Lovers of independent and international films — and my e-mail tells me there are plenty of you here — know that South Florida is underserved, that there are plenty of films that either arrive long after they are released or never get here.

But help is on the way, from a new company called Emerging Cinemas, which is building a network of museums, performing arts centers and other nonprofit venues where it will bring in films and project them in a razor-sharp, 21st-century digital format.

This weekend, at Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale, the year-round art house arm of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, you can see an example. Playing six times this Saturday and Sunday — at 2, 4 and 6 p.m. — is an extremely enjoyable documentary called A League of Ordinary Gentlemen, Christopher Browne's insider's look at the history and attempt to modernize the professional bowling tour.

But the even better news is that beginning next month, Palm Beach County will have its own Emerging Cinemas outlet, at Stage West on the Palm Beach Community College campus in Lake Worth.

These movies are not projected from DVDs but directly from a computer's hard drive. Currently, Emerging Cinemas ships film-loaded hard drives the size of a paperback book to its theaters, but by next year, company chairman Barry Rebo expects to distribute electronically, with a theater downloading the movie from a satellite transmission.

"One of the difficulties of independent international films is that the expense of a 35mm print means that most distributors go quite easy to begin with," says Rebo. "If your community isn't in the first tier, you don't get that film until quite a ways later, further down in the release pattern."

Besides not being current, the prints that arrive here are often scratched and with muffled soundtracks from use. The advantage of digital projection is that the movie remains crisp and clear, showing after showing. I saw another enjoyable documentary, Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, at Cinema Paradiso last week and the screen image was mint condition.

Programming will begin in Lake Worth on Sept. 9-10 and 16-17 with LatinBeat '05, a series of movies that form an overview of new Latin cinema. October is scheduled to bring a four-hour documentary on Bob Dylan (No Direction Home) made by Martin Scorsese, and Ingmar Bergman's Saraband, his follow-up to the downbeat Scenes from a Marriage, which the Swedish master specified should only be projected digitally. Ticket prices are not firm yet, but at Paradiso general admission is $8, and a dollar less for seniors and students.

Rebo says Emerging Cinemas will have only four or five venues by September, but expects 15 by the end of the year and plans to add 50 more next year. He is particularly high on the South Florida market.

"We're looking at a couple of other venues in South Florida...," he says. "Getting in your car and traveling 35-40 miles to see an interesting film kind of loses its appeal." So Rebo hopes to cut down that travel time for regional movie lovers. "If it goes the way it's going, by the end of the year I think South Florida will be the digital art house capital of America."

A League of Ordinary Gentlemen, Emerging Cinemas at Cinema Paradiso, 503 S.E. Sixth St., Fort Lauderdale at 2, 6, 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Tickets: $8. Call: (954) 525-3456 (FILM).