January 21, 1994

An angry, tearful crowd pushed against the doors of a Federal disaster-relief center today as it was opening at the epicenter of Monday's earthquake. Thousands more ringed the block on a day when an urgent need for food, water and shelter clashed with bureaucratic procedures. The Federal Emergency Management had just opened the center in Northridge at 1 P.M. when 15 people without appointments shoved their way in for interviews. Outside, about 4,000 other applicants for assistance were growing increasingly restless.

WHATEVER your relations with your family, the films of Yasujiro Ozu will make you think about them. Because the Japanese director often focused on conflicts between parents and their adult offspring, a twitch on the umbilical cord awaits you. But you should always expect the unpredictable: the dislikable wife or sister shows a sudden warmth, the father who gave up drinking years ago goes on a bender, the mutinous children begin to forgive their parents. Pessimism is flavored with humor, and if most families are full of mine fields, the wounded usually offer bandages to one another. Ozu died on his 60th birthday in 1963. The Film Society of Lincoln Center is honoring the director with a retrospective of his postwar movies, opening today at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. Starting next week, his early films will be shown at the Film Forum in the South Village every Monday until March 14; live piano accompaniment by Steve Sterner will be heard at selected evening screenings.

NEW YORK CITY IN SEA OF WEALTH, HOMELESS DEFY COLD As the temperature sank to one degree above zero -- a record low for the second straight day in New York City -- a loose community of homeless people along Madison Avenue continued to shun city shelters and instead pitted their survival instincts against the elements. A1. EXPERT CAN'T PINPOINT BOMB CONTENTS A forensic chemist with the F.B.I. said he was unable to form a definite conclusion about the contents of the World Trade Center bomb. B3. 2 OTHER MEN SOUGHT IN MOSQUE CLASH A day after making an arrest in the clash at a Harlem mosque, police officials said that they were seeking two other men in the melee. B4. TESTING GIULIANI'S SINGLE STANDARD Mayor Giuliani tries to make his case to black New Yorkers: "It's called the law. Everybody has to follow it. Everybody will be dealt with in precisely the same way if they don't." News Analysis. B4. The Schools Chancellor placed control of the city's high schools, special education programs and all other centrally controlled instructional programs under a single executive. B3. The Giuliani administration told New York City's Health and Hospitals Corporation to reconsider its emergency budget plan that would impose a hiring freeze and cut services. B3. The new Police Commissioner, William J. Bratton, elevated a relatively junior officer to be the No. 1 uniformed officer of the department. B4. REGION SALE CONSIDERED FOR SPORTS UNIT Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey opened the door to selling off the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, owner of Giants Stadium among other things, as a way to reduce the state's liability for debt. B5. DESPITE ASSURANCES, TAX BILLS INCREASE Westchester County property owners, who had been assured that county taxes would not go up this year, were jolted by the news that their tax bills would indeed be rising -- by as much as 11.6 percent in one town. B5. SLOW GROWTH URGED IN FINGERPRINTING A pilot program in Rockland and Onondaga Counties, which is intended to combat welfare fraud by fingerprinting applicants electronically, could save New York at least $46 million a year if it were extended to the rest of the state, a Cuomo administration study indicates. But aides to Governor Cuomo said that he favored expanding the program gradually. B5. AT CENTER OF STORM, WITH CARS IN TOW The demand for tow-truck drivers is yet another barometer of the cold snap's grip: cars that decline to go. B6. It was Ross Perot's kind of day in the capital of the United States: the Federal Government finally shut down. And much of the rest of Washington, too. B7. Neediest Cases B3 Chronicle B7

THIS year's Winter Antiques Show is definitely the coldest in memory. The cavernous Seventh Regiment Armory, at Park Avenue and 67th Street, is a drafty space in the best of Januarys, but this week's subzero temperatures and dry atmosphere have made the interior of the armory feel more like the windy Park Avenue corner outside. And the dry cold has led dealers to worry about possible damage to their delicate antiques. In spite of the weather, however, the show may be one of the best in years, and is well worth bundling up for. Now in its 40th year, this annual event, which opens to the public today and runs through Jan. 30, is the granddaddy of all American antiques shows. Collectors from both sides of the Atlantic make the pilgrimage to the armory; auction houses schedule their important American antiques sales to coincide with the show, and Manhattan dealers who are not participants hold special exhibitions to take advantage of the influx of buyers. The event has also spawned some smaller antiques shows, held simultaneously in Manhattan.

Many of the world's financial markets have recovered from a decade of excess in which problems were often measured in billions, or even hundreds of billions, of dollars. But Japan is now coping with an even more awesome debacle: the loss of at least $6 trillion from one of the steepest plunges in stock and property values of this century. And it is not over yet: the markets are just marking the anniversary of a crash that has sent stock and real estate prices down more than 50 percent, with no clear signs yet of a recovery.