Variation on Faust Tops Goethe Series

The Goethe Institute and the Silent Society’s fascinating “Before Weimar” series continues Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Hollywood Studio Museum, 2100 N. Highland Ave.

Of the three 40-minute dramas being screened--on amazingly sharp, tinted prints--the standout is Hans Mierendorff’s “The Devil’s Church” (1919), a bold, handsome variation on the Faust theme in which a voluptuous peasant woman (Agnes Straub) sells herself to the devil in return for bearing a child. As a result she becomes a wanton woman capable even of seducing the local pastor.

Mierendorff is an assured storyteller of an increasingly complex tale that unexpectedly strikes a modernist note in its concern for the human aspects of Jesus. Also screening are the visually striking “And the Light Went Out” (1914) and “Madeleine” (1912), a story of love and betrayal starring Ilse Oser and Ludwig Trautmann. Set against the Franco-Prussian War, the film is notable for its spare use of intertitles.

There will be live piano accompaniment by Michael Mortilla and an English translation of the German intertitles will be spoken by the Silent Society’s Randy Haberkamp.

Information: (213) 525-3388.

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After the Fox: Among the several films the UCLA Film Archive is screening in its “Russian Americanism: Lev Kuleshov and His School,” Thursday through Sunday at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater is Vsevolod Pudovkin’s classic 1928 “Storm Over Asia” (Sunday at 8:30 p.m.).

Set in Mongolia in 1918 during the civil war raging in the wake of the Russian Revolution, it is a bitterly anti-colonial fable in which a fur trapper’s theft of a fine silver fox pelt leads to him being cheated by an English fur trader and therefore joining forces of the Reds against the White Russians.

A couple of twists of fates later the trapper (Valeri Inkizhinov, remarkably expressive and subtle), as an apparent descendant of Genghis Khan, winds up a puppet monarch enthroned by a self-congratulatory White commander. Visually stunning and dynamically structured, “Storm Over Asia” stands on end all those adventure epics celebrating the glory of empire.

For full schedule: (310) 206-FILM.

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En Espana: “Refiguring Spain,” which will screen in USC’s Norris Theater over four weekends, from Saturday through Feb. 11, will present films of the 1940s through the 1990s that reveal how the cinema and popular culture in general helped shape Spain as it moved from fascism to socialism and from isolation to integration with the European community.

Assembled by USC professor Marsha Kinder, who has edited the new anthology “Refiguring Spain: Nationality, Media and Representation,” the series is encapsulated by Basilio Martin Patino’s 1971 “Songs for the Postwar Years” (Saturday at 9 p.m.).

It is a deft assemblage of newsreels, film clips and commercials charting key political events, accompanied by popular songs, from the ascent of Franco through the ‘50s. There’s considerable footage devoted to singing stars Imperio Argentina, Celia Gamez and Lola Flores. A surface campy nostalgia belies a highly critical view of the Franco years, which got the film banned until 1976.

Among other films screening is the 1941 “Race” (Sunday at 1 p.m.), based on the novel by Franco glorifying (greatly) his own family, tracing the destinies of the proud Churruca family from defeat in the Spanish-American War to triumph in the Spanish Civil War.

The family’s grandiose self-importance and feverish patriotism verges on parody and leans to the ponderous, but the film is a sleek, lushly photographed propaganda piece and was amazingly effective and influential in its time.

Information: (213) 740-7985.

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The Other General: By way of contrast is Antonio Mercero’s amusing 1987 popular comedy “Wait for Me in Heaven” (1987), about the vicissitudes of a Franco “double” (Jose Soriano) and his wife (Chus Lampreave) that ends up unexpectedly sympathetic to the late dictator.

Information: (213) 740-5896.