Some months it seems that nary a weekend goes by without a film festival, and that's true again.

The Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival starts tonight at 7:30 with the film "Election Day" at the Melwood Screening Room, Pittsburgh Filmmakers' headquarters at 477 Melwood Ave. A reception will precede the film at 7 p.m.

"Election Day" (not to be confused with the Matthew Broderick-Reese Witherspoon satire "Election") is from filmmaker Kate Chevigny, who tells the story of a dozen Americans determined to make their votes and those of others count on Election Day 2004.

The movie tracks such voters as a woman who waits, with her infant, in the rain for hours in Shaker Heights, Ohio, only to discover she must travel to another polling place to vote. A former felon in New York is allowed to vote for the first time but wonders if his affidavit ballot will be counted, while Stockholm, Wis., residents register on the spot and use pencil and paper to mark their preferences.

Admission for the event is $4, free to Carnegie Mellon University students.

Friday, the event shifts to CMU's Hamburg Hall 1000 for a 6:30 p.m. reception and free 7 p.m. showing of "Everything's Cool," a self-proclaimed "toxic comedy" about climate change. Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand chronicle the struggle between two groups of global warming messengers.

Saturday's events, also free, will start with a 6:30 p.m. reception at CMU's McConomy Auditorium and a 7 p.m. showing of "Sari's Mother," an Oscar-nominated documentary short about an Iraqi mother struggling to care for her son who is dying of AIDS.

It will be followed at 7:30 p.m. by "The Devil Came on Horseback," a documentary about genocide in Darfur. The film by Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern ("The Trials of Darryl Hunt") tells the story largely through the eyes and camera lens of former U.S. Marine captain Brian Steidle.

He grew up in a military family and served in the Marines for four years, commanding a company of 330. When he left the service, Steidle took a job as an unarmed military observer for the African Union in Sudan in 2004. He was there to monitor the civil-war cease fire but soon found himself in Darfur, where he was greeted with, "Brian, welcome to hell."

The film festival is sponsored by Pittsburgh Filmmakers, International Development Group and the Master of Entertainment Industry Management program at CMU's Heinz School. Go to www.heinz.cmu.edu/humanrights for more information.

The 81st annual Academy Awards will be handed out Feb. 22, 2009, with nominations uncharacteristically being announced on a Thursday, Jan. 22. That's two days later than normal because Jan. 20 is Inauguration Day.

"It didn't make any sense for us to try to compete with [the inauguration] from a news point of view," academy executive administrator Ric Robertson told The Associated Press.

But the change will put the squeeze on the rest of the calendar, Robertson added. Nomination ballots will be mailed Dec. 26 and final ballots sent Jan. 28. Final ballots are due at 5 p.m. Feb. 17.