Cultures in flux

A sampling of the dozens of offerings in the 11th annual Pan African Film & Arts Festival, opening tonight, suggests that this may well be the strongest to date.

Issues of cultural identity and displacement, a legacy of colonialism, emerge as key themes, and social and political concerns tend to emerge implicitly, rather than didactically, within stylish, personal films. Many of the festival’s widely diverse films deserve much wider exposure. The 12-day event begins tonight with the premiere of Neema Barnette’s “Civil Brand” at El Capitan; it continues through Feb. 17 at the Magic Johnson Theaters.

* Considering the eloquent emotional intensity of “L’Afrance,” an outstanding, notably accessible first film, it is not surprising to learn that its maker, Alain Gomis, is half Senegalese and half French, for it deals with the pain and confusion of conflicted cultural identity. Djolof Mbengue’s El Hadj is a handsome Senegalese so caught up in preparing for his finals for a postgraduate degree in Paris that he misses the deadline for renewing his residency permit and faces deportation.

Until that moment, El Hadj is sure he wants to return home to serve his country, but in crisis he begins to listen to friends back in Senegal who find they are made to feel as if they are foreigners. His ordeal becomes a severe test of his character, judgment, values and perceptions. Gomis is impassioned without being preachy and proves to be a dynamic, exceptional screen storyteller and a skilled director of actors. Screens Saturday at 8:30 p.m., Tuesday at 6:45 p.m.

* Abderrahmane Sissako’s “Waiting for Happiness” is a poetic evocation of life in the sandy port town of Nouadhibou, Mauritania. While we watch a small group of inhabitants in a shantytown area by the sea going through their everyday routines with seeming contentment, Sissako introduces several people who have been deeply affected by a sense of displacement, directly or indirectly.

Throughout, the film is sustained by a rhythmic ebb and flow between a soothing calmness, exemplified by some stunningly beautiful music and images, and a disturbing uncertainty and conflict. Sunday at 6:30 p.m., Feb. 14 at 3:55 p.m., Feb. 17 at 10:10 a.m.

* Joe Brewster’s “The Killing Zone” takes its title not from the war-torn West Ghana of 1978, where this raw and provocative film opens, but from the most dangerous area of present-day Brooklyn. Back in 1978 an idealistic African American doctor rescues a young boy who is being exploited as a child soldier and helps him get to the United States. Now married and living in a restored Edwardian house in Montclair, N.J., he has grown up to be a psychiatrist (Isaach De Bankole, the handsome star of Claire Denis’ 1988 film “Chocolat”) with a taste for the good life but a failing practice.

The way past and present converge has made for a powerful film, with Bankole emerging as a commanding, charismatic presence. Sunday at 1 p.m., Feb. 13 at 8:15 p.m., Feb. 17 at 4:55 p.m., followed by Q&A;

* In Gael Morel’s revealing and uncompromising “Under Another Sky,” a striking-looking, athletic young man, Samy (Nicolas Cazale), is sent back to Algeria, a homeland he barely remembers, after he has killed a policeman in a hit-and-run accident. Not surprisingly, present-day Algeria, beset by authoritarian rule and fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, proves a place of confrontation, not escape. Samy does experience a touching reunion with his ailing grandfather, a landowner of noble character, but becomes caught between his bitterly estranged cousins, one a reckless, none-too-swift youth, the other a beautiful young woman with her own dark secret to atone for. That the country is remarkably beautiful, and that Samy experiences moments of warmth and joy, do not preclude Algeria from being an ultimately tragic place. A stylish, incisive film, with Cazale radiating a lot of star potential. Monday at 7:15 p.m., Feb. 13 at 9:30 p.m.

* The most venturesome of this selection of films is Charles Najman’s highly experimental parable on the eternal corruptibility of absolute power, “Royal Bonbon.” A deranged man (Dominique Battraville) who roams the streets of Cap-Haitien one day decides he is the reincarnation of King Christophe, the liberator of Haiti turned despot. When the film moves to the magnificent ruins of Christophe’s palace, Sans Souci, it becomes a bold -- and demanding -- theatrical fantasy in which the imposing Battraville, reminiscent of Paul Robeson as Eugene O’Neill’s “Emperor Jones,” reenacts Christophe’s increasingly tyrannical ways. Saturday at 2:25 p.m., Feb. 16 at 11:05 a.m., Feb. 17 at 4:35 p.m.

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Pan African Film & Arts Festival

Where: Pacific’s El Capitan, 6838 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood; Magic Johnson Theaters, 4020 Marlton Ave., L.A.

When: Tonight at El Capitan; continues through Feb. 17 at the Magic Johnson Theaters.

Cost: Film screenings: $8.75, general; $5.50, kids under 12; opening night gala, $250. Other special events: $30 to $50.

Info: (213) 896-8221.