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Rob Tregenza runs Cinema Parallel, a small Maryland-based company that has distributed recent films by such influential directors as French New Wave veterans Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette. He’s also, however, a director himself, one whose work has been well-reviewed on the film-festival circuit, if rarely seen in commercial cinemas. This mini-retrospective begins Sunday, April 11, with Tregenza’s debut film, Talking to Strangers, nine continuous-take scenes in which a would-be writer from Baltimore encounters people in such locations as a bank, a church, a soup kitchen, and an Inner Harbor water taxi. The movie, which Tregenza also shot, shows great formal invention, although the filmmaker’s skill as a writer lags behind his work as a cinematographer. Also shown will be The Arc, in which a Baltimore welder abandons his marriage to an English immigrant (played by veteran D.C. actress Jennifer Mendenhall) for a cross-country excursion. The series concludes on Sunday, April 18, with Tregenza’s most recent film, Inside/Out (pictured), a black-and-white CinemaScope tale in which a French artist confined in a Baltimore-area asylum becomes the obsession of a fellow patient. Chicago Reader film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, a longtime Tregenza supporter, will introduce and discuss the director’s work at the latter screening. Both screenings begin at 4 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art’s East Building Auditorium, 4th & Constitution Ave. NW. Free. (202) 842-6799. (Mark Jenkins)