Fluidly commingling the 1920s and the 1990s, Japan in Paris in L.A. tracks the dislocation of Saeki Yuzo, a Japanese painter restively residing in Paris. Confounded by the strict formalities of Modernism, Yuzo is further bewildered by references to a cultural past that is not his own. In a portentous meeting with painter Maurice de Vlaminck, he is told that his "paintings are copies of photographs of paintings," a criticism that strikes at the core of Western ethnocentrism. In Yuzo's quest for artistic autonomy, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto's remarkably conceived portrait also penetrates that other great misconception, the artist as authentic being. Through heightened theatricality, Yuzo transcends his role as artist, becoming instead a hyper-aestheticized gesture. (30 mins, Color, 16mm)Le Pétomane, the stage name of Joseph Pujol, was not an artiste, but a fartiste, a master of the musical anus. The rage of Parisian cabarets at the turn of the century, he broke wind as well as box office records, drawing an audience that gasped at his gaseous recitations. Igor Vamos's airy Le Pétomane establishes Pujol's uneasy place within art history as an early proponent of body-centered art. Using an archive of vintage footage, newsreels, and re-enactments, along with cheeky interviews with such culture critics as Roger Shattuck, Emily Hicks, and Edwin Harkins, this doc looks at not just Le Pétomane but the tumult of the Belle Epoque, a time when the ranks of artists were being overrun by pranksters, prevaricators, and poseurs. Was Pujol a modernist? A charlatan in a tux? Or just one of many artists to expose their inner depths for art? (56 mins, Color/B&W, 3/4" video)-Steve Seid