WHy Can’t L.A. Have a Major League Film Festival? : AFI / LA FilmFest Preview: Picking Out Goodies : THE FILMS

In the past five years, it has evolved from FILMEX into AFIFEST into its current tongue-thickening designation as the American Film Institute Los Angeles International Film Festival (AFI/LA FilmFest, for short).

It’s traveled from Westwood to Santa Monica to Los Feliz to its present home at the Cineplex Odeon Century Plaza Cinemas at Century City’s ABC Entertainment Center. But, as always, it’s a cornucopia of movies, a smorgasbord, a glut: a big, rambunctious, eclectic gathering of films (about 123 features and 70 shorts) both old and mostly new (16 major premieres) from all over the country and all around the world (as of last count, from about 45 different nations).

AFI/LA FilmFest officially commences Thursday with the invitation-only premiere night. For the public at large, it starts, in earnest, on Friday: eight movies at the Cineplex Odeon, running in three different theaters from 6:25 until midnight. (That’s the usual schedule, except on weekends, when the programs begin at noon.)

There are special programs: a six-film marathon devoted to the late, fiery innovative American film maker, John Cassavetes (April 22); a series of recent films, under the blanket title “Dangerous Loves,” scripted by Nobel Prize-winning novelist-screen writer--and one-time film critic--Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

In addition to the movies themselves, there are six in-person tributes: for director Franklin Schaffner (April 18), French novelist-film maker Alain Robbe-Grillet (Apr. 22), actor-director-poet-Vulcan Leonard Nimoy and Muppeteer and Kermitmeister Jim Henson (both Saturday) and dancing ladies Cyd Charisse (April 23) and Ruby Keeler (April 22). There are also seminars, a TV-movie retrospective and a seven-program 70th anniversary salute to cinematographers by the American Society of Cinematographers.

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Wading through all this, you may experience a dizziness, a temporary loss of balance. Impossible to see everything--unless, like the amoeba, you can separate into several beings for every showing. So how can you pick or choose?

Should you attend the Finnish documentary on Soviet rock music, “From Russia With Rock” (Friday, 10:40 p.m.) or dip and glide next door to the simultaneously shown Argentine “Tango, Our Dance” (10:45 p.m.)? Who gains your deepest loyalties at 2 p.m., Saturday: the tribute to Man Who Was Spock, the Latino Writer’s Conference or the Canadian documentary on the Philippine revolution? At 6:15 p.m., next Sunday, you have a particularly puzzling and pungent selection: a Spanish version of “Frankenstein,” the great Soviet-Armenian director Sergei Paradjanov’s musical version of a Lermontov story and a Taiwanese film set in pre-revolutionary China.

So it goes. Late night Thursday, April 20, offers the newest film by Polish master Andrzej Wajda (filmed in France from Dostoyevsky’s “The Possessed”); a Nicaraguan movie, “The Spectre of War,” described as a cross between “Platoon” and “Flashdance” and a British road comedy, “Vroom,” set in working-class Lancashire. The 8:45 p.m. slot on Tuesday, April 25, pits Swiss master Alain Tanner’s latest against a social drama from the Dominican Republic and a series of Oscar-winning shorts from the National Film Board of Canada. At 10:25-10:45 p.m., on Friday, April 21, you have three pictures running against each other that almost make up a single title: “The Stupid Years: Two Idiots in Hollywood, Afraid to Dance.”

There’s a method behind this seeming chaos or profusion. According to festival director Ken Wlaschin, AFI/LA FilmFest has two primary goals: (1) To give the Los Angeles public, and particularly local movie makers, a chance to see what’s happening throughout the world, especially in film industries whose aims and intentions deviate markedly from Hollywood norms; (2) To provide a showcase for the new American independent cinema.

Because the AFIFEST bookers go out of their way to select films which, despite their quality or intrinsic interest, have not yet found a distributor, L. A.’s Film Festival, is not, like New York’s, a program of relatively sure things: primarily recent films by top American and international directors, many slated to open as soon as the festival closes. It’s a cross between a more prodigal selection like the Chicago Film Festival (or London’s, Wlaschin venue before coming to Los Angeles) and a distributor’s showcase, like the American Film Market.

Once you understand this, it becomes easier to tolerate what some critics damn--wrongly, I think--as AFIFEST’s vagaries, excesses or dubious choices. The programming is deliberately adventurous, offbeat, chancy--and purposely rather wide-open.

Work by demanding art directors like Paradjanov, Wajda, and France’s Alain Robbe-Grillet (“La Belle Captive” on Apr. 22) stand shoulder-to-shoulder with items like “Hellbent”--a punk Faust melodrama by a rock video director who reveres Ed (“Plan 9 From Outer Space”) Wood Jr. (Saturday); “Comic Book Confidential,” which contains interviews with R. Crumb, Lynda Barry and Harvey Kurtzman; and “Ghosts of the Civil Dead” (April 27), a horrific look at prison society with script, acting and music by avant-garde rocker Nick Cave.

What are the highlights of the festival?

On the basis of four weeks of press screenings, Times Film Critic Sheila Benson recommends Theo Angelopoulos’ “Landscapes in the Mist” (from Greece: April 26), an evocative journey-tale about the search for a mythical father, and Rafael Zelinski’s low-rent maternity comedy, “Ginger Ale Afternoon” (U.S.: Saturday).

Film reviewer Kevin Thomas suggests Fernando Solanas’ lyrical tale of revolution and remembrance, “South” (Argentine: April 27), Juzo Itami’s wry sequel, “A Taxing Woman’s Return” (April 18) and Yojio Takita’s satire on modern greed, “The Yen Family” (Friday), both from Japan; Andrew Grieve’s sweeping Welsh family saga, “On the Black Hill” (British: April 19) and Huang Shuquin’s haunting study of theatrical obsession, “Woman Demon Human” (Chinese: April 23).

My own picks, are Paradjanov’s exquisitely stylized “Ashik Kerib” (U.S.S.R.: April 16); Tanner’s “A Flame in My Heart.” (Switzerland, April 25), a cool look at obsessive passion; Francesca Archibugi’s funny-sensitive look at young, unrequited love, “Mignon Has Come to Stay” (Italy: April 14); Stanley Kwan’s perfumed ghost story “Rouge” (April 15) and Alex Law’s heartfelt Peking Opera memoir, “Painted Faces” (April 16), both from Hong Kong; Merata Mita’s pantheistic melodrama, “Mauri” (April 15), and Geoff Murphy’s slam-bang chase thriller, “Never Say Die” (April 26), both from New Zealand; George Sluizer’s terrifyingly logical nightmare, “The Vanishing” (Dutch: April 21); and two films from the Marquez series: Ruy Guerra’s sensuous, cruel “Fable of the Beautiful Pigeon Fancier” (Brazil: April 16), and Tomas Guttierez Alea’s lyrical, super-romantic “Letters From the Park” (Cuba: April 15).

A festival insider who’s seen most or all of them, suggests, in addition, Derek Jarman’s “War Requiem,” “Comic Book Confidential,” “Ghosts of the Civil Dead,” Henry Jaglom’s “New Year’s Day” (U.S.: April 22), Vera Chytilova’s “The Jester and the Queen” (Czech: April 21) and Roger Spottiswoode’s “Time Flies When You’re Alive” (U.S.: April 17).

All of us here urge you to the Cassavetes marathon on noon, Saturday, April 22: a long-overdue tribute to a great and all too often neglected or underrated American film maker. It includes “Shadows,” “Faces,” “A Woman Under the Influence,” “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” and “Opening Night,” plus Michael Ventura’s sympathetic documentary, “I’m Almost Not Crazy.”