Burnett’s ‘Killer of Sheep’ to Open Watts Commemoration

Charles Burnett’s astonishing “Killer of Sheep” opens a weeklong series of films commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Watts riots tonight at 6 at Keck Auditorium of Drew University in Watts.

The 1978 film is a beautiful and anguished documentary-like account of several days in the life of an L.A. slaughterhouse worker (wonderfully played by Henry Gayle-Sanders) and his family.

On Tuesday, director Billy Woodberry will introduce his “Bless Their Little Hearts” (1984), which Burnett wrote and photographed and which, like “Killer of Sheep,” deals with a black family man (Nate Hardman) struggling to make ends meet; this film is more direct and raw than the poetic “Killer.”

Other films in the series, which is being presented by the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research and the Fanon Research and Development Center, are Haile Gerima’s “Bush Mama” (1977) and Burnett’s “Several Friends” and “The Horse” (1975) and “My Brother’s Wedding” (1983). Information: (213) 759-6063.

“Fight for Us,” an expose of far-right death squads terrorizing the Philippines, displays in full force director Lino Brocka’s mastery of melodrama in service of social protest. Currently banned in the Philippines, this latest release by its leading filmmaker screens Thursday at 7:30 and again at 9:30 at the Los Feliz as a benefit for the Children’s Rehabilitation Center, a nonprofit organization in the Philippines established to care for youngsters traumatized by revolution and terrorism.

Written by Jose Lacaba, “Fight for Us” centers on a young ex-priest (Phillip Salvador), long imprisoned for his struggle against the Marcos regime, who wins his freedom with the coming of the Aquino government only to discover that human-rights abuses are worse than ever. Fearless as always, Brocka bluntly asserts that these savage vigilante organizations, rabid anti-communists who cloak themselves in religious fervor, thrive with the tacit blessings of the church and the support of the armed forces.

What Brocka depicts with such outrage is said to be drawn from actual case histories, and although this film is fictional, its vigilante characters correspond all too convincingly with their real-life counterparts interviewed in the recent documentary “A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution.” Information: (213) 933-6443, (213) 422-5828.

The UCLA Film Archive is offering a rich sampling of Egyptian cinema, old and new, starting Thursday at 8 p.m. in Melnitz Theater with a robust classic double feature. Yousef Chahine’s neo-realist style “Cairo Station” (1958) casts Chahine as an ill-fated Chaplinesque news vendor at Cairo’s main train station. Salah Abou Seif’s hilarious “Between Heaven and Hell” (1959) is an imaginatively sustained comedy about 15 people trapped in an elevator in a Cairo high-rise.

Screening Saturday at 8 (but unavailable for preview) is Mohammad Khan’s “Dreams of Hind and Camila” (1989), about the lives and yearnings of two young servants, and Yousry Nasrullah’s “Somersaults” (1989).

The latter is an exquisite, vibrant memory film recalling the impact of Nasser’s 1961 agrarian reforms on a large family, members of the beleaguered landed gentry. There are echoes of “The Cherry Orchard” in this superb, complex, acutely observed drama, which focuses on the uneasy friendship of the young scion of the family and a peasant boy.

The series concludes Sunday at 8 with Hani Lachine’s “The Puppet Player” (1989), a father-and-son comedy-drama in which Omar Sharif brings his durable charm to the role of a life-loving peasant and skilled puppeteer determined that his son receive a proper education. Sharif is a delight, but the two-hour film, for all its appealing aura of artlessness, overstays its welcome by half an hour at least. Information: (213) 206-FILM, (213) 206-8013.