Thursday, May 08, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Beyond the Multiplex

This week's special screenings

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport

(PG, 122 min.) In the nine months before the outbreak of World War II, about 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were evacuated to England. Ninety percent never saw their parents again. Narrated by Judi Dench, this Oscar-winning 2000 documentary by Mark Jonathan Harris (whose 1997 film on postwar Jewish refugees The Long Way Home also won the best-docu Academy Award) mixes rare archive footage, photographs, letters and modern interviews with Kindertransport survivors to shed light on a hitherto obscure aspect of Holocaust history. Winchester Theater, 3130 S. McLeod Drive, 455-7340, $3. Wed., May 14 7 p.m.

Asian Cinefest Independent Film Festival

As part of Asian Cinevision's 25th anniversary tour of its Asian-American film festival, helmers Mark Arbitrario, Christopher Castillo, James Cho, Don DeLeon, Karen Ishizuka and Bob Nakamura introduce their short films (Friday, 6 p.m.), and lead a series of workshops and lectures (Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.), focusing on diverse topics, including documentary filmmaking, screenwriting, making short films and the pros and cons of digital video. Followed (Sat., 6 p.m.) by a screening of Castillo's feature-length psychological thriller The Sky Is Falling. See www.lvccld.org for full program details. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, 507-3459, free. Fri., May 9 6 p.m., continuing Sat., May 10 10 a.m. (Further short film programs are scheduled at West Charleston Library May 17 and Whitney Library May 24.)--AA