Documenting Roots of Rounder Records

The Nuart is screening tonight through Wednesday ace music documentarian Robert Mugge’s “True Believers,” a tribute to the 25th anniversary of the founding of Rounder Records, dedicated to recording American roots music.

Mugge includes such Rounder stars as Alison Krauss, Bill Morrisey, Irma Thomas and Marcia Ball in performance and interviews, as well as interviews with Rounders principals Marian Levy, Bill Nowlin and Ken Irwin. The gratifying result is an enjoyable film that shows that smart people of integrity can make a crucial cultural contribution and even prosper without giving in to greed. (But how come Mugge overlooked Rounder star--and Cinegrill stalwart--Charles Brown?)

The Nuart’s New Chinese Cinema will present four recent films Thursday for one week. All deal with the plight of women, a familiar concern of Asian cinema.

Zhou Xiaowen’s “Ermo,” a bemused but compassionate riff on the eternal human comedy, takes its title from its peasant heroine (Alia) with a much-older, now impotent husband (Ge Zhijun) and their young son. Ermo supports her family working like a slave making noodles. Meanwhile, her fat and lazy next-door neighbor (Zhang Haiyan) not only has a lean, hard-working husband (Liu Peiqi) with a truck but also a color TV.

The entire film turns upon Ermo’s determination to get a bigger set than her neighbor, and its unfolding allows for considering a wide range of questions of values and priorities. While Zhou is concerned with the impact of freer money--and also sexual attitudes--on China in general and Ermo in particular, he doesn’t judge her.

Huang Jianxin’s terse, stunning “The Wooden Man’s Bride,” shown in last year’s Asian Pacific Film & Video Festival, is a folk tale in which a young woman (Wang Lan) is forced to marry her recently deceased fiance in effigy, represented during the ceremony by a carved wooden bust held by her formidable mother-in-law’s virile young retainer (Ku Paoming). The film is in the stark tradition of Asian cinema in which the utmost suffering and hardship are expressed in the most beautifully composed of images.

Xie Fei’s “Women From the Lake of Scented Souls,” shown at the 1993 Asia Pacfic Fest, is a strong feminist work whose heroine (Siqin Gaowa) is a rustic Mildred Pierce, whose sesame oil is so fine she attracts Japanese investors. While running her mill, however, she is burdened with a drunken, oafish husband to whom she was sold at 7, married at 13, and with trying to marry off her sexually frustrated, developmentally disabled son.

Yin Li’s “The Story of Xinghua” is that of a beautiful young wife, Xinghua (Jiang Wenli), married to a brute (Zhang Guoli) who blames her for not being able to conceive. He’s obsessed with cashing in on the new market economy to the extent that he not only is selling stones removed from the Great Wall of China but is also considering violating an ancient taboo by excavating for mythical treasure beneath his village watchtower. In a powerful twist, the story really does come to be Xinghua’s.

For schedule: (310) 478-6379.

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Held by a Vision: Chris Newby’s “Anchoress” (at the Monica 4-Plex Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m.) is an ultra-arty, hard-to-follow and very slow take on a pretty 14th-Century peasant (Natalie Morse) whose vision of the Virgin Mary leads her to choose being imprisoned in a cell constructed along a wall of her local church, where she quickly attracts pilgrims seeking her blessings and advice.

Her immurement, encouraged mightily by the local priest, sets off a spiritual and sexual tug of war between pagan and Christian beliefs and impulses. The film has a handsome steel-engraving look, but the impact of its images is undercut by an overwhelming self-consciousness. Carl Dreyer, Robert Bresson and Ingmar Bergman have all told such tales far better.

Information: (310) 394-9741.