Filmmaker takes daring look at gay life in China

Cui Zi’en’s “Enter the Clowns” is a groundbreaker in gay cinema as well as in Chinese independent filmmaking. Adapted from his own novel by Cui, a controversial Beijing Film Academy professor, this beautifully shot-in-digital film unfolds as a series of interlocked vignettes revealing the everyday lives of young Beijing gay and transgender men. In their exploration of sexuality, they struggle to link emotions and desire more freely and matter-of-factly than one might expect in the communist nation. Screening Saturday at 7:30 p.m., “Enter the Clowns” is featured in the concluding weekend of the UCLA Film Archives’ provocative “New Chinese Cinema” series at Melnitz Hall’s James Bridges Theater.

The film has terrific immediacy, and while some moments recall a Warhol-like spirit of spontaneity and others his tediousness, the film has a winning quality of being lived rather than acted. Its seven-minute opening sequence is at once tender, startling and erotic, yet poignant. In extreme close-up we see a handsome youth (Xiao Bo) caring for his dying father, played by Cui and glimpsed only briefly. The father says, “Call me Mom” as his son helps him apply makeup. The vignette’s conclusion recalls the daring and discretion of Louis Malle’s “Murmur of the Heart” (1971).

The impact of this scene is hard to match, but numerous others come close, especially a long sequence in a which a high school-age youth pays an initially indifferent young man to hear his story. The boy spills his guilt and confusion over having rejected his best friend’s sexual overtures only to reject him again after the friend had been surgically transformed into a woman.

“Enter the Clowns” embraces humanity in its infinite variety -- and seeming absurdity -- and its capacity for experiencing joy, anguish and pain, often simultaneously.

Just before the recent demolition of Roger Corman’s old Venice studio, a group of young filmmakers made one last film there in an affectionate homage to Corman’s exploitation pictures that launched so many careers. The result is the fast and funny bloodbath “Slaughter Studios,” which opens a Friday and Saturday midnight run at the Sunset 5.

A pretentious video auteur (Peter Stanovich) rounds up a small cast and crew, who break into the spooky, long-closed Slaughter Studios to shoot a silly horror picture in which five Playboy centerfold-types on a camping trip are menaced by a giant green mantis. No sooner does Stanovich call, “Action!” than one person after another meets a gory fate. Cleverly written by Dan Acre and John Huckert, “Slaughter Studios” is a showcase for director-editor Brian Katkin and cinematographer John Matkowsky, who go for broke with a torrent of dynamically composed and structured images that’s exactly what this genre spoof requires to pull it off.

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Screenings

“Enter the Clowns”

Melnitz Hall’s James Bridges Theater, near intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Hilgard Avenue, Westwood. Saturday, 7:30 p.m. (310) 206-FILM.

“Slaughter Studios”

Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset, Blvd., West Hollywood. Friday and Saturday, midnight. (323) 848-3500.