AFI FESTIVAL FARE

The following is today’s screening schedule for the AFI Film Festival of Los Angeles. Screenings take place at the Los Feliz Theater, 1822 N. Vermont Ave., Hollywood. Information: (213) 520-2000 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

12:30 p.m.--”Axiliad” (Poland, 1985; director, Witold Leszczynski)

3 p.m.--”Dr. Sun Yat-sen” (China, 1986; director, Ding Yinnan)

5:30 p.m.--”Just Like Weather” (Hong Kong, 1986; director, Allen Fong)

7:30 p.m.--”Weapons of the Spirit” (U.S.A./France, 1986; director, Pierre Sauvage)

9:30 p.m.--”Comrades” (Great Britain, 1985; see below for review)

Below is a review of a film showing today that was not screened in time for review in Sunday Calendar.

“COMRADES”

(Great Britain, 1985, 180 minutes, 9:30 p.m.). As in his autobiographical trilogy “My Childhood,” “My Ain Folk” and “My Way Home,” writer-director Bill Douglas depicts protracted poverty and hardship that are eventually overcome, but this epic-scale saga of the Tolpuddle Martyrs--seven English farm laborers sentenced in 1834 to seven years hard labor in Australia for daring to strike for higher wages--disappoints, despite some masterly touches. Once in Australia, the film meanders, and its seemingly endless displays of human suffering are not relieved by its repetitive and overly didactic strength-through-unity sentiments, noble as they are.