Living the Hustler’s Life in ‘Skin & Bone’

As part of its ongoing Alternative Screen series, the American Cinematheque at Raleigh Studios is presenting Thursday at 8 and 10:30 p.m. Everett Lewis’ “Skin & Bone,� an entertainingly lurid melodrama which follows, a la “Valley of the Dolls,� the misfortunes of three young men who become West Hollywood call boys for a madam (Nicole Dillenberg) whose motto could be, “the customer is always right.�

Almost none of her customers is anything but kinky at best and lethally dangerous at worst.

Obviously, prostitution always carries with it a potential for danger, but it’s absurd that such good-looking guys--b. Wyatt (a Calvin Klein underwear billboard model), Alan Boyce and Garret Scullin--should knowingly take such risks with their lives every time they go to an assignation.

If Lewis, best known for “The Natural History of Parking Lots,� offers a sensationalized take on hustling, however, he nonetheless creates for Wyatt an intense characterization as a struggling actor who has deluded himself that what he’s really doing as a prostitute is merely acting.

The American Cinematheque’s seventh annual “New Films From Germany� series also continues at Raleigh Studios Friday at 7 p.m. with a repeat from last year’s festival, Romuald Karmaker’s “The Deathmaker,� a grueling, highly theatrical dramatization of the 1924 interrogation of accused serial killer Ernst Schultze (Gotz George), the Jeffrey Dahmer of his day.

It will be followed at 9:30 p.m. by a lively program of short films, none more clever and amusing than Thomas Stallnach and Tyrone Montgomery’s “Quest,� in which a clay man travels through time, discovering in the process how dubious the entire notion of civilization really is.

Holocaust Horror: It is a testament to the overwhelming enormity of the Holocaust that half a century later, filmmakers are still finding fresh and provocative ways of communicating its horror and meaning to audiences.

With his compelling and reflective “Journey Into Life� (Saturday at 7 p.m.), Thomas Mitscherlich introduces us to three survivors who endured Auschwitz as children. As Mitscherlich interviews these three people, he cuts away from them to travel down the highways of their present-day environs--the Dutch countryside, stretches of Israeli desert and Southern California freeways, respectively--which creates an effect of an endless journey back and forth in time.

For further context, he invents, via narration, “Sgt. Mayflower,� a stand-in for all the countless American military men who filmed their own experiences of the liberation of Germany, and this footage provides a historic context for his subjects’ recollections and observations.

Mitscherlich’s first interviewee, writer-sociologist Gerhard Durlacher, was born in Germany in 1928, emigrated to Holland with his parents in 1936 and was later sent to Auschwitz. Durlacher experienced a cruelly ironic return to Holland at age 17. He suppressed as much as possible his entire Holocaust experience for more than 30 years.

Not until he was able to speak out and write about his experiences did he discover that his camp friend, Yehuda Bacon, a year younger than he, was alive and well and living in Jerusalem.

Nearly beaten to death for trying to toss his uncle a pair of shoes over a camp fence, Bacon, who already knew he would become an artist, was determined to absorb and remember everything in detail so that he could paint and draw it accurately, should he survive.

Unlike the men, who were liberated by the Allied forces, Ruth Kluger, born in Vienna in 1931 and a writer and professor of literature living in Irvine, was able to escape from Auschwitz with her mother as the Third Reich crumbled. Her mother found employment with the American military and thus spared her daughter and herself from becoming displaced persons. All three--none more tartly than Kluger--tell how Holocaust survivors were made to feel like pariahs, their experiences too terrible for many to want to contemplate.

Information: (213) 466-FILM.

Early African American Film: Filmforum will present at the Nuart Saturday and Sunday at noon Oscar Micheaux’s “Within Our Gates� (1919), the earliest surviving African American film, starring Evelyn Preer as a schoolteacher struggling to get a better education for black children.

Its mix of lurid melodrama, romance, uplift and social protest would characterize Micheaux’s films for the next 30 years.

Information: (310) 478-6379.

Wiesenthal’s Story: Incredible as it may seem, Johanna Heer and Werner Schmiedel’s outstanding “The Art of Remembrance--Simon Wiesenthal� (Saturday through Monday at 10 a.m. at the Sunset 5; also Jan. 25-26) is the first feature-length documentary about the man who, from his first day of his liberation from Mauthausen concentration camp, dedicated his life to bringing Nazi criminals to justice. The film offers a comprehensive survey of Wiesenthal’s remarkable life and ongoing work, which includes efforts on behalf of all people deprived of human rights. The point that Wiesenthal makes so well is that, while he may forgive his tormentors, he cannot do so on behalf of the millions who died in the Holocaust. (213) 848-3500.

Note: Nicholas Roeg’s 1971 adventure in the Australian outback, “Walkabout,� opens Thursday for one week with a fresh 35-mm print and five minutes restored to its running time.

Information: (310) 478-6379.