they don't want to see how the cow gets butchered."

Occupation: Dreamland is short on actual carnage, but Olds and Scott's footage cuts deep all the same. There's the recruitment talk in which troops are essentially demoralized into re-upping; you can stay in the military, the recruiter tells them, or go home and live on the streets. So much for the best and the brightest. The movie's opening sequence lays out a bleak picture of the lives the men left behind: low-paying jobs, cloistered existences and, in Corcione's case, an unsuccessful career as a death-metal bassist. Dreamland is by no means anti-troop, but it's a hard-eyed look at just who the U.S. is sending to fight. It's not hard to picture one of these men ending up like Shawn Nelson, the subject of Olds and Scott's Cul-de-sac: A Suburban War Story, an unemployed veteran whose stolen-tank joy ride ended in gunfire. As Corcione tells a soldier who emerges from a fact-finding mission in what turns out to be an Iraqi family's septic tank, "You just stepped in shit. Your country appreciates it, though."