Early LI Film Festival at Boulton

The 28th Long Island Film Festival is arriving at Bay Shore's Boulton Center a little early this year.

Held last year in September and October, the festival is being pushed forward -- it starts today -- in an attempt to take advantage of summer tourism traffic to Fire Island, according to the festival's executive director, Thomas Santorelli. Another week of programming may be scheduled for September.

Though the festival isn't restricted to homegrown movies, there are a few on the bill, including the short films "Hortensia," written by Stony Brook's Linda Flores West (it screens Monday night), and "The Absence" (screening Wednesday), shot in the Hamptons by Alex DeMille, son of author Nelson DeMille.

Some festival highlights are below.

VIRTUAL JFK: VIETNAM IF KENNEDY HAD LIVED (Monday night at 6:15). Koji Masutani's documentary asks whether the 35th president could have prevented America's entanglement in a long, bloody, divisive war.

AMERICAN FUGITIVE: THE TRUTH ABOUT HASSAN (Tuesday at 6:15 p.m.). A documentary on David Theodore Belfield, a Bay Shore kid who grew up to become Hassan Abdulrahman, the murderer of Iranian dissident Ali Akbar Tabatabaei in 1980. A discussion with Thomas Murray, a former Bay Shore High School history teacher who knew Belfield, follows the screening.

WITH GREAT POWER: THE STAN LEE STORY (Wednesday at 6:15 p.m.). This tribute to the man behind Marvel comics includes interviews with Kenneth Branagh, Nicolas Cage and Roger Corman.

A. HITLER (Wednesday at 8:16 p.m.). In this unconventional drama, the Nazi leader dictates his memoirs while receiving visits from the phantoms of Goebbels, Goering, Eva Braun and even Sigmund Freud. The film also includes images from Braun's private home movies and Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will."

NIGHT CLUB (Thursday at 7:46 p.m.). Ernest Borgnine, Mickey Rooney, Sally Kellerman, Paul Sorvino and Natasha Lyonne star in this comedy about a retirement-home resident (Borgnine) who helps three college students (one played by Hempstead's Bryan Williams) start an illegal nightclub.

Long Island Film Festival

WHEN | WHERE Monday through Thursday at the YMCA Boulton Center, 37 W. Main St., Bay Shore

TICKETS $12

INFO 631-969-1101; lifilm.org