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Brooklyn-bred comic-strip artist Ben Katchor’s signature creation, Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer, may reside in an unnamed Everycity of the mid-20th-century mind, but touring Manhattan in the informative company of the artist leaves little doubt as to where Knipl’s real-life address would be. Sam Ball’s Pleasures of Urban Decay lets us in on Katchor and Knipl’s world as part of tonight’s program of New York-themed shorts. The four films screening are concerned with the unique urban environment of NYC, but it is a love and longing for lost places that truly unites them. Jim Jennings’ contemplative Silvercup finds soul in the steel bridges and railways binding Manhattan to Queens and a totemic union of past and present in a once-abandoned Long Island City landmark. Two short films whose subject is that most contemporary of lost places, the World Trade Center, complete the program, which begins at 8 p.m. at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s Ring Auditorium, 7th and Independence Avenue SW. Free. (202) 357-3091. (Todd Hitchcock)