Slapstick Tragedy ‘Burn’ Heats Up Writers Festival

“Writer to Writer: The American/Soviet Screenwriters’ Festival” continues today at the Writers Guild Theater, 135 S. Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills, with the outstanding “Burn, Burn My Star” (1969), written by Valery Fried and the late Uly Dunsky and directed by Alexander Mitta.

A lively, dark-hued slapstick tragedy, “Burn, Burn My Star” is set in 1920 in a village in southern Russia that is alternately under the control of the Reds and the Whites. Arriving there is a strolling player, a passionate man of the avant-garde theater (Oleg Tobocov) bent upon staging a revolutionary version of “Joan of Arc” that will make the theatrical experience as real as life itself, a mission that in the unstable circumstances is hazardous in the extreme.

Indeed, the film’s point is to explore the relationship between art and politics, proclaiming the role of the artist in society to be as risky as it is essential. The film’s most inspired notion is to contrast Tobocov’s character with the local film exhibitor, who alters his narration of a silent short to suit whatever political faction is in power. As sad as it is jaunty, “Burn, Burn My Star” is rich in folk art imagery.

Closing the festival on Thursday at 7 p.m. is the world premiere of another winner, “Comrade Stalin Goes to Africa,” written and directed by Irakly Kvirikadze. The Soviet Georgian cinema has a courageous tradition of political satire to which this sly and complex film belongs most emphatically. It imagines that in the final year of Stalin’s life the government bureaucracy started searching for candidates for a double that would relieve him of performing ceremonial duties. (Apparently, Stalin actually did use doubles from time to time.)

One of the hapless candidates proves to be an elderly Jew who we view both in actuality, represented by color sequences, and in the black-and-white footage shot by a government cameraman. All manner of bitter and ironic implications emerge; interleaved tantalizingly are color shots of contemporary Manhattan, of all places.

Information: (213) 858-1346.

Filmforum, the weekly showcase for experimental films, commences its new season at LACE tonight at 8 with “From Sea to Shining. . . ,” a timely program of anti-war films.

Among them is Canadian Richard Kerr’s “The Last Days of Contrition” (1988), which offers a flow of bleak, largely deserted American landscapes culminating in a rush of apocalyptic imagery and accompanied by a soundtrack featuring Dick Gregory expressing concern for the state of democracy and justice in the United States.

With its austere, formal look, the film has been aptly compared to the work of photographers Walker Evans and Paul Strand. The result is an evocative, disturbing and richly visual experience.

On a lighter note, Bruce Conner’s 4-minute “America Is Waiting” (1982) makes deft use of found footage, primarily old TV commercials, to make a swift, succinct anti-nuclear protest. Following the screening, which will include James Benning and Bette Gordon’s 27-minute “The United States of America” (1975)--but unavailable for preview--there will be a potluck reception to introduce Filmforum’s new executive director Jon Stout and associate director Laurie Brown. There will also be a discussion chaired by the Los Angeles Coalition Against U.S. Intervention in the Mideast.

Information: (213) 6633-9568.

One of the great rarities that LACMA is presenting in its “From Caligari to Hitler” series is Erik Charrell’s famous “Congress Dances” (1931), which screens Friday at 1 p.m. and again at 8 p.m. The only trouble is that it isn’t so great, at least not in its English-language version. (In the early days of sound, both Hollywood and European studios frequently shot films simultaneously in two different language versions).

It’s an opulent, supremely silly operetta set against the Congress of Vienna in 1815 that finds Prince Metternich (Conrad Veidt) attempting to distract the Czar of Russia (cloddish Henri Garat) with a glamorous countess (Lil Dagover), to whom he is attracted himself. The Czar, who conveniently has brought along a double (also Garat), however, dallies with a pretty shop girl (the untalented English actress Lilian Harvey, who had a brief career in German films). It’s pure kitsch in desperate need of the Lubitsch touch.

Information: (213) 857-6010.