AFI FILM FEST VIEWED AS A SUCCESS

Critical assessments aside, officials of the American Film Institute Film Fest Los Angeles say their first event was a success because it met its biggest challenge, which was to avoid following in the steps of its debt-ridden predecessor, Filmex.

“The good news is, the whole event broke even,” AFI Deputy Director James T. Hindman said. “The expenditures and revenues essentially matched.”

The festival, which ran from March 11-29, featured more than 200 foreign and American films and was attended by more than 46,000 people.

Hindman said that the festival’s gross revenues of $178,000 (in ticket sales and advertising sales for its printed program) were exceeded by direct event expenditures of $197,000. The $19,000 difference, he said, will be covered by a $200,000 grant to underwrite the festival from the InterFace Group, a Boston-based trade show producer.

Whether that leaves the AFI Fest with a surplus, however, is another question. AFI officials said the matter is complicated because the institute used a dual accounting system for the festival, with the InterFace grant being applied to “general exhibition expenses” for the entire year.

Hindman said that AFI will use that money to defray a number of “hidden costs” in mounting the film festival, including the extra hours spent by institute staffers, screening room time, film shipping costs and the salary of festival director Ken Wlaschin.

“Those costs are real to us,” Hindman said. An absolute bottom line for this year’s film festival won’t be known until the AFI completes its final year-end accounting, he said.

He insisted that the InterFace grant will cover these expenditures, guaranteeing that AFI Fest won’t have to contend with anything even remotely akin to the deficits that plagued Filmex and eventually forced it to go out of business in 1985. It still is $300,000 in debt.

If there was any one category where the AFI Fest may have fallen short, it was attendance.

More than 21,000 tickets were sold for the daily selection of films screened at the aging Loz Feliz Theater in Hollywood, said Wlaschin, who, since 1983, had been artistic director of Filmex before taking the reins of AFI Fest.

Wlaschin said another 20,000 people attended a series of free screenings at Barnsdall Park and Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Park that were designed to appeal to the city’s diverse ethnic population. About 5,000 school-aged children, he added, attended the Sugar Bear Film Fair, a three-day mini-film series sponsored by Post Cereals of General Foods Corp.

By contrast, Filmex at its height boasted ticket-paying audiences of between 60,000 and 100,000.

Wlaschin, however, defended this year’s AFI Fest by claiming that it explored territory that other major film festivals, including Filmex, had previously ignored.

“One thing it has become is a populist festival,” he passionately explained near the end of the festival. “We have had terrific feedback from the community. We are reaching parts of Los Angeles that had not been reached before when (Filmex) was held on the Westside. A large black audience came out for the “Langston Hughes” film. We had to repeat (“Machito: A Latin Jazz Legacy”) the same night because the demand was so great.”

But AFI Director Jean Firstenberg, echoing faults noted by some local movie critics, acknowledged that several technical and logistical problems must be addressed if AFI Fest hopes to create a clear identity for itself next year.

“Ken didn’t have 12 months to plan (the festival),” Firstenberg said. “He did not get the green light from the AFI board until December.”

She said the late start left no time for developing television ads or a festival logo--two ingredients that would have increased the event’s visibility. “We didn’t have the focus,” she concluded. “We have to establish a clear identity for this festival” next year.

Wlaschin, for his part, bemoaned the lack of such amenities as a Dolby-encoded sound system at the Los Feliz, while associate festival director Gary McVey said that finding an easily accessible, central location is a problem that has persisted for both the AFI Fest and Filmex.

The Los Feliz was selected as the principal screening venue because of its proximity to the AFI’s Hollywood headquarters--a choice, McVey said, that may have discouraged the once loyal Filmex fans on the Westside from attending this year. “A lot of Westsiders didn’t make the effort to come down here,” he said.

McVey explained that there are “two distinct clumps of (festival-going) people”--a Hollywood crowd and a Westside crowd. “So it’s a hard problem to solve wherever you put it,” he said.

The AFI’s Hindman said that a number of different locations are being considered, although a final decision won’t be made until early next year because most theaters find it difficult to commit themselves too far in advance.

But, Hindman said assuringly, “Much will be changed and we’ll have an earlier start. By starting now we are going to be in a whole different position” next year. InterFace Group, he added, has promised to give another $200,000 for next year’s event.