Three exceptional new documentaries about village life in Central and East Europe offer evidence that the global village has yet to circumscribe the entire planet. If Bliss (Vitaly Mansky, Russia, 1996) were a Russian folk tale, it could be told like this: In the countryside, after the fall of Communism, there lived an old woman who watched over a drunken old man and cared for a crippled babushka. Everyone on the ramshackle farm is defeated by poverty, neglect, old age, or vodka-except for one mysteriously pregnant girl....A daring blend of documentary with magical realism. (52 mins) Flying over Blue Fields (Audrius Stonys, Lithuania, 1996) is a droll and surrealist Lithuanian documentary on rural life and airborne reflection. (20 mins) String of Life (Momir Matovic, Yugoslavia, 1996) uses spare and exclusively visual means to reveal the ingenious solutions a family finds to overcome the obstacles of the landscape they inhabit. (17 mins)-Ron Levaco