MOVIE REVIEWS : 3 Soviet Shorts to Make Los Angeles Debut

Director Elem Klimov, the first Soviet member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will host a screening of three recent Soviet short films making their Los Angeles debut tonight at the Directors Guild Theater, 7950 Sunset Blvd.

Two of these films were available for press screening, the 50-minute “Neptune’s Feast,” in which director Yuri Mamin unveils a droll and satiric sensibility, and a 7-minute clay animation work, “Conflicts” by Garry Bardin. (The third, “20 Minutes Older,” is a documentary on Afghanistan, maker unspecified.)

Up in an almost frozen-over small town near Murmansk, the townsfolk have pretended to the ruling bureaucracy that they hold a winter festival, Neptune’s Feast, each year and have received a small stipend for its continuance. Actually, in this weather the villagers are all as slow-moving and lethargic as hibernating bears. Suddenly they’re ordered to expect a delegation of Swedish visitors who are coming to witness their winter high jinks, including a ritual dip in the icy river.

It is director Mamin’s inspired notion to stage this hastily assembled pageant like a parody of “Alexander Nevsky,” even down to Prokofiev’s score thundering in the background. The ant-like behavior of the locals in the opening, as they rush about in circles obeying conflicting orders, has a strong Gogol flavor to it. If you are a non-Russian speaker, a few of the finer details of the story may have to be taken on faith: The print is unsubtitled and will be given a voice-over translation at the showing. (Actually, it convulsed the translator at the press screening so that she gave up and laughed hysterically through whole sections of it. Presumably, this will be out of her system by screening time tonight.)

“Conflicts” has a laudable theme, the impossibility of war, as acted out by little platoon of wooden-match soldiers who chop each other up over niggling boundary disputes. While it’s heartening to see pleas for peace breaking out all over Soviet screens, too, honesty compels me to say that this may not be clay animation’s finest hour. There are far more electrifying examples of Soviet animation.

Tickets for the 6:30-8 p.m. screening are $20. For further information contact the American-Soviet Film Initiative at (213) 456-6144.