DOWN AND OUT, UP AND DOWN

AT 7:15 AND 9 Friday, local filmmaker Ginny Durrin's Oscar-nominated "Promises to Keep," the documentary about Mitch Snyder, will be shown. Durrin will attend and answer questions. At 11 Sunday, the D.C. Community Center and Yiddish of Greater Washington is sponsoring a bagel brunch and screening (at 12:15) of "The Forward: From Immigrants to Americans," about the up-and-down history of the Yiddish newspaper The Jewish Daily Forward. Co-producer/director Marlene Booth will attend and answer questions. Admission for brunch and film $9, $5 for the movie; 775-1765. Biograph's number is 333-2696.

FRENCH director Claude Chabrol's "The Cry of the Owl" ("Le Cri du Hibou"), based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, has its Washington premiere at 6:30 Friday and 6 Sunday at the American Film Institute. Also this weekend, at 8:30 Friday and 8 Saturday, is a great screwball double bill of Mitchell Leisen's 1937 "Easy Living" (scripted by Preston Sturges) and Garson Kanin's 1940 "My Favorite Wife." In "Living," working girl Jean Arthur gets a gift literally from Heaven when a millionaire tosses a mink coat from an upper window that lands on her. In "Wife," jettisoned ex-wife Irene Dunne comes back to mess with ex-hubby Cary Grant's new marriage to Gail Patrick. AFI admission $5 (members $4); 785-4600/1.

THE NATIONAL Archives continues its three-month retrospective of Frank Capra's career, from his early silent films to the later Hollywood fables via his World War II "Why We Fight" films. At 1 and 7 Friday, free, it's the 1931 "The Miracle Woman," in which Barbara Stanwyck plays an evangelist, based on real-life Aimee Semple McPherson, who profits only too well from the pulpit.

The American University begins a selected Charles Chaplin series at 8 Friday with four 20-minute shorts: "Kid Auto Races at Venice" (1914), "Behind the Screen," "The Floorwalker" and "The Pawnshop" (all 1916); and at 8 Friday, April 21, with "The Cure" (1917, 20 minutes) and "The Gold Rush" (1925, 80 minutes); and April 28 with "Shanghaied" (1915, 20 minutes) and "Modern Times" (1936, 89 minutes). Admission at the Mark Wechsler Theater, Mary Graydon Center, is free; 885-2040.

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