The Black Vision, Times 50 or So

The Pan African Film Festival, running through Sunday at the Magic Johnson Theatres at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall, features more than 50 different visions of Africans and African Americans. These independently produced films weave tales of adjustment in the city and tribal life in the village, of ambition and unrequited love. The diversity of the images and the universality of the themes should help shatter stereotypes and build bridges in Los Angeles.

There is something for everyone: adventure thrillers like “Welcome to the Terrordome,” a Nigerian-British production, and musicals like Zaire’s “La Vie Est Belle.” An American-made biopic, “Adam Clayton Powell,” heads the documentary list. Comedies, romances, political commentaries, shorts and children’s films fill out the list of movies, some of which will also be screened at the Laemmle Sunset 5 theater in West Hollywood.

A festival within the festival comes by way of a continuing project begun by the French Consulate after the 1992 Los Angeles riots and cosponsored by the Urban League. It features motion pictures from France and French-speaking African nations. One of the funnier entries, “Fast,” tells the story of a rural idiot who is always careful to do exactly what he is told and winds up in Paris, where his cheerful but brainless efficiency quickly propels him into the ranks of management at a fast-food burger joint.

The Pan African Film Festival presents lifestyles rarely acknowledged in the usual offerings of Hollywood but certainly worth seeing.