Rambunctious ‘Soweto’ Satirizes Post-Apartheid S. Africa

The Pan African Film Festival continues through Sunday at the Magic Johnson Theaters, and today’s program is highlighted by a sure-fire crowd-pleaser, David Lister’s rambunctious satire on post-apartheid South Africa, “Soweto Green” (tonight at 8). Broad as a sitcom, subtle as a sledgehammer, awfully long for a comedy (110 minutes), “Soweto Green” is nonetheless often funny and always pertinent--in its crude fashion.

John Kani stars as an idealistic environmentalist long in America who returns to South Africa with his pampered African American wife (L. Scott Caldwell) determined to launch a tree-planting project in Soweto. On the plane he meets a young Afrikaner (Casper de Vries) returning home with his fiancee, a beautiful young black African. The young man is wondering how to tell his father, a major Johannesburg-based contractor and developer, of his engagement.

Very soon Kani’s and De Vries’ destinies will become entwined with hilarious results and serious undertones. The no-holds-barred humor skewering racism and the perils of integration in “Soweto Green” would be inconceivable in a mainstream South African movie only a few short years ago.

Ingrid Sinclair’s “Flame” (Tuesday at 6 p.m.), which also screened last Friday, is an awkward yet impassioned epic on the four-year struggle to liberate Rhodesia and to create the independent state of Zimbabwe. Told from a feminist perspective, it is set in 1990 and flashes back to 1975, when two young women (Marian Kunonga, Ulla Mahaka) from the same village join the revolution but in the course of battle begin to become distant from each other. The film is wearying in its rambling but gathers steam and focus as the two women cope with their very different lives after the revolution.

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Other notable films in repeat screenings are the shimmering folk tale “Guimba” (Tuesday at 8 p.m.), the excellent documentary “Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl?: The Life and Music of Robert Johnson” (Wednesday at 3 p.m.) and the charming yet bitter parable “Ava & Gabriel” (Saturday at noon), set in 1948 Curacao.

Matt Mahurin’s “Mugshot” (Thursday at 6 p.m.) is a stylish, provocative drama of psychological suspense in which a young white man (Robert Knepper) finds himself beaten, robbed and amnesiac in a derelict Harlem building. There, he is at the mercy of a young black man (Michael K. Williams) who sees, despite some very real dangers, a chance to exploit the white man’s predicament for some money that will get him out of Harlem.

In a remarkably assured and imaginative feature debut, Mahurin keeps us on edge while exploring the tempting impact of the world of the haves upon a man from the world of have-nots and raising questions about the nature of one’s sense of identity. “Mugshot” keeps you wondering whether either man will get out of an increasingly scary situation alive.

Gloria Victoria Rolando Casamayor’s beautiful, sensual “Un eterno presente: Oggun” (Thursday at 10:40 p.m.) is the first in a projected series of videos intended to record and celebrate Cuba’s rich African heritage. Her initial 52-minute segment centers on singer Lazaro Ros, who introduces us to the world of santeria, which preserves the African Yoruba religion in legend, song, dance and ritual. Casamayor commences by Ros relating the legend of Oggun, the Yoruban god of metals, iron and warfare, who in the filmmaker’s surreal, poetic rendering is a handsome young man tantalized by a beautiful young woman representing Oshun, the goddess of love.

Screening Sunday as part of an 11 a.m. African American short films program is Malcolm D. Lee’s incisive 25-minute “Morningside Prep.” It is a flawlessly articulated vignette in which the arrival of a bright, uninhibited, outspoken ghetto youth (Stephen “Wood” Harris) at a posh prep school has an unsettling impact upon two other black students (Lawrence Adisa, Anastasia King) who are at once threatened by his presence and condescending to him. Lee leaves us thinking about the price “assimilation” can unconsciously exact.

For a full schedule and related events, call (213) 896-8221.