Cannes Film Festival Saluting Changes in East Europe

The Cannes film festival pays its own political tribute to the triumph of democracy in the former Communist Bloc by giving grim East European films prominence at next month’s event.

Only one East European director was short-listed last year for the “Golden Palm,” awarded after 12 days of screenings in the glamorous Riviera resort.

This time four East European directors will be up for the prize, with another two showing outside the competition.

The sinister aspects of life under the now discredited Communist regimes are the focus of most of the East Bloc offerings.

In Polish director Ryszard Bugajski’s “Przesluchanie” (The Interrogation) a woman is questioned in a police station, while Czechoslovak director Karel Kachyna explores the effect of systematic eavesdropping in “Ucho” (The Ear).

Polish director Andrzej Wajda, whose “Korzcak” is not up for the award, tells the story of a doctor and a group of children struggling to survive in a concentration camp in the 1940s.

Soviet director Pavel Lounguine’s cinematic debut--”Taxi Blues”--centers on the relationship between a cabdriver and an Israeli saxophonist in present-day Moscow.

Festival president Gilles Jacob, who sat on a panel that whittled the 326 films originally vying for a place down to 24, stressed that Eastern Europe will not be allowed to overshadow other countries’ offerings.

“We took some of the East European films because they are free and liberated now, but all parts of the world have been represented,” Jacob said.

Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, fresh from winning an honorary Oscar in Los Angeles last month, will open the festival May 10 with his autobiographical “Dreams.”