Films that enchant and mystify

THE tough yet sometimes surprising journey of the turmoil-ridden into reconciliation and perhaps forgiveness is the subject of a handful of gripping films during this weekend’s conclusion of the 15th annual Pan African Film & Arts Festival.

In Chad-born filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s austerely powerful “Daratt (Dry Season),” a declared amnesty on war criminals in that landlocked African country’s decades-long civil conflict spurs a brooding young villager named Atim (Ali Bacha Barkai) to ask: “How could this happen?” Determined to find and kill his father’s murderer, Nassara (Youssouf Djaoro), he ventures into the big city and discovers that his prey is an aged, battle-hardened but charitable city baker, who unwittingly takes in his would-be killer as an apprentice.

Naturally, the father-son surrogacy that ensues makes Atim’s mission difficult -- the soul’s own civil war, in a sense -- but through the virtues of work and companionship also gives the wary avenger a reason to move on with his life.

Haroun’s assured handling of his sparse drama, almost Bressonian in its tense formality, is a major virtue and makes the inevitable confrontation a charged one, indeed.

On a lighter note, there are the fissures that need repair in a sprawling Fijian family in the New Zealand feature “No. 2,” which writer-director Toa Fraser adapted from his play. So when matriarch Nanna Maria (played with irascible gusto by Ruby Dee) demands one morning that a blood-only family feast happen that afternoon, her many grandchildren, spread out over Auckland’s picturesque Mount Roskill suburb, get to work cooking, fighting, partying and airing their grievances with each other and their parents. Which, of course, is what Nanna Maria wants: a show of life, of brio, of a willingness to engage each other.

The mystical suspense over who will be named as Nanna Maria’s “successor” -- in other words, a keeper of her house and the family’s spirit -- is less a reason to stay tuned than the many humorous spats, set-tos and exuberant scenes of feast-organizing among the attractive and comically gifted bunch of twentysomething grandkids, which include actors Mia Blake, Rene Naufahu, Miriama McDowell and Taungaroa Emile.

Sure to provoke discussion, nervous laughter, consternation and lobby arguments between festival screenings is the decidedly un-PC devil’s-advocacy satire “Shoot the Messenger,” directed by Ngozi Onwurah, which originally ran on British television and provoked cries of racism from a prominent black leader there. David Oyelowo, who can be seen as a doctor in “The Last King of Scotland” and a spy on the series “MI:5,” stars as Joe, an idealistic teacher who is fired under the false accusation that he struck one of his more troublesome black pupils. As his life spirals away from him, he looks to the camera and confidently intones, “Everything bad that has ever happened to me has involved a black person.”

The gauntlet thrown, what follows is a blistering and not unfunny picaresque of self-hatred, paranoia, inflammatory utterances (about baby names and attitudes about slavery) and eventually social renewal as Joe explores his own identity as a conscious black man, which one character describes to him as a feeling of being “cursed to care.”

What saves the film from knee-jerk stridency is Jamaica-descended writer Sharon Foster’s belief that a mirror check of any kind is the only sanity when the urge to blame threatens to overwhelm. That’s not to say “Shoot the Messenger” doesn’t at times feel like a caustic litany of what the filmmakers believe are self-perpetuated ills, but through strong performances (especially from Nikki Amuka-Bird as Joe’s girlfriend, an insecure career-placement worker) and unpredictable storytelling, it’s a rewardingly provocative gut punch.

Then there’s the journey that exists for its own sake, that celebrates the winding paths of life as only cinema can, as a steady source of poetic wonder for the eyes and ears. That film would be Tunisian filmmaker Nacer Khemir’s sublimely enjoyable desert curio “Bab’Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Own Soul,” which moves its many wanderers -- lovers, opportunists, vengeance seekers, most of them headed toward a once-every-30-years confab of dervishes -- across a sand-swept landscape that enchants and mystifies. The main characters are the titular character, a blind Sufi (Parviz Shaminkhou), and his precocious granddaughter Ishtar (Maryan Hamid), who delights in the fantastic stories her wise old travel companion spins, even while she worries that they don’t know exactly where everyone’s meeting up. Not to worry, Bab’Aziz says: “He who is at peace won’t lose his way.”

It’s easy for the adventurous moviegoer to feel confident in where Khemir is headed as well, because his visuals have an unforced beauty in the way they set people against the desert ocean, and his storytelling rhythms allow for humor, eccentricity and rich swaths of vibrant, unfettered music and dance.

All in all it’s an elusive entertainment, born of a desire to capture but not bottle the mysteries of the soul, and will therefore either seem inconsequentially exotic or philosophically satisfying. But it’s an assured work, nonetheless.

From toy to tool

While Hollywood continues to make movies that seem designed to sell toys rather than artistic vision, one toymaker’s short-lived dabbling in moviemaking continues to inspire artists.

Fisher-Price’s toy camcorder PXL 2000 sold for only two years in the late ‘80s but grew quickly from child’s plaything into Everyperson’s cinema tool. The grainy, evocative and personalized quality of this low-res, low-cost technology -- black-and-white images and sound recorded onto audiocassettes -- gave rise to a devoted film subculture.

Tonight at Vidiots you can check out “PXL This 16,” the latest collection assembled by enthusiast Gerry Fialka of films from around the world made with the PXL camera. They include L.M. Sabo’s “Gestures,” a two-minute history of the Iraq war; the architecturally ghostlike “Rousham”; and big-screen director Michael Almereyda’s game-culture riff “Aliens,” from 1993.

weekend@latimes.com

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Screenings

Pan African Film & Arts Festival

* “Bab’Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Own Soul”: 8:10 p.m. today, 8:40 p.m. Saturday, 1:45 p.m. Monday

* “Shoot the Messenger”: 8:10 p.m. Friday, 4:05 p.m. Monday

* “Daratt”: 6:10 p.m. Saturday; 1:20 p.m. Sunday

* “No. 2”: 2:10 p.m. Sunday; 3:45 p.m. Monday

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

Info: (323) 290-5900, www.paff.org

‘PXL This 16’

When: 8 p.m. today

Where: Vidiots, 302 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica

Info: (310) 306-7330, www.indiespace.com/pxlthis