REEL LIFE / FILM & VIDEO FILE : Foreign Oscar Nominee Gets Ojai Screening : ‘Farewell My Concubine,’ called China’s ‘Gone With the Wind’ by some critics, is this week’s screening by the film society.

“Farewell My Concubine,” a candidate for best foreign film at this year’s Academy Awards, will be the feature at this week’s Ojai Film Society screening.

Some critics call it the Chinese “Gone With the Wind,” set as it is during the ravages of World War II and later, the Cultural Revolution. The controversial film from China uses the unsettled emotional lives of its characters to portray the human cost of war and the cruelties suffered by artists during the Cultural Revolution.

The picture chronicles the relationship between two male stars of the Peking Opera. The two meet as boys at opera school and form a fast friendship that is disrupted by one’s marriage to a former prostitute, played by Gong Li (“Ju Dou” and “Raise the Red Lantern”).

Because of the film’s length, the screening will start at 4 p.m. instead of 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the Ojai Playhouse, 145 E. Ojai Ave. Admission is $6.

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Ariana Richards won the best actress prize from the International Youth In Film Awards, an organization called the Oscars for children.

The 14-year-old East County resident earned the honors for her role as the computer savvy granddaughter in “Jurassic Park.” Her next film project begins production this spring in Costa Rica. It will be an action film directed by Vic Armstrong.

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Sunstone Films, a nonprofit documentary film company, is holding a benefit concert Monday at the Metro Bay Club for a film on the link between child abuse and violent crime.

The film is called “Sowing the Seeds: Child Rearing and the Roots of Violence,” which features interviews with people currently incarcerated for violent crimes. The film examines their childhoods and interviews specialists in child psychiatry, as well as shows what volunteer organizations and governments are doing to prevent crime and to rehabilitate criminals.

Camera crews will be at the concert to interview people about their perceptions of violence.

The featured bands are “Lion I’s,” “Ska Daddyz,” “Blender,” and “This.”

The tax-deductible tickets cost $8 and are available at Wild Planet and Ooga Booga, both in Ventura. The show starts at 8 p.m.

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Santa Paula is in line for a seven-screen theater. Wallace Theaters, a Hawaiian chain with several theaters in California, announced it will open “Movies 7” in late 1994 on West Main Street in the Santa Paula Shopping Center.

The theater is boosting lots of “state of the art” doodads and one traditional touch--the seats, they promise, will be built on rocker springs.