An extension of life

LIFE merges with art in UCLA’s preview screening of “Tale of Cinema,” a wistfully self-reflexive drama by Korean director Hong Sang-soo. Set in Seoul, the film explores the audience’s relationship to the films they see and ultimately to the filmmaker.

It opens with a callow young man named Sangwon (Lee Ki-woo) and an uncomfortable meeting with his brother. The taciturn Sangwon then has a giddy reunion with Yongsil (Uhm Ji-won), whom he spots working in her uncle’s optometry shop. Two years earlier, the pair had had a brief affair.

The two get drunk, squabble and engage in some unfulfilling sex, and it’s easy to see why the relationship didn’t last. They ultimately find common ground in their lack of desire to live and commit to a suicide pact. That doesn’t end any more satisfactorily than their lovemaking.

The film then shifts its focus to another young man, Tongsu (Kim Sang-kyung), whose story echoes that of Sangwon. Through this second narrative window, the director unpacks the filmgoing experience and its relationship to our lives.

Slip-sliding away

American Cinematheque wraps its Best of Slamdance presentations with the narrative feature and short winners. Experimental filmmaker Lynn Shelton makes her feature debut with “We Go Way Back,” a subtly unsettling drama about a young Seattle thespian slip-sliding into depression after a breakup, as she reads the birthday letters she wrote as a 13-year-old to her adult self.

Kate (Amber Hubert) is a utility player for a local theater company. She does the books, finds the hard-to-get props and fills the spear-carrier roles without complaint. She’s more than a little surprised when the company’s director (Robert Hamilton Wright) rewards her with the plum role of Hedda Gabler.

The increasingly bizarre production takes a toll on Kate as she subconsciously fills her loneliness with sex. Against the backdrop of Northwest indie folk rock, Shelton insightfully sketches a young woman’s loss of self in the context of the more assured teenager she used to be.

“We Go Way Back” screens with Canadian filmmaker Matthew Swanson’s dreamlike short, “Hiro,” which depicts a bashful Japanese collector of rare bugs who finds himself thrust into the role of action hero.

In-depth studies

The final weekend of the Pan African Film & Arts Festival features a drama set in the world of stand-up and two documentaries on global issues. Writer-director Tony Spires’ “Tears of a Clown” tracks the fall, rise and fall of comic Cole Black (Don “D.C.” Curry). Black crashes and burns after 15 years on the laugh circuit and returns to Oakland to open a club. At more than two hours, the film could use a trim, but Curry is dead-on as a man who takes his comedy seriously and learns to question the degree to which African American artists support one another.

Cameroonian director Jean-Marie Teno unravels the complex, and often disputed, history of Christian missionaries in South-West Africa -- contemporary Namibia -- in his pointed documentary “Colonial Misunderstanding.” Teno packs in lots of information as he dramatically builds to the Herero Wars that bloodied the continent from 1904 to 1907. The tribal uprising and defeat at the hands of the German army spiraled into a slaughter that some historians mark as the first genocide of the 20th century.

The Southwest U.S. is the setting for Carlos Blumberg DeMenezes’ documentary “Trespassing,” a sobering look at the effects that uranium mining, nuclear testing and the disposal of nuclear waste have. Nine years in the making, the film chronicles the mostly Native American residents as they battle the U.S. government and nuclear industry.

Contradictions

The Films of Peter Tscherkassky and Eve Heller, hosted by FilmForum, is an evening in which the Austrian-based experimental filmmakers present their work. The prolific Tscherkassky is known for films such as “Freeze Frame,” “Happy-End,” “Outer Space,” “Dream Work” and “Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine,” which consistently search for contradictions, tracing the fissures of content through eerie visuals. Heller discovers submerged meaning in the films “Ruby Skin,” “Her Glacial Speed” and “Last Lost.”

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Screenings

World Cinema

* “Tale of Cinema”: 7:30 p.m. Friday

Where: James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall, UCLA

Info: (310) 206-FILM, www.cinema.ucla.edu

Best of Slamdance

* “We Go Way Back” and “Hiro”: 7:30 tonight

Where: Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

Info: (323) 466-FILM, www.egyptiantheatre.com

Pan African Film & Arts Festival

* “Tears of a Clown”: 1 p.m. today

* “Colonial Misunderstanding”: 3 p.m. Friday

* “Trespassing”: 1:10 p.m. Saturday

Where: Magic Johnson Theatres, 3650 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., L.A.

Info: www.paff.org

FilmForum

* The Films of Peter Tscherkassky and Eve Heller: 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

Info: www.lafilmforum.org