SOVIET FILMS SHUT OUT AT MOSCOW FEST

The 15th biennial Moscow Film Festival, described by its organizers as totally unrigged, ended Friday with no Soviet film winning a top award in three major categories.

A jury headed by American actor Robert De Niro gave the grand prize to Federico Fellini’s nostalgic film “Interview,” while a Walt Disney production, “The Journey of Natty Gann,” won the gold prize in the children’s category.

None of the entries in the documentary category were deemed worthy of a gold prize, according to the Soviet jury chairman, Alex Adamovitch. Instead, the jurors decided to present an honorary gold prize to the Soviet photographers who recorded the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.

A Soviet film, “The Messenger Boy,” shared a special prize with a Polish feature, “Hero of the Year,” for what De Niro’s jury termed “a new, hopeful and exciting outlet for opinion” in both the Soviet Union and Poland.

The American entry in the feature category, Francis Coppola’s “Gardens of Stone,” a post-Vietnam War drama that was received with only a smattering of applause Thursday night at its formal screening, was not chosen for any award.

De Niro, who was kissed on both cheeks by an ebullient Fellini, was the first American to be chairman of a jury at the Moscow Film Festival. His selection was described openly by Soviet officials as an effort to raise the prestige of the event, notorious in the past for favoritism to Soviet or East Bloc entries.

Along with the other jury chairmen, however, De Niro said the decisions were difficult.

“The experience hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be, but I wouldn’t want to be at the negotiating table at Reykjavik,” De Niro told a closing ceremony, referring to the summit meeting in Iceland last year of President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Alexander N. Komshchalov, chairman of the State Committee on Cinematography, known as Goskino, said at the start of the ceremony that the organizers were not aware of the names of the winners “up to this very moment.” Fellini, however, had flown into Moscow at midafternoon Friday and was mobbed by well-wishers as he took his seat in the Central Concert Hall before the awards were announced.

Komshchalov made a point, however, of saying there was no pressure on the juries, adding: “They decided by themselves and what they decided, goes.”

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, who headed the American delegation at the festival, said the victory for “The Journey of Natty Gann” over 69 other entries was the first time he could recall that an American film had won a major prize at the Moscow event. The American entry in the documentary category, “Mother Teresa,” did not receive any award. The jury in that field, however, was described by Komshchalov as “the strictest.” It refused to award a gold prize and presented only two, rather than three, silver prizes.

Productions from Mozambique and Czechoslovakia won those awards.

Fellini’s film, described by film critics of the weekly Moscow News as his “most sincere and personal work,” won a big round of applause from the 2,500 people in the audience.

The News said the picture presented “the sad thought about the irreversibility of time . . . mitigated by warmth and humor,” including scenes from some of Fellini’s most-acclaimed works.

In a brief acceptance speech delivered in hand-waving Italian, the 67-year-old Fellini said of the prize: “I feel like a schoolboy. . . . I am going to run away with it.” He gave De Niro a friendly cuff on the neck, incorrectly describing him as Italian-born (De Niro was born in New York), and far outpaced the efforts of a translator to repeat his remarks in Russian.

The children’s jury, headed by Parvati Menon of India, gave silver prizes to “The Wonder Child” from Poland, “Speak Up” from Italy and “Bach and Broccoli” from Canada.

Other major prizes went to Dorothy Uvardos of Hungary for best actress for her role in the Hungarian film, “Love, Mother,” and to Anthony Hopkins of Britain for his role in the British film, “84 Charing Cross Road.”

An international federation of film critics, known at International Kinopress, gave its first prize to the Polish film, “Hero of the Year,” directed by Felix Falk, and named a second prize in honor of Andrei Tarkovsky, the late Soviet director who left the Soviet Union in protest at censorship of his work.

The mention of Tarkovsky, described as “the brave Soviet film maker,” won loud applause. That prize was given to works by young Soviet cinematographers, with a special citation for Alexander Sakurov, a director from Leningrad.

This Soviet Union of Cinematographers gave a special award to Fellini, but its main award went to Polish film makers for their entries in the competition, including “Hero of the Year” and a documentary entitled “Wonder Child.” The Soviet cinematographers, under new leadership since younger, more liberal members took control at its last convention, have become ardent champions of Soviet leader Gorbachev’s reform policies.

Komshchalov, head of Goskino, said the festival reflected “the revolutionary changes transforming our society.”