As co-chair of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston film committee, Michael Zilkha sees himself as a man with a mission: Filling an unfortunate void in H-Town’s cultural landscape.

Specifically, Zilkha has joined forces with other committee members and MFAH film program director Marian Luntz in a concerted effort to offer local premieres of films that, not so long ago, would have been booked into the Greenway 3 Theatre and the Angelika Film Center.

“It’s a role that’s been forced on us, really,” Zilkha says. “If you think about it, between the closing of the Angelika last year, and the Greenway 3 in 2007, we lost 11 screens that had been devoted to art films, foreign films.”

And while it’s true that H-Town cineastes can catch indie films and English-subtitled imports on DVD, and cable or satellite TV – well, that’s not quite the same thing as savoring cinema while seated among dozens of other venturesome moviegoers.

“I think the communal setting is the key to our program,” Zilkha says. ‘If you see a film with other people, it’s a very, very different experience than watching it on video.

“I guess I always felt that our role was to provide a communal experience, in terms of seeing quality films. And obviously, with the Angelika gone, there are more quality films that might be impossible to see in a communal setting here in Houston if not for our program.”

In recent weeks, MFAH has presented Houston premieres of such notable films as Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture (winner of the Narrative Feature prize at last year’s SXSW Film Festival), Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Howl (the Allen Ginsberg biopic starring James Franco as the influential Beat poet) and Soul Kitchen, the latest effort by acclaimed German-Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin.

“Two of Akin’s earlier films, Head On and Edge of Heaven, played here, I believe, at the Angelika,” Zilkha says. “But you probably wouldn’t have had a chance to see Soul Kitchen on a big screen here if it hadn’t been for (the MFAH program).”

Upcoming Houston premieres at MFAH include Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy (May 6-15), a romantic drama starring Oscar-winner Juliette Binoche, and Kenneth Bowser’s Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune (June 30-July), a documentary portrait of the late, great folksinger.

But wait, there’s more: This weekend, MFAH will present Five Funny French Films, a program of five audience-friendly, unabashedly commercial French comedies that were big hits in their homeland. Call them foreign films for people who think they hate foreign films, and Zilkha won’t argue the point.

The lineup includes:

• The French Kissers (7 p.m. Friday), Riad Sattouf’s playful tale of hormonally inflamed teenage boys
• Heartbreaker (9 p.m. Friday), Pascal Chaumeil’s saucy comedy about a professional heartbreaker who meets his match
• Potiche (7 p.m. Saturday), Francois Ozon’s glossy showcase for French screen legends Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu
• OSS 117: Lost in Rio (9:30 p.m. Saturday), Michel Hazanavicius’ spoofy spy adventure set in 1960s Brazil
• A Town Called Panic (5 p.m. Sunday), Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar stop-motion animated feature featuring three iconic plastic toys – Cowboy, Indian and Horse – in a wacky Wild West romp.

“All of these films opened in France within the past two years,” Zilkha says. “So we’re hoping to tap into the local market of French expats who haven’t been home for a while.”

But at the same time, Zilkha says, the MFAH film committee is casting its net wider to attract any and all H-Town cineastes who look forward to laughing out loud while enjoying – yes, you guessed it – a communal experience.