Cinematheque to Show Human Rights Films

The American Cinematheque announces the seriousness of its intentions with its very first monthly program, “Close-Up on Human Rights,” a three-day offering with seminars presented in association with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Film at the Public.

Screenings begin tonight at 7 at the Directors Guild, which will serve as the “Temp’theque” on the second weekend of each month until the American Cinematheque’s facilities are completed at the Hollywood Promenade Project in late 1991. Among the films and videos to be presented on the first evening is Nestor Almendros and Jorge Ulla’s electrifying, prize-winning, two-hour documentary, “Nobody Listened,” which takes up where Almendros’ 1983 “Improper Conduct” left off. The Cuban-born Almendros, one of the most gifted and honored cinematographers in the world, once again makes it chillingly clear that there’s a Gulag a mere 90 miles from Miami. As before, Almendros, with Ulla, who does much of the interviewing, talks to many, many people, most of them intellectuals who have endured the most unspeakable torture and imprisonment, sometimes lasting decades, merely for expressing disagreement with the policies of Fidel Castro.

What emerges is bleak in the utmost, offering little hope for Cuba as long as Castro rules. (Interestingly, some old-line Communists insist he is not of their ranks; one woman says, by way of scornful dismissal, “He’s just Gen. Pinochet with Marxist phraseology.”) So utterly persuasive are the film’s subjects in regard to the hideousness of their experiences that we come away wishing that Almendros and Ulla had speculated as to the source, presumably within the Cuban character, of such protracted and barbaric cruelty to fellow human beings.

The depiction of a society that cannot tolerate any deviance from the official line also emerges in Frederic Laffont’s 52-minute “No Tears for Mao,” also screening Friday evening. Unlike Almendros and Ulla, who not surprisingly were not allowed to film in Cuba (but obtained some clandestine footage anyway), Laffont was able to go to China with a young woman, called Niu-Niu, who is returning home for a visit with her French bridegroom.

It was Niu-Niu’s curse to be born in 1966, just as the Cultural Revolution started. She recalls how her parents were arrested by Red Guards when she was only 4, simply because they were well-known film stars; how her grandfather, having slit his wrists, was then beaten to death by the Guards--his particular sin was that he had been a banker before 1949--and how she suffered discrimination as a child. Although “No Tears for Mao” ends on a happy note, it remains disturbing, especially in the light of current turmoil in China.

“No Tears for Mao” is preceded by Sheldon Reisler’s 27-minute “Danylo Shumuk: Life Sentence.” It is a very awkward work, yet is most effective in showing that the efforts of Amnesty International can have results. Danylo Shumuk, born to a large farming family in the Ukraine in 1914, ended up spending a staggering, record-setting 42 years in prison because he opposed the oppression of his people by the Poles, then by the Germans and finally by the Soviets. Amnesty International eventually won Shumuk’s freedom, and now he lives in Canada with his nephew. Shumuk may be aging and frail, but the set of his jaw suggests his awesome strength of character.

Tonight’s program also offers another chance to see Loni Ding’s extraordinary 109-minute “The Color of Honor,” the most comprehensive of the documentaries on the Japanese-American experience in World War II, which focuses on those young Japanese-Americans who served in U.S. armed forces with distinction and valor while their families remained in concentration camps.

Special focus is given to the little-known contributions of the 6,000 Japanese-Americans who acted as interrogators and translators in the Pacific-Asia theater in the U.S. Military Intelligence Service. Ding has kept polishing and updating her film, and now she has been able to add to it the Japanese-Americans’ final, hard-won victory over the infamous evacuations, resulting in a formal apology and financial restitution by the government.

Information: (213) 461-9622.