‘Border Crossings’ Series Starts Tonight at USC

“Border Crossings: Films and Videos by Mexican and Chicano Filmmakers,” which is USC’s School of Cinema-Television’s two-weekend contribution to the citywide Artes de Mexico celebration, commences tonight at 6:30 p.m. in the university’s Norris Theater with a dazzling, awesomely demanding double feature that shows that the often-overlooked Mexican cinema can be as venturesome as any in the world.

Nicolas Echeverria’s “Cabeza de Vaca” (1990) is a grueling, magnificent and altogether overpowering epic inspired by the memoirs of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish explorer who was among a small group of men who were shipwrecked off Florida in 1528. This film is a more mystical and less sentimental “Dances With Wolves,” in which Alvar (Juan Diego) becomes the slave of an Indian shaman, enduring much misery but gradually learning his master’s magic and, as a result, respect for the Indian culture about to be devastated by the conquistadors.

Even more ambitious, Juan Mora Cattlet’s “Return to Aztlan” (1990) is believed to be the first feature to take us into the pre-Columbian world of the Aztecs without any European on hand to serve as our guide. Spoken in Nahuatl, the ancient Mexican tongue, “Return to Aztlan” is rich in authentic ritual and music. It is a film to be intuited rather than to be followed. At its heart it is simple enough: A young Aztec named Ollin (Rafael Cortes) must go on a perilous journey to distant Aztlan to pray to a certain goddess for rain to end a four-year drought. When he finds her she tells him she is just an old peasant woman hoping for the return of her long-missing son; for him she is nevertheless a rain goddess.

To watch this stately film unfold with its stark beauty and measured pace is to sense that one is watching how myths are born, occurring anywhere when two different groups of ancient--and modern, for that matter--peoples encounter each other, bringing with them their own assumptions, beliefs and practices that have evolved over uncharted time in an attempt to make sense of a capricious nature and a mysterious universe. Filmed in part against Aztec pyramids, “Return to Aztlan” brings alive a long-vanished world. Both this film and “Cabeza de Vaca” are timely laments of all that was plundered and destroyed after the arrival of Columbus.

Information: (213) 740-3339, 688-ARTS.

Itami Premiere: Also commencing today, the Japan Today Film Festival is a weeklong, six-film series at the Monica 4-Plex sponsored by the Japan America Society. Among recent features is the Los Angeles premiere of Juzo Itami’s fifth hit, “A-Ge-Man: Tales of a Golden Geisha,” a funny and provocative romantic comedy and witty satire from the maker of “The Funeral,” “Tampopo,” “A Taxing Woman” and “A Taxing Woman’s Return.”

Having skewered Japanese ways with death, food, taxes and greed with zest and originality, Itami now presents the Japanese men as seen by Japanese women. Itami sees his sex as the decidedly weaker one; if Japanese men need to be coddled by their women they also use their concern for face and politeness in their dealings with each other often to mask an outrageous treacherousness.

In the forefront is a battle of the sexes as a resilient geisha and erstwhile banker’s secretary (Nobuko Miyamoto, the director’s wife and perennial star) deals with the various men in her life who in turn are caught up in corrupt practices at the very highest level of business and government.

As usual with Itami, the film is on the longish side for comedy and satire--two hours--but it is clearly another success for a director who brings a breezy Hollywood screwball comedy style to Japanese foibles, making them seem universal in the process.

Full schedule and other information: (213) 627-6217 or 394-9741.

Spirited Screenings: Yet another offering tonight at 7 is in the spirit of Halloween as UCLA presents in Royce Hall an outstanding Tod Browning double feature, “The Unholy Three,” a 1925 silent with Lon Chaney that will be accompanied on the organ by Robert Israel, and the once-banned “Freaks” (1932).

Information: (213) 825-9261.