Black Gay Issues Theme of Filmforum Series at LACE

Filmforum presents at 8 tonight at LACE “Black Men Loving Black Men,” composed of Marlon Riggs’ ground-breaking 55-minute “Tongues Untied” (1989), his new 10-minute “Anthem,” described as a rap-style video about black gay eroticism, and Canadian filmmaker John Greyson’s 15-minute “A Moffie Called Simon” (1987).

A call for liberation characterizes the stunning and original “Tongues Untied,” which draws from the poetry of Essex Hemphill and others and utilizes dance, tableaux and documentary footage to create a stylized, sensual and impassioned stream-of-consciousness celebration of love between black men.

“A Moffie Called Simon” draws attention to the plight of black gay South Africans in general and Simon Nkodi, an imprisoned black gay activist, in particular. We’re able to know Nkodi only through his letters and some pictures. The words of his white lover (spoken on the soundtrack) says it all about conditions in South Africa when he exclaims without irony that it’s “a great improvement” that Nkodi and a group of other black men, who have been jailed without being charged, have at last been charged with treason and murder.

Information: (213) 663-9568.

A month after its reopening, the Silent Movie, 611 N. Fairfax, is continuing to show the major stars of the silent era in some of their lesser-known films, a policy that has resulted in packed houses. This Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. brings Buster Keaton’s delightful “College” (1927), which he made right after one of his most famous and frequently revived films, “The General.”

Keaton was one of the most superbly coordinated men to ever face a camera yet his image is that of a klutzy everyman at constant odds with the machinery of the modern world. To watch “College” is to realize that only a great athlete could have portrayed a hapless non-athlete with such perfect precision. In this blithe yet poignant film, directed by James W. Horne, Keaton, then 32, plays with ease a full-blown nerd, a high-school valedictorian who once in college determines to become an athlete to win the girl he loves. As he strives mightily to excel in baseball, track and as coxswain of the college crew, Keaton emerges as his familiar impassive personage, his isolation and loneliness painfully palpable.

“College” is light, fast and very funny, but there’s that timeless wry wistfulness at its core so characteristic of Keaton. Playing with “College” is a 1915 Douglas Fairbanks rarity, “The Lamb.” Information: (213) 653-2389.

A couple of other key vintage films screen this week. The Silent Society will present Erich Von Stroheim’s supremely stylish and amusingly cynical “The Merry Widow” (1925) with Mae Murray and John Gilbert on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Hollywood Studio Museum, 2100 N. Highland. Reservations: (213) 937-0776.

Thursday brings the charming 1922 “Toll of the Sea,” a variation on the “Madame Butterfly” plot with Anna May Wong and Kenneth Harlan shot in exquisite two-strip Technicolor and restored by the UCLA Film Archive. Playing with it is a major UCLA restoration, Rouben Mamoulian’s elegant, astringent “Becky Sharp” (1935), the first feature film shot in three-strip Technicolor. Information: (213) 206-FILM, 206-8013.

“From Caligari to Hitler” continues Friday at LACMA’s Bing Theater at 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. with “The Great Love” (1942), with Zarah Leander, the Swedish-born singing star who enjoyed great popularity in Germany, especially during World War II, and in the last years of her life--she died in 1981--became a camp figure, as documented in Christian Blackwood’s 1987 “My Life for Zarah Leander.”

Not all Third Reich films were propaganda pieces, and this elegant, romantic film, well-directed by Rolf Hansen, is in fact tinged with a melancholy and even pessimism that stands in sharp contrast to the upbeat wartime Hollywood pictures; ironically, it was Leander’s most popular film and one of her least kitschy pictures. Even so, this is the film that is parodied in “Kiss of the Spider Women” with Sonia Braga in the Leander role.

Leander, whose voice was notably deep and who resembled Broadway actress Nancy Kelly, plays a cabaret star who falls in love with a dashing Luftwaffe pilot (Viktor Staal). They are not youngsters--Leander had in fact passed 40 when she made this film--and neither of the lovers expresses any patriotic fervor whatsoever. Even so, Allied censors inexplicably demanded that a scene showing the couple retreating to a bunker during an air raid and Leander singing to German soldiers be cut.

Information: (213) 857-6010.