Finding Gems in African Film Fest

Festivals can be a decidedly mixed bag, but they also can offer rich treasures. The latter is the case with selections previewed for the 10th annual Pan African Film Festival. They are strong on emotional engagement and accessibility and many are first-time features from a diverse and talented group of filmmakers. The festival, which began Wednesday, runs through Feb. 18 at the Magic Johnson Theatres.

A highlight among the many sidebar events will be the appearance at 6:15 p.m. Sunday of Amir Baraka, with festival executive director Ayuko Babu, to discuss “Art as a Political Tool” and to receive a lifetime achievement award. The 1966 film “Dutchman,” from the play Baraka wrote when he was known as Leroi Jones, will be screened at 8 p.m.

Stefanie Sycholt’s “Malunde” (Friday at 1 p.m.) takes the classic combination of a gruff man and an irresistible little boy, whose relationship evolves into one resembling that of father and son, to probe the lingering, bitter aftermath of apartheid. Ian Roberts plays a craggy ex-soldier reluctantly taking a job wholesaling furniture polish who winds up giving a ride from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Cape Town to a bright, self-reliant, 11-year-old black street kid (Kagiso Mtetwa) eager to be reunited with the mother whose brutal boyfriend, he says, caused him to run away. Sycholt’s feature debut is a wonderful film of universal appeal, overflowing with humor and adventure offsetting pain and loss, allowing us to see that in some ways those who enforced apartheid were almost as apt to become brutalized by the racist system as those it oppressed.

Gavin Hood’s “A Reasonable Man” (Friday at 6:15 p.m.), also an impressive first film, is a crackling courtroom drama. Hood, once a lawyer himself, plays a barrister defending a hapless Zulu youth (Loyisa Gxwala) who inadvertently killed an infant when he lashed out at what he believed to be an evil spirit lurking in a darkened hut. Based on an actual incident, the film reveals the challenge facing post-apartheid South Africa in defining what is a reasonable man in a multicultural society and the struggle to administer a uniform standard of justice.

Hood’s barrister, also a haunted veteran of the war in Angola, is a man alone, because the prosecution team, though black, is made up of proud Anglicans who regard native African religions as superstition; this view is shared by the judge (the late Nigel Hawthorne in a subtle portrayal), who nevertheless may be able to look beyond his heretofore unconscious bias. Hood, a UCLA film school alumnus, assumes his writing, directing and acting with aplomb and makes a charismatic leading man.

Chad-born Issa Serge Coeleo’s beautiful and harrowing “Daresalam” (Friday at 10:25 p.m.), yet another powerful debut feature, is set in a fictional North African country. A brutal government bears down on a peaceful village, one among many, for taxes beyond the people’s capacity to pay. Government massacre triggers revolution as we follow the thoughtful Djimi (Haikal Zakaria) as he and best friend Koni (Abdoulaye Ahmat) are swept up and transformed in ultimately different ways by cataclysmic events. “Daresalam” presents human chaos amid settings of great natural beauty, accompanied by an evocative score.

German documentarian Jorg Bundschuh got to John Lee Hooker just in time--the blues legend died last June--which makes “John Lee Hooker: That’s My Story” (Sunday at 11:30 a.m.) as invaluable as it is engaging and comprehensive. The portrait of Hooker, who was born in the Mississippi Delta circa 1917, that emerges through his music and words and those of his family, friends, colleagues and admirers is of a proud, dignified man who drew deeply from his heart and soul in creating music.

Bundschuh gracefully blends archival performance footage and glimpses of the South, past and present, to round out his archetypal story of an illiterate sharecropper who through talent, hard work and a resilient, humorous spirit overcame adversity to win international acclaim. By the time Bundschuh caught up with Hooker, the King of the Boogies was still a vibrant, dapper figure despite the frailties of age. In his pride and intelligence, Hooker makes it clear that in looking back he preferred to focus on the considerable good fortune that came his way. He did not deny, however, the painful realities of touring in the segregated South in the 1950s nor the fact that for years he was aware that he was cheated out of royalties and pay for club dates.

Hooker ended up comfortable, revered and even on warm terms with his ex-wife and confident that his music would endure. An honest performer if ever there was one, he admits that even after getting everything he ever wanted in life, he could “never get enough love from the people.”

(Note: Some films will be repeated during the course of the festival.) (213) 896-8221.

Among the films screening at the James Bridges Theater in Melnitz Hall in the final weekend of the UCLA Film Archives’ 12th annual “Celebration of Iranian Cinema” is Ali Shah-Hatami’s “Shrapnels in Peace” (Saturday at 7:30 p.m.), a near-surreal evocation of a post-apocalyptic landscape in which survivors scavenge relentlessly for scrap to sell in a struggle to survive. The central figures are two boys tempted to enter the minefields in search of more lucrative loot. In the face of bleakness and despair Shah-Hatami nevertheless manages to create a hypnotic spell with the striking, floating quality of his images. When and where this devastation has occurred is deliberately never revealed; we could just as easily be looking at a war-ravaged region in Afghanistan as the aftermath of either the Iran-Iraq conflict or the Gulf War. (310) 206-FILM.