SOLD-OUT PROGRAM : NEW YORK FILM FEST OPENS TONIGHT

The banners are hanging outside Lincoln Center, the protective canopies and police barricades are readied for a parade of stars and fall appropriately fills the air as the film community here awaits tonight’s gala, celebratory opening of the 25th New York Film Festival --still this city’s pre-eminent film event and arguably the second-most important film festival in the world, after Cannes.

The two-week international festival is scheduled to open with Soviet director Kikita Mikhalkov’s Italian-made film “Dark Eyes,” starring Marcello Mastroianni, who is expected to be among the black-tie audience of 2,700 in Avery Fisher Hall.

The festival closes Oct. 11 with “House of Games,” directed by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter David Mamet. It is due to be released by Orion Pictures later this fall.

The festival has had its good years and its bad, its admirers and its detractors, its placid film programs and its controversies. No longer can the festival claim a corner, as it once could, on introducing American independent and foreign films.

Even so, this year’s program of two dozen films sold out sooner than usual.

Most of the directors and many of the stars in the films slated to be shown are expected here from the distant corners of the world. Nearly 500 members of the press, about 20% of whom come from outside New York, already have descended for the ritual of press screenings and question-and-answer sessions held outside the regular festival schedule. And it was very difficult this week to find anything but warm support for the festival from among those who work in and around the film business here.

“We’re all a bit more sentimental than we like to think and so we’re probably being given some special indulgence because we’ve been around 25 years,” said Richard Roud, the director and guiding force behind the noncompetitive annual event since its inception in 1962.

“Actually, very little has changed,” he said. “We had a very good idea at the beginning to bring 20 or 25 of the best films from around the world each year to New York, and we’ve stuck to it.”

Sponsored and subsidized since 1969 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the festival, budgeted this year at $560,000, continues to be accessible to the public with tickets ranging from $6 to $8.

“The New York Film Festival allows us to peek at films we might not otherwise ever see,” said New York Times film critic Vincent Canby. “This year’s program has yet to prove itself, but the festival’s record to date isn’t bad.”

Over the years, the festival has introduced to American audiences the work of such foreign film makers as Roman Polanski, Eric Rohmer, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Milos Forman, as well as Americans Robert Benton, Terrence Malick and Martin Scorsese. It has provided a screening for important writers who turned to film making, such as Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag and, this year, Mamet.

Festival films have not always provoked the controversy of Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris” in 1972 or Jean-Luc Godard’s “Hail Mary” in 1985. But the festival has supported such directors as Satyajit Ray and mainstream American directors, such as Sidney Lumet, Arthur Penn and Jonathan Demme, when their films stood little chance of finding commercial success.

In particular, the festival has provided a home for American documentary films, especially those containing controversial subject matter that would be hard-pressed to find a home in theaters or even on television, such as this year’s haunting “Radium City.”

“The festival provides a very, very good launching pad for certain kinds of films that need to reach the public through the national media that see the films here,” said Russell Schwartz, president of Island Pictures, distributor of “Dark Eyes,” as well as last year’s festival opener, Jim Jarmusch’s offbeat American film “Down By Law.” Referring to the fact that “Dark Eyes” was seen last spring at the Cannes Film Festival and more recently at the Toronto Film Festival, Schwartz cited the special prestige that comes from being anointed by the New York festival and its audience.

Schwartz and other distributors, as well as publicists, acknowledged this week that they would consider other, more obviously commercial films inappropriate for the festival, because they are likely to find their broader audiences on release around the country. They also conceded that marketing strategies can be a deciding factor in whether or not films are made available to the festival.

“I don’t know that we have that much effect on a film’s distribution,” said Roud, noting that this year, as usual, only about half of the festival films already have American distributors. “But I do think we give an extra push, and we certainly provide prestige and a lot of free publicity.”

Historically, according to Roud, the festival has encountered difficulty obtaining American films, especially Hollywood studio films, because release plans have been made far in advance of the festival selection process, and have situated the films sometime outside the fall festival season.

The festival also has carried an art-house connotation that Roud and others here this week called a myth. They cited recent festival films such as Lawrence Kasdan’s “The Big Chill,” and Francis Coppola’s “Peggy Sue Got Married” as films that did well both at the festival and in commercial release.

Roud recalled this week that the festival initially met with resistence by both the New York filmgoing public, who now so enthusiastically support the annual event, and the film establishment.

“The public didn’t think we needed a festival to (see) good films in New York, and the studios just didn’t pay any attention to us,” said Roud. “Obviously, these attitudes have changed a great deal.” He pointed out that one-third of the films in this year’s festival are American-made--more than in any previous year--including Taylor Hackford’s feature-length documentary about Chuck Berry “Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll” from Universal.

“We’ve remained pretty constant and I think we’ll continue to,” said Roud, groping for a reason for the festival’s long life. “Maybe it has something to do with Lincoln Center--all that marble and wood--and with the fact that it’s become an event . . . but I think it really has to do with the audience that has been built over the years. They really love or really hate the films, but they remain enthusiastic and they are wide awake.”