The Global Lens 2008 film series, a touring program of narrative feature films from Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia, continues in Bates College’s Olin Arts Center this week with 7 p.m. screenings of the 2006 Iranian drama The Fish Fall in Love on Wednesday, Nov. 5, in Room 104, and Kept and Dreamless (Argentina, 2005) on Thursday, Nov. 6, in Room 105.

The arts center is located at 75 Russell St. The Bates College Museum of Art presents the series in cooperation with the college’s Multicultural Center. The public is welcome to all of the films at no charge. For more information, please call 207-786-6158.

The series is assembled and distributed by the Global Film Initiative, a U.S.–based nonprofit organization promoting independent filmmaking in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Founded in 2002 with the mission of promoting cross-cultural understanding through cinema, each year the initiative not only presents the film series but awards grants to deserving filmmakers from around the world. For more information, please visit the initiative’s Web site.

The Fish Fall in Love (Mahiha Ashegh Mishavand) is the story of Atieh (Roya Nonahali), a woman with a singular passion for food and a small but popular restaurant, her pride and joy, on the sleepy Caspian coast. But when Aziz (Reza Kianian), a former lover, appears after a 20-year absence with the intention of closing the restaurant, Atieh prepares his favorite dishes, one after the other, in a desperate effort to convince him otherwise.

Loosely based on the Persian fable of Shahrazad and the Thousand Myths (A Thousand and One Nights), director Ali Raffi uses the language of food to paint a richly textured portrait of life and love on the southern coast of Iran.

Kept and Dreamless (Las Mantenidas Sin Sueños) is set in the economically troubled Argentina of the 1990s. The 9-year-old Eugenia (Lucía Snieg) and her mother, Florencia, live a seemingly colorful life surrounded by eclectic neighbors and an offbeat collection of family.

But for Eugenia, who must deal with her mother’s dysfunctional and drug-addled lifestyle, life is anything but pleasant in this darkly inspiring story of expectation, acceptance and nontraditional family, led by standout performances from young actress Snieg and from Vera Fogwill, who portrays Florencia and also wrote and co-directed the film with Martin Desalvo.

The Global Lens series, now in its fifth year, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in January and is traveling around the country to more than 40 locations. Read more about the films and view the series trailer and individual film trailers.

All of the Bates screenings begin at 7 p.m. Here’s the rest of the series:

The Kite (Lebanon, 2004), Wednesday, Nov. 12, Olin 104.

Let the Wind Blow (India, 2004), Wednesday, Nov. 19, Olin 104.

Luxury Car (China, 2006), Wednesday, Dec. 3, Olin 105.

Opera Jawa (Indonesia, 2006), Thursday, Dec. 4, Olin 105.

Boston filmmakers DeMane Davis and Khari Streeter will screen the Maine premiere of Lift, their dramatic film about shoplifting at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 26, in the Keck Room, Pettengill Hall, at Bates College. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

Set in Roxbury, Mass., Lift is an emotionally moving mother-daughter story that revolves around the high-stakes world of shoplifting. The movie “teems with life,” writes The New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell, who calls the picture “a lively and thoughtful attack on the perfidious materialism that has always prowled the country’s inner cities like a hungry cat, preying on acquisitive young African-Americans.”

Winner of the 2001 Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature Film at HBO’s UrbanWorld Film Festival in New York, Lift has earned acclaim at various other festivals, including Sundance — the premier U.S. event for independent filmmakers, held each year in Salt Lake City — and the Acapulco Black Film Festival.

Lift was selected from more than 60 scripts as the U.S. winner of the 1998 Sundance/NHK Filmmakers Award. Davis and Streeter also screened their well-regarded 1997 debut film, Black & White & Red All Over, at Sundance.

Lift stars Lonette McKee (seen in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, Jungle Fever and Sparkle) Kerry Washington (Save the Last Dance), veteran Barbara Montgomery, Eugene Bryd (Whiteboys and Dead Man) and rap artist Sicky Fingaz. Lift, according to film critic Anthony Kaufmann, “complicates the conventions of the ‘urban drama’ with a smart new take, surpassing the stereotypes of Yo! MTV Raps and Boyz in the Hood.”

Davis and Streeter’s Bates appearance, which includes a visit with an American cultural studies class, is sponsored by the Department of Theater and Rhetoric, and the African American studies and American cultural studies programs. For more information, contact Charles Nero at 207-786-6415 or this cnero@bates.edu.