DIRECTOR KLIMOV PRAISES TREND : A HINT OF FREEDOM IN SOVIET FILMS

In the Soviet Union, party leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has proclaimed a new era of glasnost (“openness”), and director Elem Klimov--recently elected to the presidency of the Soviet Filmmakers Union--intends to take Gorbachev up on the offer.

Klimov is in Los Angeles today to help launch a six-week UCLA series of recent Soviet films. The movies began an American tour in New York earlier this month and will move to San Francisco after their run here.

Klimov said during an interview that he believes that political and artistic forces, working in opposite directions within the Moscow film community, have created a sense of daring that “we would be fools not to seize and use.”

“Mikhail Sergeyevich (Gorbachev) made the country a little more ready for progressive film making, yes, but there are also a number of young people who want to make films their way, and they are working through the union to get that right,” Klimov said. “We have a chance not only to make our own situations better now, but also for those making films later.”

Klimov, 41, has been active in--and troubling to--Gosfilm, the Soviet state film organization. Since 1975, when Klimov made “Agony,” based on the life of the notorious Rasputin, he championed the causes of controversial film makers. Gosfilm refused to release “Agony” to Soviet theaters until 1983, even though it was shown at foreign film festivals.

Klimov’s election to the union presidency in May, then, was a surprise. His name did not appear on the official list of nominees, and his selection was engineered by a large (and vocal) turnout of the union’s younger members.

The Soviet bureaucracy has supported his program since May, yet Klimov--an animated, lanky man with graying hair--is anything but sanguine about the limited freedoms he and his supporters are seeking.

“We realize what a weapon films can be,” he said. “There are no other media that can damage the soul as well as heal it the way films can. But that is reason enough to let many voices be heard--to spread the power around. And so far, the state is agreeing. In any case, this is the first time the desires of film makers and of the ministers they must answer to are moving in parallel ways.”

Klimov’s main bete noire is what he calls “gray films,” those films in which the current Soviet social line is uncritically espoused, and the film maker does not reflect or comment on on the political, economic and sociological facets of Soviet daily life.

“These must go--they add nothing,” he added, gesturing dismissively. “To look back is not a bad thing; one must just look back with one’s own eyes.”

Klimov’s own “Come and See,” made last year, is a harrowing retrospective of Nazi brutality in Byelorussia, a Soviet republic just east of Poland that was particularly savaged by the invading Germans during World War II.

Indeed, the individual characters of the 15 nominally independent republics that form the Soviet Union is a recurrent theme not only among contemporary Soviet film makers but also of the UCLA series, which will present films from many corners of the nation: Latvia, on the Baltic Sea; Georgia, perched high among the Caucasus Mountains; and Kazakhstan, bordering China and Mongolia.

“It is important to realize how different we all are,” Klimov commented, “but also how connected. Perhaps if we try to make it understood that everyone sees things a little differently, we will all be more comfortable with the idea of sharing the planet.”

(That sentiment extends to American films as well: At a dinner given jointly by UCLA and the Directors Guild of America on Monday night, Klimov expressed great admiration for three current releases he’s seen since arriving here. He especially praised David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet.”)

“Politics are for bureaucrats--and sometimes for those of us who must be political now and then,” Klimov said dryly. “But art is something else again. We are hoping it can be made by people, not committees. We shall see. Nothing happens quickly, in Moscow or in Los Angeles.”