Screening Room : Films of East German Wolf at Goethe

The Goethe Institute resumes its fascinating survey of films from the former German Democratic Republic with “The Films of Konrad Wolf.”

Wolf, who died in 1982 in his 57th year, is virtually unknown in America, as are most GDR filmmakers. Like other East German filmmakers that the Institute has introduced, Wolf was a socially conscious realist. He had an exceedingly graceful and dynamic visual style and at times he ran afoul of censorship rules. There is a tremendous passion and vitality in his films, which are exceptionally well-written and acted; the same could be said for all the East German films that the Goethe Institute, 5700 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 110, has so far presented.

The Wolf series opens Tuesday at 7 p.m. with “Lissy” (1957), which traces the impact of Hitler’s rise to power upon a pretty, vivacious young woman (Sonja Sutter, in the title role) of leftist upbringing whose husband (Horst Drinda) joins the S.A. after despairing of finding work in the depths of the Depression.

“Lissy” is adroit at dramatizing how Nazism fed upon economic despair and in turn unleashed anti-Semitism long ingrained in a society looking for a scapegoat for all its ills. “Lissy” doesn’t tell us anything that we don’t already know, but what specifically led up to the Holocaust is depicted somewhat less often on the screen than its horrors and aftermath.

“Sterne” (Thursday at 7 p.m.) moves us ahead into World War II, in an idyllic-looking ancient Bulgarian town under German occupation. The town has become a stopover on the way to Auschwitz for Jews transported from Portugal and Greece. When a young German officer (Jurgen Frohriep), who for the world looks like a clean-cut American, reflexively refuses to allow a doctor to attend a Jewish woman in the throes of a difficult childbirth, he is shamed into changing his mind by a courageous young Jewish woman (Sascha Kruschkarska) addressing him from the other side of barbed wire.

It’s an act that will transform his life; the strength of this subtle, heartbreaking film suggests how an intellectual (which the officer is) can justify indifference to human suffering and injustice by retreating into cynicism and pessimism.

Information: (213) 525-3388.

BAROQUE BENEFIT: Beyond Baroque, the literary/arts center at 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, will present a benefit for itself Saturday at 8 p.m. and again at 11 featuring folk singer Phranc, performance artist George Herms and a 26-minute film, Anna Biller’s “Three Examples of Myself as Queen,” an endearing camp travesty musical in which Biller envisions herself as a bored Arabian Nights ruler cheered up by her singing attendants, then as a queen bee (as in honey) in search of a hive and serenaded by her devoted drones, and finally as a girl at a ‘60s house party endangered by hooligans but rescued by a hero in white on a white horse. Sweet, funny with marvelous costumes, sets and even quilts designed and constructed by Biller; a kind of innocent homage to Maria Montez with a sense of color and decor worthy of Kenneth Anger.

Information: (310) 822-3006.

PHONY ‘QUEST’: Peter Delpeut, enterprising programmer at the Netherlands Film Museum, scoured the archives for silent era polar expeditions to create a fake documentary, “The Forbidden Quest” (Monica 4-Plex, Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m.), purportedly investigating an ill-fated 1905 journey to the South Pole.

Intercutting the found footage with a phony 1941 interview with a survivor of the voyage, an Irish ship’s carpenter (Joseph O’Connor, a skilled teller of a very tall tale), Delpeut spins quite a yarn, a kind of exceedingly dry spoof of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” yarns.

The trouble is that by the very nature of this undertaking the most dramatic and horrific events must be related by O’Connor, for the silent footage, while beautiful, is of the travelogue variety. The result is a film that is at times more tedious than amusing for all its ingenuity. More rewarding was Delpeut’s earlier work “Lyrical Nitrate,” which celebrated the magic, charm and purity of the earliest cinema while exploring the techniques of silent-era actresses.

Information: (310) 394-9741.