Documented Truth

The Midnight Special Bookstore’s “Documental,” an experimental and documentary film and video showcase, presents two different programs Saturday, at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., that add up to a richly varied and rewarding evening.

The first begins with Margot Smith’s 28-minute “To Empower Women: The Beijing Platform for Action,” which focuses on a wide range of participants at the Non-Governmental Forum held as part of the 1995 World Conference on Women, the largest gathering of women in history. Smith’s video makes us aware of the tremendous challenges facing women everywhere but at the same time gives us hope for a better world through the words of her interviewees, all of them women of strength, vision, courage and practicality.

Joshua Oppenheimer and Jacob Silver’s 30-minute video “These places we’ve learned to call home . . . “ juxtaposes images of chaos, destruction and cruelty with snippets of conversations with members of militias and white supremacist groups, plus sequences of performance art, to create an evocative, unsettling work of contemporary Americana.

Even more disturbing is Mikko Allane’s 24-minute “Voices of Dissent,” in which Dr. Philip Melanson, chair of the Robert F. Kennedy Assassination Archives at the University of Massachusetts, cogently argues for a reopening of the murder of U.S. Atty. Gen. Kennedy, suggesting powerfully how the LAPD and the L.A. District Attorney’s office may have destroyed or suppressed evidence indicating that Sirhan Sirhan was not a lone gunman.

The 9 p.m. program is composed of T. Bart Hawkins’ 19-minute “Hopilavi” and Richard Young’s 30-minute “Dinner With Henry.”

The first is an eloquent survey of Hopi culture, with its emphasis on living in harmony with nature, and how that culture will surely die if its language is not preserved.

In the second, Henry Miller is shown in a taped conversation over a dinner at his home with his long-time amour, Brenda Venus. Initially, the idea was to explore the possibilities of making a wine commercial featuring the legendary novelist. Miller’s view of American wines swiftly put the kibosh on that notion, but Miller, frail but feisty, went on to hold forth on a lot of his views, above all his respect and affection for one of his literary heroes, Swiss-born poet and novelist Blaise Cendrars, whom he regarded as an “electrifying” writer. “Dinner With Henry,” which was taped shortly before Miller died in 1980, is an especially affecting, succinct valedictory from one of the major literary figures of the 20th century. Admission is free. (310) 393-2923.

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The Sunset 5’s “Classic Japanese Erotic Cinema” series, which will screen Friday and Saturday at midnight and Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m., begins with Toshio Okuwaki’s harrowing, relentless “Naked Pursuit” (1969). Unfortunately, Phaedra Cinema was unable to find a subtitled first reel, which means that there are some silly stream-of-consciousness remarks in English on the soundtrack. Alas, the subtitles on the rest of the film don’t convey crucial information.

In any event, “Naked Pursuit” remains provocative and daring, as a student (Masayoshi Nogami) fleeing a brutal massive demonstration during which he unintentionally killed a policeman, heads for an uninhabited portion of an island. There, he encounters a young woman (Mari Aoki) bent on suicide, so devastated is she that her mother has taken a lover. Consumed with rage and fear, the man compulsively rapes the woman. But gradually their relationship evolves as he learns of her intention to kill herself, and he becomes determined to prevent her from doing it. The film attains psychological validity only to undermine its credibility when a search plane starts hovering over the island with its vast sand dunes. There’s no way the couple couldn’t be swiftly spotted. (213) 848-3500.

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Filmforum screens its second installment in experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton’s “Magellan Cycle” Friday at 8 p.m. at Ahmanson Hall, Art Center College of Design, 1700 Lida St., Pasadena, and repeated Sunday at 2 p.m. at L.A.C.E., 6522 Hollywood Blvd. Among the films to be shown are “Palindrome,” “Public Domain” and “Straits of Magellan: Drafts and Fragments.”

When he died of lung cancer in 1984, Frampton had completed a third of his planned 36-hour film cycle, which was intended to be seen over the course of 371 days and designed to “systematically map the terrain of film art,” bringing it to full circle as Magellan had circumnavigated the globe. Frampton seemed incapable of pointing his camera anywhere without creating a striking, beautiful image, and he offers in abundance the pleasures of experiencing the purely visual.

His 22-minute “Palindrome” offers a stunning, kaleidoscopic flow of abstract images, presented with a stroboscopic rapidity followed by a pause. Many of their motifs are

repeated in varying form. With their use of color, high contrast light and shadow, they leave you with the feeling that each frame is like a luminous watercolor painting.

The 14-minute “Public Domain” is composed of the earliest shorts, shot in the 1890s and early 20th century, selected from the paper print collection of the Library of Congress and celebrating the cinema’s unique capability in bringing the past alive. The 51-minute “Straits of Magellan: Drafts and Fragments” is a sampling of 49 fragments, many of them referring to other filmmakers, past and present, and many of them sensitive observations of rural domestic life so intuitively framed and composed that you would never mistake them for home movies.

Filmforum’s Saturday and Sunday program at the Nuart disappoints, with Kevin Hull’s “Einstein’s Brain” and William Wegman’s “The Hardly Boys in Hardly Gold,” a pair of droll but over-long dry-as-dust put-ons. (213) (526-2911).

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As part of its Sephardic Arts Festival, a Sunday celebration of music, dance, food and history, the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, will screen at 11 a.m. Gregori Viens’ “Island of Roses: The Jews of Rhodes in Los Angeles.” It recounts ancient Sephardic traditions in general and how our local community of “Rhodeslis” in particular is trying to preserve them in the face of assimilation.

Few Rhodesli descendants can speak Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish dialect, expected to die out as a spoken language within 20 years. Until the Germans sent Rhodes’ Jews to Auschwitz in 1944, these Sephardim were able to practice ancient traditions undisturbed from the time they were expelled in 1492 from Spain, where they had lived since about 800 BC.

Today, firsthand experience with Rhodesli customs, beliefs and rituals resides mainly with a handful of elderly women, some of whom are Holocaust survivors and others long part of the local Sephardic community. Viens’ warm and caring documentary leaves you thinking about the quality of your own spiritual life and sense of identity. (310) 440-4500.