MOVIE REVIEWS : Works by Weston Fellowship Winners at UCLA’s Melnitz

“A Commemorative Screening: UCLA Women Award Winners, 1983-1987,” which will be presented tonight at 8 in UCLA Melnitz, is composed of four winners of the Lynn Weston Fellowship in Film. The fellowship, which is awarded annually to an outstanding graduating woman film maker at UCLA, was established by Dr. Raymond Weston in honor of his late wife, who was a film maker, photographer and poet.

Opening the evening will be Nina Menkes’ 40-minute “The Great Sadness of Zohara” (1983), a quietly compelling reverie from the maker of “Magdalena Viraga” (1986). As in the more recent film, Menkes reveals an extraordinary ability to hold a shot until it fills with meaning. The camera picks up a young woman (Tinka Menkes, the film maker’s sister) in the heart of Jerusalem.

Through lingering images of beauty and desolation combined with keening sounds and fragments of poetry, Menkes expresses the woman’s increasing sense of alienation from her Orthodox Jewish life that drives her to journey deeper and deeper into Arab lands. Menkes creates a portrait of intense isolation as the woman travels through vast deserts and wanders through ancient Arab quarters. This highly sensual, richly textured film of striking imagery creates a powerful sense of timelessness.

Emily Liu’s 24-minute “Unspoken Words” is a journey of a considerably simpler sort. It is an innocuous, sunny little vignette about a young American exchange student (John Collier Bennett, who wrote the script with Liu) who defies official orders and takes a Sunday outing in the countryside banned to foreign visitors. Predictably, the student has a lovely time among the helpful, friendly peasants. Yet another film that relies on sentiments of good will more than substantial observation of what life in China is really like.

Winner of the 1987 Lynn Weston Fellowship, Robin Schorr’s 30-minute “Fill My Living Room,” which she wrote with Eric Finck, offers an amusing commentary on consumerism. Displaying admirable self-restraint, a young woman (Robbin Harvey) resists splurging on a credit card for which she is never billed. Unfortunately, she doesn’t keep what has happened to her a secret. “Fill My Living Room” presents a well-drawn portrait of an intelligent and sensible individual struggling against temptation.

Also screening, but unavailable for preview, is Audrey Wells’ “The Scheme of Things.”

Admission to the approximately two-hour program is free but a reservation is required. (213) 821-2337.