The Downtown Film Festival starts today, with John Sedlar's restaurant Rivera (also downtown) as the festival's restaurant sponsor. To mark the event, Rivera has a special 3 course prix fixe menu (for $40) available starting tonight. You can watch trailers for the Festival's movies on the restaurant's “illusion monitors” (drink too much of Sedlar's many tequilas in those wacky tequila chairs and maybe you'll see why they call them that) while you eat chilled crab with summer corn espuma, or confit duck leg with mâche and pine nuts–or pick a dish with Sedlar's spiceology stencils (pictured below), which are, in a way, trailers of a different sort. Bring in your festival film ticket stub and receive a 10% discount on the new late night menu, available Thursday through Sunday.

Tickets for the films and a schedule of presentations for the festival (which runs August 12-22), are available at www.dffla.com. Films are screened at The AT&T Center Theater, on the corner of 12th Street and Olive, downtown. Rivera: 1050 S. Flower St.,

Los Angeles; (213) 749-1460.

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