Soviet Film Makers Take On New Turf

Call it glasnost with vengeance.

Soviet documentary film makers, for years relegated to the role of “polite chroniclers of the times,” as film critic Sergei Muratov put it, are finally being freed to explore some of the social and political ills of their own country. The opening of the Glasnost Film Festival Monday night suggested that they relish their new role.

The three films screened at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills displayed a surprising willingness by the film makers to level criticism at the Soviet Union’s government and social structures. The first film told the bleak and violent stories of alcoholic mothers and their children, who have become wards of the state. A second documentary exposed the grim reality of the lives of a handful of young gymnasts rigorously being groomed for the Olympics.

The third film, which appeared to be the favorite with the American audience that night, depicted a group of elderly peasant women who were forced to cut down forest trees for firewood in an effort to augment their meager pensions. During this strenuous labor, the women swap their own poignant and often humorous philosophies on life--”We’ll all be equal when we’re dead,” insists one. But they also criticize the government’s pension program and express skepticism about the country’s highly touted perestroika policy.

“We think it is essential to make political films that show the sore spots of our society,” said Leonid Gurevich, a Soviet script writer and film critic who appeared on a panel of experts following the screenings. “It’s our duty. . . . No one is forcing us.”

But, Gurevich acknowledged, the Soviet Union’s new, more open atmosphere also poses a challenge to film makers. It is tempting, he noted, to hand laurels to film makers willing to criticize the system, without regard to the artistic quality of their work.

“That’s an easy kind of success,” he said. “For us, it is very important to preserve the documentary film as art.”

Ironically, the state finances these documentaries, Soviet representatives said. “It’s a mystery of the Slavic soul,” Gurevich joked.

But the funds are filtered through the country’s studios and, as a result, the government loses some control over the outcome. Once a critical film is made, the Soviets explained, it can be difficult to get it aired on TV, where in prime time the documentary may reach 70 million viewers.

Gurevich said the five-day Glasnost Film Festival pressured the Soviet government to air the documentaries that were being shown during the Los Angeles event. “One of our arguments was, ‘What do you mean--Americans are going to watch this and we can’t watch this at home?’ ” he recalled. “Several films were aired only because of the festival here.”

The festival continues tonight at the American Film Institute in Hollywood, Thursday at UCLA and Friday at UC Santa Barbara.