UCLA WILL HOST CHINESE FILM SERIES

“The Black Cannon Incident,” which launches the “Discovering the New Chinese Film” series Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in UCLA’s Melnitz Theater, is the most exciting and provocative film to come from the People’s Republic of China since the end of the Cultural Revolution. It has much of the crisp style and relentless drive of the Italian political films of the ‘60s and ‘70s as it zeroes in on a specific event, which in turn reverberates throughout society like a pebble tossed in the still pond.

A burly German--presumably East German--engineer (Gerhard Olschewski) arrives in China to oversee the construction of a vast power plant but is dismayed to discover that the translator (Liu Zifeng) he had on his previous trip, a man that he had befriended, will not be available to him--even though his replacement proves dangerously inadequate. From this predicament, director Huang Jianxin (who will be present for the screening) and his writer, Li Wei, working from a story by Zhang Xianliang, launch a devastating critique of the old-line party committee mentality, steeped in paranoia and self-importance, which in this instance is dedicated to a great and foolish waste of time in witch-hunting at the expense of Liu’s reputation.

At the same time, “The Black Cannon Incident” takes pains to respect the sincerity of each member of the committee that holds so dearly its power over Liu’s fate, and for this reason it is ironic that the 1985 film, in being banned to the Chinese public at large despite winning a number of prestigious Chinese film awards, has in effect suffered the fate of its hero.

The Sunday 7:30 p.m. offering, “A Good Woman,” was unavailable for preview, but the film following it, Zhang Nuanxin’s “Sacrificed Youth,” is a tender story of a teen-age girl (Li Feng Zhu) who learns to love the people and the life in a remote village to which she has been sent during the Cultural Revolution. It is a fine evocation of an ancient and simple way of life seemingly untouched by the 20th Century.

Information: (213) 825-2345, (213) 825-2581.

The second annual “Greek Film Festival” at the Nuart gets off to a great start Sunday with a stunning double feature, Pantells Voulgaris’ “Stone Years” and George Panoussopoulos’ “Mania.” The first is a modern Greek tragedy, spanning the 20 years between 1954 and the fall of the dictatorship in 1974 and centering on a couple from Thessaly who calculate that in those two decades they managed to be together no more than 70 hours. That’s because the man (Dimitris Katalfos) is swiftly arrested for disseminating Communist Party pamphlets, and his young fiancee (Themis Bazaka, who has the dark majesty of a Sophoclean heroine) is forced to commence the hard and dangerous life of a political fugitive.

“Stone Years” doesn’t dwell on ideology but is an austere, sobering account of the couple’s struggle for survival during long, bleak years of relentless oppression and incarceration in which their ordeal becomes symbolic of that of Greece. At the end we learn that we’ve watched a true story, and the film maker expresses the hope that the actual couple feels he has done them justice.

Just as she is preparing to depart for the United States for training, a brilliant young Athens computer programming analyst (Alessandra Vanzi) for a multinational corporation, the heroine of “Mania,” decides to take her daughter to the nearby National Park, a vast forest-like preserve with a zoo. It’s a hot summer day, and Vanzi finds herself succumbing to its spell--so much so that she seemingly becomes a goddess in Euripedes’ “The Bacchae,” while the park’s shaggy zookeeper (Arls Retsos) turns into a seductive, naked Pan. At first a profoundly sensual and then rather amusing fantasy, “Mania” develops into a kind of nightmare that reminds us of the dark, primitive forces of nature that lurk beneath our fast-paced, highly technological society. Information: (213) 478-6379, (213) 479-5269.

Continuing: the Renoir series at the County Museum of Art and the Black Independent Cinema at UCLA, which will highlight the impressive documentary work of Britain’s Horace Ove.