IT’S SHOW-AND-TELL TIME AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

You don’t have to walk too far into the market section of the Cannes Film Festival to learn how wide a range of product is on sale here.

The first kiosk on your left, just past the basement entrance in the festival’s Palais headquarters, is that of Sovexport Film. On sale are 30 Soviet movies, most of them historical dramas.

Just a few yards away is the booth of the Van Nuys-based Cal Vista International Ltd. Here, buyers can select from more than 200 movies, all of them hard-core pornography.

If you stand in the right place, you can see posters for Sovexport’s “Boris Godounov” and Cal Vista’s “Susie Superstar II” at the same time.

Boris, a 16th-Century czar, glares out from his poster wearing a heavy aristocratic gown. Susie is in underwear.

The two men running these neighboring showrooms--Cal Vista’s French representative Lionel Wallmann and Sovexport’s Eugene Beginin--could lob videocassettes back and forth if they liked.

But neither one cares much for the other’s movies, and besides, they are too busy to indulge the irony.

Beginin and Wallmann both say Cannes is one of the world’s two most productive exchanges (the other is held each October in Milan), and they’re here to show their wares.

They don’t show them to the same people, however. Wallmann says his clients deal exclusively in sex films and he hasn’t seen many of his customers veering off toward Sovexport’s brochure table.

It was the luck of the draw that put Cal Vista on the Soviet border in this huge market, a maze of alleyways and kiosks where virtually everything on film is for sale.

The only difference between the operations is that the sex film salespeople have to show their films behind closed doors. The others have their video machines going full time in the open.

Beginin just laughed when asked how the Russians felt about being so close to “Susie Superstar.”

“It’s an open marketplace,” Beginin said. “It’s a bizaar .”

Just around the corner from Boris and Susie is a booth promoting such titles as “The Killing of Satan” and “Heated Fists.” These action films, distributed by the Philippine F. Puzan Film Enterprises, appeal to an even different set of buyers.

Conrad Puzan, chairman of the company, said all 22 of his films have sold out in Middle Eastern territories.

“My movies go very fast in those countries,” Puzan said, standing in front of a pyrotechnic poster for “Secret Marshals.” They take everything.”

Among Puzan’s steady customers: Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Yemen.

The openness of the Cannes market can be disarming. Wallmann discussed Cal Vista’s products as if they were so many tubes of lipstick, noting that some cultures don’t allow their women to indulge in makeup.

Meanwhile, Sovexport’s Beginin sat down with a Western reporter and whimsically recalled that after the Chernobyl reactor tragedy, he told his wife that they ought to plan a vacation this summer at the Black Sea.

“With the radioactive clouds there,” he said, “we’ll have the place all to ourselves.”

He said his wife didn’t care; she wasn’t going to go anyway.

Beginin, a soft-spoken former university professor, acknowledges that the Soviets are obviously participating in free enterprise by selling in the Cannes market.

And is the Soviet government uncomfortable about being here? On the contrary, he said. The government is pressing for higher sales.

“They think we should sell more films to more countries,” Beginin said. “But it is difficult to compete. Especially with the Americans.”

The Soviet lineup would not thrill the manager of the Winnetka Drive-in.

Of the 30 pictures being offered, 11 are based on historical Russian war experiences. Two others would appear, from plot synopses in the Sovexport’s brochure, to be anti-American.

“The Infernal Voyage,” described as an “adventure,” is about the successful effort of Soviet submarines to foil a CIA nuclear launch against the U.S.S.R.

The other, “Flight 222,” re-enacts a purportedly true story about U.S. attempts to keep a Soviet ice skater from flying out of New York after her husband defects.

With “Rambo” and “Rocky IV” fresh on the mind, it’s hard for an American to be too critical about those plots.

Sovexport also buys six to 10 American movies a year. “Tootsie” was a big hit in the Soviet Union, and “E.T.” might have been.

“We wanted to buy it, but they (the producers) wanted an outrageous amount of money.”

In the Soviet Union, where first-run ticket prices are 35 cents, Beginin says it’s hard to recover the cost of buying or making movies.

Since films are approved by a government-run studio and since the government believes film should have cultural rather than commercial merit, it’s hard to show up at Cannes with product that many buyers want.

“I do hope the day will come for Soviet film,” Beginin said. “People will get tired of violence and sex and the exploitation of human feelings.”

In the meantime, Beginin will be coming to the bizaar .

“Working with the Russians is exactly like working with anyone else,” says Gerald Rappoport, who has been bringing Soviet films to the United States for 20 years.

“They (Sovex film) are a commercial organization. They want the best deal they can get.”