East German Westerns At The Speakeasy Cafe

It's no longer a surprise to find October in Seattle crowded with all kinds of film festivals: Polish, Mexican, gay, retrospective, etc.

But just when you think you've seen them all, here comes "Wild East Goes West," a collection of East German westerns that were filmed between 1966 and 1983 in Yugoslavia, Romania, the Soviet Union, Mongolia, Cuba and East Germany. Rarely shown outside Eastern Europe, they're set in the U.S. and attempt to deal with American history from a Native American perspective.

The series begins at 8 tonight at the Speakeasy Cafe with Josef Mach's "The Sons of the Great Bear," a sweeping 1965 production about the impact of white immigrants on Native American culture during the discovery of gold in western Dakota. (It gets a repeat showing at 8 p.m. Sunday.)

It will be followed at 10 tonight by a discussion with the movie's star, Gojko Mitic; "Northern Exposure's" Richard Restoule; the University of Washington's Maureen Schwarz; and a group of "East Germans of the `Indian movie' generation." A videotape of the discussion, which will focus on the treatment of Native American history and culture in popular culture, will be shown at 10 p.m. Sunday.

The 11 o'clock movie tonight is Konrad Petzold's 1971 film, "Osceola," which deals with the deportation of Florida Indians to Oklahoma in the mid-1830s. Gottfried Kolditz's "Apaches," which will be shown at 8 p.m. tomorrow and 11 p.m. Sunday, is a 1973 production

about a young warrior, Ulzana, who survives a massacre and tracks down his tormentors.

Jens Wazel, a Microsoft employee who grew up in East Germany and organized the festival, claims he "didn't think in political terms when I was 7 years old in 1972 and saw my first Indian movie . . . (but) for us the Indians were always the good guys, and in play, nobody wanted to be a cowboy, everybody wanted to be an Indian."

He tried to raise money for a festival for a couple of years, then got the backing from a German television production company that plans to make a documentary about the event. All films will be shown with English subtitles. Information: 464-4801.

More festivals

The Polish Film Festival is winding down tonight through Sunday at the Seattle Art Museum, while "A Century of Cinema" has just begun at the Broadway Performance Hall.

Highlights of the Polish series include the powerful "Polish Cuisine," at 6 tonight and 7 p.m. tomorrow; an atmospheric, remarkably faithful English-language treatment of Joseph Conrad's "The Shadow Line" at 5 p.m. tomorrow; and the Oscar-nominated "Man of Iron," which closes the series at 8:15 p.m. Sunday. (Saturday starting times have moved up an hour.)

Presented by the Seattle International Film Festival, "A Century of Cinema" will include the Seattle premieres of the New Zealand film, "Broken English" (8:45 tonight), and Patrice Leconte's "Ridicule" (8:45 p.m. tomorrow), both of them preceded at 7:30 p.m. by documentaries about the countries that produced them. Sam Neill co-directed the New Zealand film, "A Cinema of Unease"; Jean-Luc Godard co-directed the French entry.

Other highlights: a Latin American program that includes Luis Bunuel's "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz" (9:15 p.m. Sunday); Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter's "The Go-Between" (8:45 p.m. Wednesday); and Kenji Mizoguchi's "The Life of Oharu" (8:45 p.m. Thursday). ("Some Mother's Son," which was listed on some early schedules, has been replaced at 8:45 p.m. Oct. 19 by "The Dead.")

In addition, 911 Media Arts Center, 117 Yale Ave. N., is holding a preview of its Human Rights Film Festival at 8 p.m. Wednesday with a screening of "Transport From Paradise," an early-1960s Czech film based on the short stories of Arnost Lustig.

The rest of the festival will play Nov. 13-16 at 911. It includes local premieres of "Calling the Ghosts: A Story About Rape, War and Women," "Ollie's Army" and "Days of Democracy."

Around town

Mexican filmmaker Maria Novaro, whose 1991 feminist classic, "Danzon," played theaters here, will screen her most recent films, "The Garden of Eden" and "Gloria," at the University of Washington tomorrow. Showtimes are 2:30 p.m. in Gowen 1B and 7 p.m. in Savery 239. Admission is free, and the public is welcome. Information: 682-6552 . . . At 7:30 p.m. Monday, the Museum of History and Industry and the University of Washington's Department of Romance Languages continues its Spanish Civil War series with "For Whom the Bell Tolls," to be shown in the museum's McEachern Auditorium. Tickets are $2 . . . The Sanctuary Theater (upstairs at Scarecrow Video) will screen the early-1970s Hammer Studios tale of a 19th century plague, "Vampire Circus," at 7 and 9 tonight through Sunday. Next Friday: one of Hammer's best later efforts, "The Devil's Bride," with Christopher Lee and Charles Gray. Tickets are $5 . . . At 9 p.m. tomorrow on KING-FM, 98.1, "Soundtrack Cinema" will feature Michel Legrand's score for the NBC-TV mini-series, "The Ring," plus Hoyt Curtain's music for the "Jonny Quest" cartoon series . . . "Vaudeville & Flickers," a program of vaudeville performers and movies, including Buster Keaton's "One Week," will play at 8 p.m. tonight and tomorrow and 3 p.m. tomorrow and Sunday at Hokum Hall, 7904 35th Ave. S.W. Tickets are $8 general admission, $6 for students and seniors. Information: 937-3613. . . . The Seattle Art Museum continues its series, "Night Wind: The Film Noir Cycle," with Elia Kazan's "Boomerang," at 7:30 p.m. Thursday . . . Macaulay Culkin is now a teenager, so Twentieth Century Fox is looking for a talented 8-year-old boy to star in "Home Alone 3," which begins filming in December. Also needed: actors to play his 10-year-old sister and 12-year-old brother. Open casting calls will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct. 26 at the Broadway Performance Hall.

Out of town

The Olympia Film Society will begin its 13th annual film festival next Friday at the Capitol Theater in downtown Olympia. Opening-night events include a 7 p.m. street show (jugglers, fire spitters, bag pipers), followed at 8 p.m. by an "exorcism" of the theater by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence of St. Joan's Abbey, a performance by the Masuda Middle Eastern Dancers, and a screening of Allison Anders' "Grace of My Heart" . . . Following Miramax's umpteenth reissue, "Il Postino" has finally passed "Like Water For Chocolate" to become the top-grossing foreign-language film in U.S./Canadian history. Last weekend, it hit $21.7 million, eclipsing "Chocolate's" $21.6 million. Adjusting for inflation, however, the record is still held by Federico Fellini's early-1960s epic, "La Dolce Vita," which played roadshow engagements in many cities and had far more impact at the time . . . The 1931 version of "Dracula," starring Bela Lugosi, will be screened at 2 and 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, and at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the historic Everett Theater. Both matinees are free to senior citizens. The Lincoln shows are otherwise $1 for the matinee and $2 for the evening program. Donations are encouraged at the Everett shows.