THE FESTIVAL IN BRIEF : Fang Lizhi Rejects Drama

Famed Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi has personally requested that “One Year After,” planned as an Open Festival production at UCLA’s Math Science Building beginning Saturday, be indefinitely postponed. The play, closely based on Fang’s writings, dramatizes his emergence as spokesman for Chinese political freedom.

Artist Pamela Davis, the primary creator of the multimedia work, recently received word from Fang via a close friend (who requested anonymity) of the physicist that he preferred that no public performances based on his efforts be presented at this time. Davis, quoting Fang’s contact, said that “they want to establish their identity as scientists, and make it clear that when they speak out, it is as individuals.” Fang and his wife are now in exile in Oxford, England.

People Watching at the Movies

Actor Toshiro Mifune, who recently completed filming the Japanese-American co-production of “Strawberry Road,” will make a rare appearance at tonight’s American Cinematheque screening of Akira Kurosawa’s 1960 film “The Bad Sleep Well” at the Director’s Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood.

Other cinema notables appearing as part of Los Angeles Festival screenings include director Masahiro Shinoda and his wife, actress Shima Iwashita; Soviet director Dalat Khudonazarov, chairman of the Union of Soviet Filmmakers, and Naum Kleiman, a film historian and curator of the national Soviet film archive.

Filmmakers Shu Kei, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo and Dai Sijie have been forced to cancel their appearances.

Bolivians for Ecuadoreans

Bolivian music ensemble Miriam Mita Ayllu Sankayo has been added to the Sept. 9 “Andean Winds” program at UCLA’s Sunset Canyon Amphitheater.

The group will perform traditional Inca music. It replaces the originally scheduled Ecuadorean ensemble Runa Pacha, who were dropped from the festival lineup because of visa problems.

Renaming the Revolution

“The Revolution Will Be Televised,” but under another name: Taiwan-born filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang has decided to drop the R-word in her five-hour video exhibit’s title and simply call the compilation “ . . . Will Be Televised: Video Documents from Asia.” Her works chronicle a visit to China in June 1989 shortly after the Communists imposed martial law. “The crackdown got me so upset,” Chang said in an interview from New York, “and I didn’t want audiences to confuse events in Asia with changes in Eastern Europe.” Four of the five hours deal with social, cultural and democratic reform in Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and the Philippines and were only available because citizens smuggled in home-camcorder units. The broadcast, presented by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, debuted Saturday at American Film Institute and repeats Wednesday at LACE.