REVIEW

In an arresting new documentary, a Cambodian dance teacher who lost loved ones to the killing fields of Pol Pot hears that the regional leader who terrorized her in the 1970s has come out of hiding and reinvented himself as a powerful leader in the same village where he once condemned people to death. Her outrage overcomes her fear, and she decides to confront him. In a tale so intimate and suspenseful that it has the feel of a novel, she leaves her home in the city and journeys through the lovely Cambodian countryside to the village. There, in a crumbling old pagoda, Buddhist monks arrange for her a riveting meeting with the onetime village abuser, who at first pretends he can't remember what she's talking about. This story, told in "Deacon of Death," is just one of a rich array of documentary films to be showcased at the fourth annual Amnesty International Film Festival West Hollywood, at the Directors Guild May 24 through 29. It is one of several films that are so visually stunning they could double as travelogues ­ if it weren't for the social justice issues that drive their stories. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International are playing an ever-increasing role in marketing documentaries that play to their concerns. The Amnesty International Film Festival, which began in Seattle in 1992, in the last five years has spread to five other U.S. cities, including Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh and Asheville, N.C., as well as Amsterdam, said Alessandra Gallo, the director of the festivals for Amnesty International USA. The first District of Columbia festival will be in October, in partnership with the National Geographic Society. Such exposure can be crucial for documentaries, said Sandra Ruch, the executive director of the Los Angeles-based International Documentary Assn. "That's where you can launch the career of a film," she said. "Even a distributor wants to see the film at a festival first to see the audience reaction. How many distributors are going to take a political film right off the bat? I cannot overemphasize the importance of that festival." At a time when Amnesty International is making its way into everything from the liner notes of U2 albums to network dramas like "The West Wing," its festivals are increasingly viewed as an effective branding tool ­ even for films that are already scheduled for distribution or broadcast. This year, the Independent Television Service will partner with Amnesty International to promote "The Devil's Miner," a film about child miners in Bolivia, according to Desiree Gutierrez, an associate publicist for the PBS series "Independent Lens." Amnesty festivals have helped to build audiences for such documentaries as "Born Into Brothels," "Senorita Extraviada," "Death in Gaza" and "The Murder of Emmett Till." Among the 22 documentaries that will be screened here is the U.S. premiere of "The Other Side of Burka," an eerie look at the literally maddening lives of Iranian women on the Persian Gulf island of Qeshm, where they are forced to wear a pinching black face mask. The Los Angeles festival will also screen "Shake Hands With the Devil," retired Canadian Gen. Roméo Dallaire's memoir of his nightmarish stint as the U.N. peacekeeping commander during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, where he was not empowered to stop the murders of 800,000 people. Another documentary showing here for the first time is "State of Fear," about the abuses committed in Peru's war with the Shining Path, a chilling history narrated by such protagonists as a soldier who describes dropping Shining Path guerrillas from a helicopter one by one, to frighten the last guerrilla into providing information ­ and then pushing him off too. The world so beautifully photographed in "The Devil's Miner" ­ with its festivals, folkloric dances and folk art devils ­ seems conjured from the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez, except for the unbelievably harsh odds facing the boy miners who narrate the tale. In a misty Andean dreamscape, a 14-year-old miner and his 12-year-old brother descend into the bowels of the Earth to eke a marginal livelihood for their family from a Bolivian silver mine where countless workers are said to have lost their lives. The boys stumble into the darkness, stopping to pay homage to one of the hundreds of handcrafted terra-cotta devils that guard the tunnels. When they enter this underworld, workers leave God behind and hand their fate to the demons who safeguard their short lives in the mines. In these claustrophobic depths, the boys breathe in the dust that destroys miners' lungs, and run for their lives when they hear the sound of dynamite exploding, so they won't be buried in the tunnels that are a tomb for so many. Some of the documentaries have already ruffled feathers in the countries where they are set. "Singapore Rebel," about opposition political leader Chee Soon Juan, was withdrawn from the Singapore International Film Festival in March by director Martyn See after pressure from official censors. Instead, the Los Angeles festival will host the world premiere. But even the most incendiary documentaries rarely find a fraction of the audience that greeted Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." Bonnie Abaunza, the director of Artists for Amnesty, would like to use Amnesty International's clout to market documentaries even more aggressively. Abaunza hopes to tap into the same audience that conferred bestseller status on Philip Gourevitch's "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families," about the Rwanda genocide, and Azar Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran." She wants to interest bookstores in offering documentaries, at special kiosks, to the same customers who have purchased the nonfiction books. "I think the audience is much wider for documentaries. People are seeking them out at festivals," Abaunza said. "Last year we had to turn some people away. That's why we're screening some of them twice this year." Meeting a high demand One of those that will have a double screening this year is "State of Fear." In this documentary, Peruvian photojournalist Vera Lentz returns to the scene of a 1983 massacre in the tiny Ayacucho village of Soccos, where police lashed out at Peruvian peasants after failing to find those responsible for local guerrilla attacks. A groom was to lead his wedding guests in a ceremonial walk to a home where the bride was waiting for him. Instead, police rounded up the wedding party's 33 frightened Quechua-speaking Indians ­ many of them elderly family members of the bridal couple ­ and gunned them down at the edge of a ravine. Police dynamited the ravine to try to cover up the massacre. But Lentz trekked out to the village, at great personal risk, to document the crushed bodies and weeping loved ones. Her unforgettable photographs underline the crucial historical role such photographers play. The story of the Soccos massacre became emblematic of the authorities' racially charged brutality, and it was eventually retold in the award-winning Francisco Lombardi film "La Boca del Lobo." In "Deacon of Death," the latent social tensions that animated Cambodia's killing fields in the 1970s are now, a few decades later, in remission. The man who directed the carnage in his region is back in his village. His gentle fellow villagers recount how people were publicly disembowelled, how pregnant women were beaten to death. They puzzle, on camera: How can they live alongside their onetime abuser, who now pretends he didn't do the terrible things they saw with their own eyes? The Cambodian dance teacher who confronted the man is now teaching the ancient dances that Pol Pot's forces tried to eradicate, to graceful girls who are too young to have any memory of their country's horrific recent past. Such films will remind those who "forget."