SOVIET FILM FEST TAKES NEW TACK; DE NIRO ON JURY

The Soviet Union opened its 15th international film festival Monday amid signs that the government, determined to polish its international prestige, for the first time has not stacked the deck in favor of Soviet entries.

Sponsors of the 12-day biennial event said that they expect higher quality in the competition as well as the judging following a shakeup in the Soviet motion-picture industry. For the first time since the festival started in 1959, foreign film makers have been invited to sit on juries. American actor Robert de Niro will be chairman of the jury for the feature-film category.

Soviet critics, in a rare acknowledgment of the heavy-handed pressure on judges in the past, said that some of the best Western and East Bloc films once were barred from consideration by narrow-minded screening boards.

“The reputation of the festival wasn’t exactly helped by the very evident desire to crown a Soviet film with one of the top prizes, at all costs,” Georgy Kapralov, a leading Soviet film critic, observed. He said that “incompetent interference” began in 1963 with the introduction of “extraneous, pseudo-patriotic considerations” in the judging of films.

De Niro, acknowledging the unprecedented invitation to serve as head of the main jury, quipped to an opening-night audience of 2,500 people that “being an actor, I accepted the role.”

Later, talking with reporters, he added, “It’s a great honor, and I’m a little nervous.”

Elem Klimov, the new head of the cinematographers’ union and a former prize winner at the festival, introduced De Niro as one of the world’s greatest actors, but noted that Soviet people have not been able to see any of his films.

“Things are changing,” Klimov said. “Now we are going to show films in which Robert de Niro took part.” He did not elaborate.

A message was received from Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who conveyed his greetings and said that in the present critical times “unity of progressive people of culture . . . is so important.”

As a result of Gorbachev’s new policy of glasnost , or public openness, a series of Soviet films, barred from the screen by censors in the 1960s and 1970s, also will be shown this year.

In addition, films of the late Andrei Tarkovsky, a director who left the Soviet Union to have greater artistic freedom, will be exhibited, including those he made after his departure.

The change in attitude is largely the result of a shakeup in the union of cinematographers, which led to the election of Klimov last year as its new director. He established a commission that cleared 30 films, once banned by the censors, for public showing in the Soviet Union.

Only 27 films were selected for the 1987 competition, compared with 45 at the last such event, and fewer prizes will be awarded so that each will have greater significance.

But more than 200 other films, submitted by a total of 110 countries and five international organizations, will be shown during the festival to give it additional public appeal. Tickets are expected to be virtually impossible for the average movie buff to obtain.

A total of 1,500 guests are expected, including such famous names as Federico Fellini, Stanley Kramer, Arthur Penn, Warren Beatty and Milos Forman.

Francis Coppola, the director of the American feature-film entry, “Gardens of Stone,” is scheduled to appear. Robert Wise, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, also plan to attend.

A special showing of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” has Snow White’ is on the program as a salute to Walt Disney.

In contrast to the glittery atmosphere at Cannes, Venice and other film festival sites, Moscow is taking a more serious approach. The slogan for the festival again is “for humanism and peace in film art, for friendship between peoples,” and it is illustrated by a poster showing a globe encircled by reels of film.

Two of the Soviet entries reflect the greater tolerance for themes that probably would have been unacceptable in the past. In the feature-film category, the Soviet entry is “Messenger Boy,” a tale about an aimless young man, out of high school and waiting to serve his mandatory two-year term in the army, as he drifts through working-class and upper-class Moscow searching for meaning in his life. It is a radical departure from the old upbeat socialist films on how communism conquers all.

Perhaps the most poignant entry is a short film entitled “Chernobyl: A Chronicle of Difficult Weeks,” photographed on the site after the world’s worst nuclear accident in April of last year. The director, Vladimir Shevchenko, who worked with two cameramen near the stricken reactor, died in March of radiation poisoning. The cameramen have been hospitalized, according to the weekly newspaper Nedelya.

Another newspaper in the Ukraine said that the film itself was contaminated by radioactive particles that are visible on the screen. The documentary was shown at a film festival in the Soviet Republic of Georgia in May but has not been released in Moscow for general viewing.

The celebrated Soviet film “Repentance,” widely regarded as an indictment of Stalin-era persecution, was not entered in the competition but will be exhibited in a special hall. Its director, Tenghiz Abuladze, will be on the feature-film jury.

Other entries in the competition include “Kangaroo,” from Australia; “Snake Path,” Sweden; “Tarot,” West Germany; “84 Charing Cross Road,” Great Britain, and “Red Pepper,” India.

Also entered are “Hero of the Year,” Poland; “The House of Bernardo Alba,” Spain; “Migrating Birds,” Afghanistan; “Love, Mum,” Hungary; “Death of Beautiful Roebucks,” Czechoslovakia, and “Jean de Florette,” France.

In addition to hundreds of movie showings, the cinematographers’ union will sponsor a clubhouse for informal meetings between Soviet and foreign film makers.

The program also promises “rock parties, jazz sessions and disco parties” for those who grow weary of film, plus a visit to the Soviet home for aged actors.