Pity Salem (BASSAM KOUSA) and Nada (SAMAR SAMI), the nervous Syrian sweethearts who meet in a dirty borrowed apartment for a secret rendezvous in NABIL MALEH's film "THE EXTRAS." Even in privacy, they feel the snooping eyes and ears of the world just outside the door.

Salem, who has a stammer, works at a gas station and as an extra at the Damascus National Theater. Nada, an attractive young widow who comes from a strict family, works as a seamstress in a factory. In their five-year courtship, this is their first meeting outside a public place. A mood of comic paranoia dominates the film, which is heavily laced with Salem's flaming fantasies of steamy erotic delights and disastrous interruptions.

This well-acted Syrian comedy from 1993 is one of the high points of an adventurous film series, "THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS: DISCOVERING SYRIAN CINEMA," presented at the Walter Reade Theater by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and ArteEast, a New York-based organization that promotes Middle Eastern art. More than 30 Syrian features, documentaries and shorts are included in the series, which continues through May 18.

It includes the first American screening of "EVERYDAY LIFE IN A SYRIAN VILLAGE," the breakthrough film by OMAR AMIRALAY, an internationally acclaimed documentarian. Several of his works are being shown; that 1974 movie is still banned in his homeland.

In Syria, as in Iran, filmmakers with political messages must work around government censorship. The wonder is that they find ways to express their ideas. Often a single family (or in the case of "The Extras," a young couple) serves as an allegorical representation of a country. West 65th Street, Manhattan, (212) 875-5600.