‘Kasarmu Ce’ Looks at a Village’s Response to Evil

The UCLA Film Archive in association with Filmforum and Inter Image Video presents Nigerian filmmaker Saddik Balewa’s distinctive and imaginative “Kasarmu Ce” (This Land Is Ours) Tuesday at 8 p.m. Balewa takes the unusual tack of illuminating rural village life through, of all things, a murder mystery plot.

An already wealthy man has discovered that an incredibly rich vein of sapphires and emeralds runs under a small farming community adjacent to his own holdings and is determined to buy out everyone. The one holdout to the purchase winds up dead, ostensibly of accidental causes--we know better--and his grandson, betrothed to the bad guy’s niece, eventually develops suspicions over his grandfather’s death.

Balewa, who will be present for the screening, to be held at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater, eschews conventional detection of the crime and instead concerns himself with how the community copes with the villain’s escalating siege.

Are various ominous incidents--the holdout’s death is just the beginning--the work of evil spirits, or simply evil humans? In the villagers’ attempt to answer this question we get some insight into how the village functions, with its sense of cooperative effort and respect for the words of its wise elders. Yet Balewa leaves us aware of how vulnerable these very civil citizens and their harmonious community really are.

In addition to suspense Balewa also generates some lighthearted humor. “Kasarmu Ce” is very much all of a piece, thanks to Balewa’s brisk, easy style.

Information: (310) 206-FILM.

Vossoughi Salute: On Friday the Monica 4-Plex will present a weeklong tribute to Behrouz Vossoughi, a preeminent movie star in pre-revolutionary Iran. Since the revolution Vossoughi has pursued his career in the West, where on the London stage in 1991 he was hailed for possessing “the effortless power of the late Richard Burton.” More recently, he was featured in Rafigh Pooya’s American independent film, “First Bridge,” currently in post-production.

Unfortunately, only two of the retrospective’s seven films, which span the years 1967-77, are available with English subtitles, but both are impressive in contrasting ways. “Dash Akol” (1969) is a traditional melodrama of unrequited love, more ethnic in appeal, whereas “Tangsir” (1971), directed by the audacious Amir Naderi, is a bravura world-class stunner from the maker of the post-revolutionary Iranian masterpiece “The Runner” (1987).

Swarthy, compact and with a brooding, reflective presence, Vossoughi in the title role in “Dash Akol” (Friday at 7:30, Sunday at 7) is a Robin Hood-like swordsman in the ancient and beautiful city of Shiraz. Akol has given away his inherited riches and devoted his life to righting wrongs, but virtue proves a cruel reward when a dying man of great wealth requests that he become executor of his will. In a flash he loses both his freedom--for upon his rich friend’s death he is expected to assume the management of his friend’s immense palace and lands--and also his heart, to his friend’s beautiful young daughter (Mary Apick).

Propriety dictates that he must conceal his love for the daughter and, indeed, see that she is married off properly. Directed with respect for its time-honored material by Masoud Kimiaei, “Dash Akol” plays like a silent movie in its swashbuckling and hand-wringing combined with a striking sense of black-and-white visuals; there’s a beautiful play of light and shadow in the palace’s grand interiors.

Vossoughi wisely underplays in “Dash Akol,” but “Tangsir” (Saturday at 4:30, Sunday at 9:30 p.m) gives him full rein for his emotions as a peasant who, after a dispute, decides to leave his village only to find that the four pillars of his community, to whom he has entrusted his entire life savings, refuse to part with it.

From this simple premise, Naderi creates what can be taken as an allegory inciting revolution against those who exploit the poor; if Naderi is daring in this film, he was even more so with “The Runner,” which managed to criticize both pre- and post-revolutionary Iran. Luckily for us, Naderi’s impassioned sense of the cinematic matches his rebellious spirit, and “Tangsir,” which has a magnificent score, makes full use of the wide screen and color.

Information: (310) 394-9741.