AFI INTRODUCES ITS NEW OFFSPRING: A FILM FESTIVAL

Filmex is dead! Meet the AFI Fest Los Angeles!

The Los Angeles International Film Exposition, known as Filmex since its inception in 1970, was eulogized briefly at a press conference at the American Film Institute on Tuesday, but film buffs and festival loyalists were advised not to mourn.

Rising in its place on the international film festival calendar is a brand new Los Angeles event to be launched in March by the 20-year-old American Film Institute as a sort of pilot for what could become a national network of AFI-conducted festivals.

AFI Fest Los Angeles, which will be funded with a $200,000 grant from the Interface Group, a Boston-based trade show producer, will run March 11-26 and will feature a program of about 80 films. Ken Wlashin, artistic director for Filmex since 1983 and the director of exhibition programming for the AFI since 1984, has been named director of the new festival.

The event will be non-competitive, with opening- and closing-night galas, said AFI Director Jean Firstenberg. The program itself will not be announced until early February, but Firstenberg said its mix of independent American and foreign films will be consistent with that of Filmex.

The primary venue for the inaugural AFI Fest is the Los Feliz Theater on Vermont Avenue, said Firstenberg. Other films and series will be shown at UCLA as part of the university’s television and film archive program, and at the Gallery Theatre at Barnsdall Park.

While acknowledging that the AFI event would not have been possible without the support of the beleaguered and debt-ridden Filmex, Firstenberg made it clear that the AFI festival is a new venture. The institute is not assuming Filmex’s debt.

Filmex President Bill Magee said that the AFI is paying Filmex a fee for relinquishing its date on the international film festival calendar, and that the Filmex board has a two-year plan for retiring a debt that now hovers around $300,000. Magee would not detail the plan or reveal the amount Filmex was receiving from AFI.

The Filmex Society, a steady source of income for Filmex, will continue to operate ($100 membership fees give members the privilege of attending advance studio screenings, among other things). The Filmex Society privileges will be extended for the AFI Fest as well.

All of this might have happened a year ago if the Filmex board had responded to the mating calls of the AFI instead of those from the American Cinematheque. But at the urging of Filmex Chairman Jerry Weintraub, the board voted to merge with the American Cinematheque, partly on the assurance that contributions from various fund-raisers would help Filmex out of its financial hole.

After the merger was announced, Filmex was told the deal wouldn’t be approved by American Cinematheque’s board until all of the Filmex debt was retired.

Instead, what would have been the 16th Filmex last spring was canceled, and the Filmex staff was let go.

Filmex was founded in 1970, primarily on the impetus of the late director George Cukor, whose original plan was to have a festival put on by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The academy was (and is) the most logical sponsor for a major Los Angeles festival and there was initial interest in Cukor’s scheme.

It still makes a nice fantasy. A festival overlapping the Academy Awards, when more stars than there are in heaven are in Hollywood, with a film market held on the side. Call it Cannes West.

But politics and haste laid waste the Cukor plan and up popped Filmex, an independently run nonprofit festival organization with the young and enterprising Gary Essert at the artistic helm. Essert got a respected festival going, but one that was mired in administrative and budget problems that overshadowed its annual programs.

Firstenberg said the AFI is not counting on the Los Angeles festival as an income producer, either. But with the corporate sponsorship, it is expected to break even. She said plans will be announced soon for an AFI festival package that will be made available to AFI members. About 30,000 of the AFI’s 140,000 national members are in Southern California.

The theme of Tuesday’s press conference--perhaps prompted by all those years of dissent at Filmex--was collaboration. The press packet contained letters of support from politicos ranging from city councilmen to both U.S. senators from California to Gov. George Deukmejian, and Firstenberg introduced representatives from all arms of the film industry.

“For a major festival to succeed in Los Angeles, everyone in Los Angeles has to believe it is their festival,” Firstenberg said. “That includes everyone from filmgoers to film makers.”

In a separate interview, Firstenberg said that if the Los Angeles festival is successful, the AFI intends to create similar festivals in other major American markets where none currently exist.

Under the heading of “how quickly they forget,” it was interesting to note how few times the name Filmex came up Tuesday. Several speakers talked about the need for a major Los Angeles film festival as if there had never been one.

Interface Chairman Sheldon Adelson said that when he was deciding to get his company involved in a festival, Hollywood was the logical place to do it.

“There is only one Hollywood,” Adelson said. “Why isn’t there a major film festival in Hollywood?”

There was, but you can’t remember the films for the fights.

The AFI, headquartered in Washington, D.C., and operated on an annual budget of about $12 million, was created in 1967 by George Stevens Jr., Gregory Peck and Jack Valenti, among others, to stimulate interest in American films through a membership program that would include film series and discount programs throughout the country.

GREENING OF COLUMBIA: Add the film and television libraries of Columbia Pictures to that great gray stack of orders waiting for computer colorizing by Marina del Rey-based Color Systems Technology.

Coca-Cola Telecommunications and Color Systems have mounted a joint venture--Screen Gems-CST Entertainment--to distribute colorized versions of both television series and films originally done in black and white by Columbia Pictures, which is owned by the Coca-Cola Co.

Among the TV series first headed for Color System’s computer dye vats are “Ivanhoe,” starring Roger Moore; “The Real McCoys,” with Walter Brennan and Richard Crenna; “Wyatt Earp,” with Hugh O’Brian, and “Hawk,” with Burt Reynolds. First in line among Columbia movies are “The Shooting,” a 1967 Western featuring the then-minor actor Jack Nicholson; “Battle of the Sexes,” with Peter Sellers, and “The Count of Monte Cristo,” with Robert Donat.

“We want to offer these programs, which are proven successes, to a new generation of viewers in the manner they want to see them--in color,” said Herman Rush, chairman and chief executive of the Coca-Cola unit.

Whether audiences, in fact, want to see any of these films and series in artificially colored versions remains to be seen. Television ratings for the first colorized movies--”Miracle on 34th Street,” “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy”--have been high for syndicated shows. But in two independent call-in polls--one conducted nationally by “Entertainment Tonight,” another conducted locally by KTLA--the vote went against colorization.

The reason that colorization proceeds, despite the outrage it has stirred among film makers, is that syndication packagers and TV station bookers believe that viewers prefer the bonbons over the black- and-whites. In European markets, it is virtually impossible to sell the black-and-white versions.