The "Come As You Are" film series debuts tonight with a short film festival of sorts at 7 p.m in the Palmer Museum of Art. It will feature La Jetée, the experimental French New Wave documentary, which inspired the sci-fi film 12 Monkeys. Palmer will also screen 10 stop-motion-animated shorts from acclaimed expatriate twins, Timothy and Stephen Quay.

Kevin Hagopian, a film studies professor, said the Quays' work is "some of the most important animation in the world."

"They are fascinated by the grotesque, fascinated by what we, as audiences, find taboo and perverse," Hagopian said. "The only film that comes close to that combination of the horrific and the gorgeous is David Lynch's Blue Velvet."

These and other films from the first half of the semester are thematically linked by their ability to challenge viewers to see the world differently. They coincide with Palmer's Arneson and the Object exhibit, which displays the art of celebrated 20th-century ceramist Robert Arneson.

Dana Kletchka, a museum educator at the museum, said Arneson was revolutionary in the way he was able to take everyday objects and look at them in new, interesting ways.

With co-coordinator Bill Kelly, Kletchka sought to find films with similar artistic aims.

"We were looking for anything with a different vision," she said, "anything that's out of the ordinary or presents an everyday thing in a way that's different from preconceptions."

The second half of the semester features a host of films based on or inspired by the works of William Shakespeare. This half of the series was designed to coincide with the upcoming Center for the Performing Arts productions of Othello and Kiss Me Kate.

Robin Seymour, the coordinator of public relations for Palmer, said part of the reason for creating the film series, which is in its third year, was simply to get Penn State students to come to the museum.

Connecting films to cultural campus events both in the museum and outside of it was a way of doing that.

"We've had no problem attracting adults or elementary and high school students on class trips, but we were trying to think of ways to get college students to come to the museum," Seymour said.

She added that the idea was inspired in a large part by the success of the Graduate Students Association (GSA) film series.

One way "Come As You Are" distinguishes itself from the GSA series is that in Palmer, free coffee is provided after every Thursday night screening.

Kletchka said this feature was added to encourage discussion among viewers after the films were over.

Thursday nights have often drawn a capacity crowd to the 150-seat auditorium, Seymour said, and there have been times in the past at which there were simply not enough seats in the auditorium to accommodate the turnout.

This is the reason, she said, why the Sunday encore was established. Having two weekly showings of the films in the series was a great idea, Hagopian said, because it allows for the promotion of the films via word-of-mouth.

If someone sees a movie on Thursday night and likes it, he or she could recommend that friends see the movie on the Sunday afternoon repeat.

"State College has a movie exhibition disability," Hagopian said, referring to the dearth of high-quality films available in local commercial theaters.

"Palmer should be congratulated for its contribution to a creative, intellectual and fun college atmosphere," he added.