Calculating the Price of Prosperity

Whispered Media’s “Boom --The Sound of Eviction,” which screens tonight at 7:30 at the Egyptian in the American Cinematheque’s Alternative Screen showcase, is a real eye-opener. San Francisco has always been a magnet city with infinite attractions and a decidedly finite amount of space. Even so, the city had managed to accommodate all socioeconomic classes, until the dot-com boom of the 1990s accelerated the escalation of property values and rents. The Mission District, a longtime Latino working-class neighborhood that was also hospitable to artists, was one of the first targets of gentrification. Family after family and artist after artist were displaced for the construction of pricey condos and new commercial structures.

Filmmakers Francine Cavanaugh, A. Mark Liiv and Adams Wood have charted the ever-spreading gentrification and how the community gradually organized as the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition to protest. As the filmmakers track the struggles of several individuals to victory and defeat, they intercut an interview with Mayor Willie Brown, who comes across--through his own words--as the villain of the plot. His indifference to the plight of Mission residents is shocking. He glosses over the evictions as voluntary moves and says a meeting of 500 concerned residents with the planning commission is “not representative” of the district. Everything he says so smoothly backs up the claims of the activists that he is a pawn of real estate developers. Some 80% of Mission dwellers are renters, and 80% of dot-comers have now gone bust, yet at last report the Bay Area’s economic slump has not returned rents to pre-boom days.

“Boom” is a witty, poignant and impassioned cautionary tale with implications that apply to every big city in the country. Playing with it is Jeremiah Zagar’s 12-minute “Delhi House,” a documentary about a nonprofit clinic-rehabilitation center-orphanage serving Delhi’s poorest inner-city community. “Boom” also starts Saturday and Sunday screenings this weekend at the Sunset 5 at 11 a.m. The filmmakers will appear at the Egyptian and opening weekend only at the Sunset 5. American Cinematheque: (323) 466-FILM; Sunset 5: (323) 848-3500.

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The American Cinematheque’s New Irish Cinema series, which continues at the Egyptian through Wednesday, offers a strong lineup Saturday, starting at 5 p.m. with Pat Murphy’s captivating “Nora.” The film explores the tempestuous love between James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, a hotel maid from Galway who transfixed the young writer at first sight with her beauty and air of self-possession. “Nora,” which was shown in theaters last May, is a gorgeous period piece with rich, vigorous portrayals of Joyce by Ewan McGregor (who co-produced) and Barnacle by Susan Lynch. “Volcanic” seems too puny a word to describe the passion that seared and enveloped Joyce and Barnacle, a woman with the courage to cast her lot with him. Just as they begin to wear each other--and us--down with their stormy relationship, the film adroitly shifts gears as they struggle toward a new level of mutual understanding.

“Nora” will be followed at 7 p.m. by “How Harry Became a Tree” by Goran Paskaljevic, one of the most original talents to flower in the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. When Paskaljevic, director of “The Powder Keg” and “Cabaret Balkan,” was unable to re-set a Chinese fable from the 1920s in Bosnia because of the war, he instead shot it in rural Ireland. The result is a picture that is Irish in spirit, yet enriched by Paskaljevic’s darkly comic, surreal vision.

The time is 1924, and cabbage farmer Harry Maloney (Colm Meaney) has lost a son in the recent civil war with England and then his wife to grief. This bitter man, in a state of constant apoplexy, is tormented by a recurrent dream in which he turns into a tree, only to be chopped down to supply wood for coffins. He focuses his rage on the most successful man in the community, George Flaherty (Adrian Dunbar), the local shopkeeper and pub owner. George has a habit of hiring pretty young girls as servants, and he agrees to act as matchmaker for Harry’s hapless son Gus (Cillian Murphy), providing his latest hire, the lovely Eileen (Kerry Condon), as a bride for Gus in return for half of Harry’s cabbage crop. Eileen is amenable, but Gus is shy and Harry determined to look for an angle by which he can somehow cheat George.

The ensuing clash between Harry and George builds in tension and complexity, and for Paskaljevic it surely must symbolize the Bosnian strife. The ever-reliable Meaney has probably never given so nuanced a portrayal as Harry. Paskaljevic and Meaney will be on hand for a discussion.

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The UCLA Film and Television Archive’s venturesome and rewarding six-film survey “Contemporary Latin American Films” concludes Sunday with Flavio Frederico’s “Urbania,” which follows the 7:30 p.m. screening of “La Libertad,” an austere, 73-minute account of the daily life of a young Argentine woodcutter. “Urbania” stars Turbirio Ruiz as Mr. Edmundo, a blind octogenarian who arrives in Sao Paulo in a long, vintage Plymouth convertible driven by Ze Carlos (Adriano Stuart), a virile, craggy, leather-jacketed middle-aged man with dyed hair. The imperious Mr. Edmundo, on a fool’s errand, clearly has not been to the city in decades and is visiting for a final meeting with a lost love. As memories of the past flood over the old man, views of the city as it was 40 to 50 years ago contrast sharply with the harsh realities of today’s metropolis with its shining skyscrapers, substantial urban decay and vast number of young people struggling to survive in the streets.

The place where Mr. Edmundo’s long-lost Teresa lived is a magnificent old structure now completely ravaged, its once-elegant neighborhood grown dangerous; not surprisingly, there is no sign of Teresa. After Ze Carlos puts up the exhausted Mr. Edmundo in a fleabag hotel, he hits the streets in search of sex in an area swarming with prostitutes, many of them transvestites and transsexuals. At each step of the way, every person the two men encounter stop to speak to the camera to tell their stark stories. What emerges is a compelling portrait of a city grown bleak, desperate and utterly heartless. (310) 206-FILM.

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The Silent Movie this weekend presents four major collaborations between D.W. Griffith and Lillian Gish, who went on to a screen career spanning 75 years. The movies are “Way Down East” (Friday at 8 p.m.), “Orphans of the Storm” (Saturday at 8 p.m.), “True Heart Susie” (Sunday at 1 p.m.) and “Broken Blossoms” (Sunday at 4 p.m.). (323) 655-2520.