Friday Happenings

Movies

Near Dark made vampires into a rural, Western thing decades before True Blood was on the drawing board. Kathryn Bigelow's 1987 horror film is an overlooked classic of the decade, featuring breathtaking cinematography and a blurring of moral boundaries that couldn't be sexier. Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St., 7 p.m. $10.

You can't be a feminist and a Roman Catholic, can you? Loads of Catholic feminists would disagree. They get their due in Women of Faith (2008), the work of local filmmaker Rebecca M. Alvin, who interviews nuns, former nuns, and a Roman Catholic Womanpriest to capture, without condescension, women who reconcile their politics with their religion in many different ways. Alvin will be on hand to discuss the movie. Remis Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts, 4 p.m. $7/$6.

Weird Rock

Local band Big Bear celebrates the release of its split seven-inch with Detroit rockers Child Bite in Somerville tonight. Both bands play a bass-heavy angular punk rock that owes a debt to the Minutemen and the spazz rock of the 90s. P.A.'s Lounge, 345 Somerville Ave., Somerville, 8:30 p.m. $10.

New Music

Nathaniel Bartlett is an electro-acoustic marimba player who likes to experiment with both electronics and contemporary composition. Tonight, he performs his own piece "Sound/Space System" along with the work "Take Flight" by Allan Schindler. His set up is weird: "five-octave acoustic marimba with electronics, a powerful computer, and an eight-channel cube of loudspeakers" that will allow you to experience the music as a spatial phenomenon. Third Life Studio, 33 Union Square, Somerville, 8 p.m. $8.