American Cinematheque Honors Carlsen

Veteran Danish filmmaker Henning Carlsen will be honored this week by the American Cinematheque at the Directors Guild with a retrospective of eight of his films. Carlsen, who will be present for discussions after each screening, is known in America primarily for two films, his 1966 milestone film “Hunger,” from the autobiographical novel by Nobel Prize winner Knut Hamsun, and for his 1986 English-language Gauguin biography “A Wolf at the Door,” starring Donald Sutherland.

The retrospective begins tonight at 7 with Hansen’s first feature, the 1964 “Dilemma,” adapted from Nadine Gordimer’s novel “The World of Strangers.” Shot secretly in Johannesburg, “Dilemma” drops a sophisticated, pleasant-looking young Englishman (Ivan Jackson) into the treacherous world of South African apartheid. As the new representative for a London publishing firm, he makes the acquaintance of a young black intellectual (Zakes Mokae, now an internationally renowned actor) and soon begins an affair with an elegant, somewhat bored heiress (Marijke Haakman). Just as he’s becoming pleased with himself that he can move with such seeming ease between the worlds of anti-apartheid activists and the white aristocracy, he’s forced to realize, in shocking fashion, that he in good conscience cannot.

There’s a certain stiffness in some scenes, possibly reflective of the sense of fear in which this film was made, but it is effectively linked with documentary-like passages and by a rich score celebrating African music.

“Dilemma” will be followed at 9 p.m. with “Hunger,” a masterpiece of subjective cinema and a bold affirmation of life at its harshest. It stars the brilliant, intense Per Oscarsson as a starving but unswervingly proud young writer struggling to survive on his own terms through the bleak winter of 1890 in Norway’s capital Christiana (now Oslo). The hunger gnawing him is not only for food but also love and recognition.

Much of “Hunger’s” awesome impact derives from the fact that its world--so specifically a quaint, tintype-like, well-ordered European city of a century ago, which we see through the writer’s eyes--is so instantly recognizable, despite appearances, as our own. Somewhat reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” and Gogol’s “The Overcoat” in its insight into the psychology of the isolated individual in desperate straits, “Hunger” has been superbly directed by Carlsen and evocatively photographed by Henning Kristiansen.

Following the Saturday 6 p.m. screening of “The Cats” (1964), a drama set in a laundry, is the warm and wryly amusing “Oh to Be on the Bandwagon!” (1972), set mainly in a gemutlich Copenhagen cafe. Reminiscent of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” but told on a deliberately lighter note, it acquaints us with cafe regulars whose camaraderie sustains their lives and dreams.

There’s a big, lumbering butcher (Jesper Langburg) who believes he’d really be an opera singer if only he had “the right connections”; the intensely shy middle-aged window- polisher (Ingolf David)--never dare call him a “window-washer”--who pines for the kindly barmaid (Birgitte Price); the portly waiter (Karl Stegger) who craves a place of his own, out from under the killjoy proprietor; and the young piano player (Otto Brandenburg) who resists accepting a lucrative job with his rich media tycoon father-in-law. An incident jolts these people, stirring them into action but ultimately leaving them with a greater appreciation for each other.

Carlsen’s characteristically acute powers of observation and his deft touch save this charmer from undue sentimentality.

For full schedule and information: (213) 466-FILM.

Asian Pacific Festival: Among the films to be shown in the seventh annual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film and Video Festival, which continues through Sunday at various venues, is Yasufumi Kojima’s “Rough Sketch of a Spiral” (screening Saturday at 7 p.m. at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater), a groundbreaking documentary on gay life in Japan’s often oppressively homogenous society. Its point of departure is a kind of political cabaret being staged by two gays; as the show develops we become acquainted with a number of its participants, including a 60-year-old lifelong celibate, who is persuaded to perform, singing (quite effectively) a song of androgyny and longing for love.

The film rambles and seems overlong, but clearly Kojima had his work cut out for him in getting his people to be so open with him; viewers may be surprised to discover how involving “Rough Sketch of a Spiral” becomes.

Information: (310) 206-FILM, 206-8013; (213) 680-4462.