September 20, 1981

At the moment this is being written I haven't yet seen any of the 26 programs in the 19th New York Film Festival that opens at Lincoln Center Friday night with the English ''Chariots of Fire.'' A quick rundown of this year's festival entries seems to indicate that there are more unknown directors than at any time in the recent past. There are - true - films by Francois Truffaut, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jacques Rivette, Andrzej Wajda, Louis Malle and Eric Rohmer, but most are by new directors or by directors like Maurice Pialat and Wim Wenders, who still have not yet found the audiences they deserve this side of the Atlantic. About most of the entries I am, I suspect, as much in the dark as any other reader of The Times who, last Sunday, studied the festival programs for information about particular films, such as ''The Mystery of Oberwald'' (''Cocteau's play functions simply as the libretto for Antonioni's tonal experiments in film and video color...''). That annual announcement ad is always intimidating, not only because one can never be sure one understands what one is reading (what, for example, does ''a wayward display of idiosyncratic sympathies'' mean?), but because on e knows that, time being what it is, it's impossible to see absolutely everything. But this is what keeps the festiv al alive and why, each year, so many of us scramble to see films by unknown directors with as much eagerness as films by those directors we know and admire.

If you own a home and plan to keep it, have one you want to sell, or are looking for one to buy or rent, chances are that the new tax law will benefit you directly. For many homeowners, those whose houses are their most important asset, the biggest break will most likely come in the form of the changes in the estate tax, which effectively eliminate Federal death taxes for all but the very rich and do away with taxes on bequests to a spouse. Other major changes in the Federal tax laws signed by the President last month include the following: * A liberalization of the gift tax, allowing one spouse to give an unlimited amount of personal property to the other tax-free. * A $25,000 increase in the capital gains exclusion for persons 55 years of age and older, which will allow those who qualify to exclude from capital gains taxes up to $125,000 in profits from the sale of a home. * The introduction of tax-exempt savings certificates, intended to attract money to the ailing thrift institutions, but ultimately expected to benefit home buyers by increasing the supply of mortgage money.

YONKERS ATHIRD plan for the county to come to the aid of this city's beleaguered budget surfaced last week and immediately became entangled in the thickets of election-year politics. The first two plans included one for $1.1 million in county funds proposed by Alfred B. DelBello, the Democratic County Executive, and a subsequent proposal for $1.7 million by Andrew P. O'Rourke, the Republican Chairman of the county's Board of Legislators. Now two Republicans on the City Council, joined by a Republican County Legislator from Yonkers, have come up with a third alternative. It involves the county's prepaying to Yonkers in its present fiscal year 20 years worth of payments in lieu of taxes on a local bus-maintnenace facility. The amount, its sponsors say, would be $1.1 million.

Noble Nashua proved it was no fluke that he ran the fastest mile in the history of Belmont Park three weeks ago by carrying his speed an extra quarter-mile yesterday and winning the $400,000 Marlboro Cup by 3 3/4 lengths at Belmont. Pleasant Colony, considered a shoo-in as best 3-year-old and horse of the year, seemed to lose his grip on both honors as he finished a dull fourth behind Noble Nashua, the only other 3-year-old in the field of eight. But immediately after the race, one of Noble Nashua's owners said the colt was through for the year, and it is unlikely that Pleasant Colony will be denied those awards on the basis of one race. ''I am in favor of running him next year,'' said Carl Lizza, the co-proprietor of Flying Zee Stables, which owns Noble Nashua. ''He will not run a ny more this year.''

WASHINGTON HIGH interest rates, the economic handicappers had thought, should have shut down the economy long before now. It hasn't happened. Not that things are all that bright. The securities markets are reeling. Detroit is depressed, and so are the homebuilders. Unemployment has remained around 7 percent for almost a year and a half. And over all, the economy is no better than sluggish. By the second quarter of 1981, the nation's gross national product, after adjustment for inflation, was just slightly above the level of the first quarter of 1980, and third quarter, according to preliminary figures released last week, will be no better. Yet except for the short, sharp recession of 1980, the economy has shown it can evade a slump longer than the experts, who started talking about a recession in 1979, ever dreamed. And many economists now contend that the slump of 1980 was an aberration - the price of the Carter Administration's credit controls. Without the controls, they say, the economy would have muddled along with continued high interest rates, just as it has done this year.