Regional arts and entertainment events

Sunday

It's all too beautiful The British writers and painters who banded together as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the mid-19th century were proto-hippies, seeking to escape the ugliness of the emerging industrial world by reaching back to natural ideals and a medieval aesthetic of experience. In so doing, they created remarkable, if somewhat overheated, art and poetry. The Delaware Art Museum has a fine collection of the group's work, and curator Margaretta Frederick presents the lecture

Stunners: Beauty in the Work of the Pre-Raphaelites and Aesthetes

at 2 p.m. at the

Woodmere Art Museum

, 9201 Germantown Ave. Tickets are $10. Call 215-247-0948.

Her story Larry Parr's musical

Ethel Waters, His Eye Is on the Sparrow

tells the life story of the great singer and actress, born in Chester and raised in Philadelphia.

Demetria Joyce Bailey

stars in the show, which traces Waters' rise from a difficult childhood through her stints at honky-tonks to success on Broadway and in Hollywood. The show, featuring Waters' signature song, "Stormy Weather," goes on 2 p.m. at the

Hedgerow Theatre

, 64 Rose Valley Rd., Media, and continues on a Thursday-through-Sunday schedule to Feb. 24. Tickets are $10-$30. Call 610-565-4211.

Monday

Writing her life In Shemi Zarhin's

Aviva My Love

, the title character is a downtrodden wife and mother, living in a heat-oppressed town on the Sea of Galilee and working in an unfulfilling job. When she meets a has-been writer who offers her a Faustian bargain, she is forced to take the measure of her circumstances. The film screens at 7 p.m. at the

Gershman Y

, 401 S. Broad St. Tickets are $10. Call 215-446-3033.

Tuesday

A fine line With a ready-made script taken from City Paper's column of anonymous postings,

Azuka Theatre's

reading of

I Love You/I Hate You

promises the best of both sides of Valentine's Day. The production goes on at 5 p.m. at

Woody's Bar

, 202 S. 13th St. Tickets are $10. Call 215-733-0255.

Wednesday

Let's explore We'd love to travel to exotic locales - if they all weren't so far away. Which is why we're devoted to travel documentaries. Thailand-based filmmaker

Buddy Hatton

presents his travelogue

Road to Mandalay: Myanmar and Angkor Wat

, with scenes from the nation formerly known as Burma and the ancient ruins deep in the jungles of Cambodia, in a

Geographical Society

program at 7:30 p.m. at the

Academy of Natural Sciences

, 19th Street and the Parkway. Tickets are $12; $6 for students. Call 610-649-5220.

Thursday

Sixties at a boiling point The estimable

Andrew's Video Vault

presents a matched pair of pop artifacts bookending 1960s excess.

In the 1970 epic

Zabriskie Point

, Michelangelo Antonioni attempted to portray the cultural strains then tearing at America, and ended up with a fascinating mess that endures despite its flaws. In the story (partially scripted by Sam Shepard), a disaffected youth, on the run from the law, heads for the California desert, where he meets another drifter, a gorgeous girl with a cool car. Everything comes together in a beautiful scene, then - literally - explodes. Antonioni cast two nonactors, Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin, as the counterculture couple. Their post-film fates illustrate the dichotomy of chaos and creativity at the heart of this visually stunning film: Frechette died in prison; Halprin made a couple more films, then became a respected arts therapist.

The other film on the bill, Joseph Losey's 1968 thriller

Secret Ceremony

, delves into sex and psychology in the story of a disturbed young woman (Mia Farrow) who adopts a faded prostitute (Elizabeth Taylor) as a mother surrogate, only to have the delusion spectacularly shattered when her dissolute stepfather (Robert Mitchum) shows up. The films screen at 8 p.m. at

the Rotunda

, 4014 Walnut St. Admission is free. Call 215-901-3771.

American band Bursting out of the early 1970s glam scene,

the New York Dolls

were never really glittery. But they made their inability to pull off androgyny into a plus, and their over-the-top rock style cleared the way for punk. Three of the founding members have passed on, which would usually, for us, mean a reunion is nothing more than an oldies stunt - but as long as guitarist Sylvain Sylvain and protean front man David Johansen remain on board, the Dolls live on. They play at 9 p.m. at the

New Alhambra Arena

, 7 Ritner St. Tickets are $24. Call 215-755-0611.

Friday & Saturday

Dance dance The program

India Jazz Suites

teams

Pandit Chitresh Das

, a master of the percussive north Indian dance form

kathak

, with the extraordinary tap-dancer

Jason Samuels Smith

. They perform at

Bryn Mawr College's

Goodhart Hall, 101 N. Merion Ave., Bryn Mawr, at 8 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $18. Call 610-526-5210.

Cinema scenes The wonderful old movie house now known as the

Hiway Theatre

celebrates the one-year anniversary of its reopening with a

Secret Cinema

program of vintage travel films, including a 1920s look at Hawaii and a 1954 promo for transatlantic air travel, at the theater, 212 Old York Rd., Jenkintown, at 10 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $8.50; $6.50 for students. Call 215-886-9800.

Sax style The cerebral, swinging alto saxophonist

Jim Snidero

brings his post-bop sound to

Chris' Jazz Cafe

, 1421 Sansom St., with sets at 8 and 10 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $15. Call 215-568-3131. . . . The

Prism Saxophone Quartet

plays works by Russian composers including Alexander Glazunov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Edison Denisov, Elena Firsova and Dmitri Smirnov at the

Settlement Music School's

Curtis Branch, 416 Queen St., at 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $20; $15 for seniors and students. Call 215-438-5282.