Pupils Persist in Studies of Schools : UCLA series resumes with two stories of students overcoming their surroundings through education.

The 13th annual Academy Documentary series resumes Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in UCLA’s Melnitz Theater with a pair of remarkable studies of inner-city schools whose staffs are dedicated to making a difference. Emma Joan Morris’ 55-minute “Something Within Me” is about as irresistible as documentaries get: an account of how an intense program in the performing arts not only saved a South Bronx parochial school from closure due to declining enrollment but also vastly improved its students’ reading and math skills. In this oasis in a neighborhood wracked with drug dealers, selfless teachers and bright, lively pupils persist.

That last sentence also applies to Alan and Susan Raymond’s 90-minute Oscar-winning “I Am a Promise,” which covers a year in the life of a North Philadelphia elementary school--revealing the potential in its 725 5- to 10-year-olds while reminding us of how badly the odds are stacked against them. Although more than a few of the youngsters capture our hearts--none more so than gifted, beautiful Nadia, who had the smarts at age 7 or 8 to adopt an elderly neighborhood man as her grandfather, thus escaping her crack-addicted parents--the film is to a large extent a portrait of the school’s principal, Deanna Burney, a slim, patrician, well-tailored middle-aged white woman who looks like a Main Line aristocrat but who is totally committed to her African American students.

Burney is such a calm, strong, wise leader, handling youngsters and their parents with equal aplomb, that the full extent of her despair over the inequities of a clearly racist educational system comes as a jolter.

Information: (310) 206-FILM.

Lively Comedy: The Silent Movie’s Lupino Lane Comedy Night (Wednesday at 8 p.m.) calls attention to the now little-known English comedian, who in the mid-’20s made a series of sprightly, knockabout comedies for Hollywood’s Educational Films. A selection of these two-reelers reveals Lane to be a wistful, diminutive man with a pleasing personality, not as distinct as his fellow countrymen Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel, but blessed with wonderful acrobatic skills; invariably, Lane’s key comic foil is his handsome, burly brother, Wallace Lupino (Ida Lupino is a cousin).

He’s equally at home in the service comedy, a “Ben Hur” spoof, and a swashbuckler sendup. The most inspired, the Norman Taurog-directed “Drama DeLuxe,” finds Lane as a massively inept handyman for a touring stock company.

Information: (213) 653-2389.