ANTHROPOS ’87 FILM FEST AT USC TO START MAY 20 : ANTHROPOS ’87 THE BARBARA MYERHOFF FILM FESTIVAL

Featuring 85 films and 18 videos from 31 nations, the inaugural program of a new film festival for Los Angeles--Anthropos ‘87, also known as the Barbara Myerhoff Film Festival--was unveiled here Tuesday.

“Anthropology is all around us,” enthused festival director Vikram Jayanti. “There are things of interest everywhere.”

“What we hope,” said Jayanti, opening the festival’s press conference at the Bonaventure, “is that this will become a permanent fixture on Los Angeles’ cultural landscape. It is a documentary festival with a cultural perspective.”

The festival, to be held on the USC campus May 20-24, honors USC anthropologist Myerhoff, who died of cancer in 1985 at age 49. The festival is being funded by proceeds from the Barbara Myerhoff Memorial Fund.

Producer-director Lynne Littman’s “Number Our Days,” based on Myerhoff’s book studying elderly Jews in Venice, Calif., won an Academy Award for short documentary for 1976. “In Her Own Time,” directed by Littman and produced by Jayanti and released in 1986, portrayed Myerhoff’s final field work, the study of Orthodox Jews in Los Angeles. “In Her Own Time”--which also dealt with Myerhoff’s imminent death--will be shown as part of the festival.

Jayanti, 31, son of an Indian father and a Russian Jewish mother, has been a member of the USC department of visual anthropology as a documentary film producer for seven years. During much of that time he worked with Myerhoff.

Films selected for showing at the festival have been divided into eight categories reflecting Myerhoff’s interests, which included women’s studies, gerontology and Jewish culture. Categories include anthropological studies as well as social issues, women’s subjects, Jewish subjects, music and poetry.

Among the offerings:

--”Born Again: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church.” The documentary is set “not in the Bible Belt but in Shawmut Valley, Mass.,” noted Jayanti. “You come out of that film understanding why they (the film’s subjects) call Walter Mondale a Communist. They mean someone who represents a secular, instead of a religious point of view. Good grief, in the film it makes sense. . . .”

--”Witness to the Holocaust.” The video documentary is based on 150 hours of footage of the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, in which, said Jayanti, “those who bore witness” are the real focus.

--”Gap-Toothed Women.” In this half-hour documentary, women ranging from model Lauren Hutton to an African tribal woman, explain what the gap in their front teeth has meant to their lives. “Although it was also shown at AFI (American Film Institute), it was too good to ignore,” noted Jayanti. “It’s funny and wise, at the same time.”

Among others depicted: a Hungarian beekeeper in “Menkereses,” a Navajo family over five decades in “A Weave of Time,” Eskimos in “Inughit: The People at the Navel of the World,” and children from around the world in the Danish film “Moment of Play.”

At the end of the festival, a prize of $1,000 will be awarded in each of eight categories. Judges will include producer Norman Lear, Rabbi Laura Geller, feminist Arlene Alda, singer Buffy Ste. Marie, Times editorial cartoonist Paul Conrad and Times television critic Howard Rosenberg.

The films will be shown from 2 p.m.-11 p.m. daily, and will cost $5 for each film or series of shorter films. A package of four tickets entitles a viewer to an additional free film. The closing program will be $15, the inaugural evening, $20.

“If nobody comes at all,” said Jayanti with a broad grin, “we are funded for a few years, and if they come in droves, hopefully, this will last forever.”

The festival closes May 24 with the awards ceremony and the showing of “Threat,” a Swedish documentary about the impact of the nuclear power-plant disaster at Chernobyl on the Laplanders of Finland. Jayanti said that the reindeer upon which the Laplanders base their entire culture--from the animals’ meat for food to their skins for making clothes and bones for tools--are now virtually gone. “This is the vanishing of a culture; instantly a culture is gone,” Jayanti said.

The festival will also offer “anthropological grazing.” Festival planners say they want their audiences to mingle and discuss their experiences--and sample cuisines from around the world. Among the offerings from caterers Two’s Company are chopped liver, fruit, brie . . . and chocolate-covered insects. Jayanti said the last item comes from southern Mexico. Asked who possibly would eat chocolate-covered insects, Jayanti grinned: “My staff will.”

Tickets are available from the USC Ticket Office, by phone at (213) 743-7111 (Visa or MasterCard accepted) and by mail through that office at P.O. Box 77941, Los Angeles 90007.