12 Disciples of Nelson Mandela (Thu., April 27, 7 p.m., $10, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542) Blending family portrait, biography and political history, Thomas Allen Harris' sketch of his late stepfather Pule "Lee" Leinang doubles as a chronicle of the African National Congress' years in exile. Leinang was one of a dozen men sent from Bloemfontein, South Africa, to Botswana and Tanzania to help build the movement, although Harris pays more attention to the disconnected life of a political exile than the specific tasks they set themselves. Perhaps appropriately, the movie is disjointed and sometimes feels like it's spinning its wheels, following Leinang from Africa to Germany and Philadelphia (where he took a broadcasting degree at Temple) before landing in New York in the early 1970s, where Harris' connection to the story becomes personal. The mix of personal and world-historical elements doesn't always jell, but Harris will be present at the screening to fill in the blanks. --Sam Adams

12 Disciples of Nelson Mandela

Imagine the Sound (Fri., April 28, 7 p.m., $7, International House) In this 1981 free jazz overview, Ron Mann (Grass, Comic Book Confidential) isn't interested in history per se; beginning 20 years after the dawn of the movement, he builds a rhetorical defense of a misunderstood music, focusing on four disparate artists: legendary iconoclast Cecil Taylor, airily making the case for uncompromising artistry; Bill Dixon, the angry firebrand, railing against younger musicians and the moneyed establishment; Paul Bley, who analyzes the theory behind the music; and the professorial Archie Shepp, who recounts the music's political designs. The movie's strength is its extensive performance footage, climbing into the piano with Bley, getting in Shepp's face as the jacket-and-tie-clad tenorist blows himself into a sweat, observing the subtle interactions between Dixon and his trio, and unleashing Taylor, in sweatsuit and knit cap, into an all-white limbo to dance, chant, recite poetry and execute some mind-blowing excursions on the piano. The screening is preceded by Woody and Steina Vasulka's 1970 short film of Don Cherry playing on the streets of Manhattan. --Shaun Brady

Downtown 81/Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes (Sat., April 29, 7 p.m., $7, International House) Chopped down to a barely tolerable 73 minutes for its 2000 reissue, Edo Bertoglio's scene-capturing 1981 docudrama trails Jean-Michel Basquiat to a string of club performances (by DNA, James White and the Blacks, and Tuxedomoon) and mutual-cool encounters, but Glenn O'Brien's grating, pseudo-Beat narration keeps it from passing as an art-world Wild Style. Attached are two episodes of the Warhol-MTV mashup Fifteen Minutes, not available for preview.