San Diegan Finds Film Niche on Trip to Remote Kazakhstan : Screenings: Series at La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art shows movies made in the Soviet republic, which borders on China.

During several weeks traveling in the Soviet Union, studying the regional film industries, Forrest Ciesol found something he wasn’t prepared for in the large republic of Kazakhstan, on the Chinese border.

“There was a genuine new wave of filmmakers happening unlike anything else in the Soviet Union--unlike anything else in the world,” said Ciesol. “It seemed as if everyone was under 35 and making their first film. A studio making four feature films a year was tripling its output.”

One of the few Americans with an in-depth, working knowledge of the Soviet film industry, Ciesol opened a series of new Kazakhstan films at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art on May 23. Many of the films have never been screened in the United States. It continues Wednesday with a 7:30 p.m. screening of “Ya-Ha,” a 36-minute glimpse at the underground rock scene of Leningrad, and the short “Toro,” about a young boy who succumbs to peer pressure.

The 35-year-old Ciesol, who recently moved to San Diego from Denver, has made the Soviet film industry the current focus of his life. After the Kazakhstan series concludes in La Jolla on June 27, he plans to take it on the road to 10 U.S. cities, plus four in Canada.

Ciesol first became fascinated with Soviet film while working as the artistic director for the Denver International Film Festival, a post he held for five years. No longer interested in the new German and Australian films in vogue at the time, he traveled to the world’s film festivals, exploring the relationship between a country’s cinema and its cultural origins.

Personally, as well as professionally, Ciesol was looking for films that were “intellectually stimulating,” films that were “active” and “really gave something to the viewer.” He regularly visited the world’s top film festivals, including the annual events in Cannes and Berlin.

“As I learned more and more about world cinema, I became naturally attracted to Eastern European and Russian films,” he said. “I have a certain fascination with films that are being made under circumstances of repression and the metaphorical qualities that many artists, including film directors, use when in those circumstances they cannot say point blank what they want to say.”

It’s almost misleading, Ciesol soon discovered, to refer to “Russian films.” There are 15 republics in the Soviet Union, each with its own film studio and distinct style.

After attending the Moscow Film Festival in 1987, he arranged to attend the less mainstream Tashkent Film Festival the following year in the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan. The next year he took a five-week tour of the Central Asian film studios, one of the first Westerners to receive such insight.

He discovered a film industry in the midst of cataclysmic change.

“Cinema was one of the first areas to be really impacted by Gorbachev,” Ciesol said. “It created an arena for glasnost .

“He was crazy like a fox; it’s such a powerful arena.”

The transition is not complete. “The Last Stop,” which already screened in La Jolla, has not been released in the Soviet Union because it “shows unblinkingly what it is like to live in one of the remote villages,” Ciesol said.

“Glasnost in cinema, in its purest sense, is in Moscow and Leningrad, not in the republics,” he explained. “Glasnost is a little more selective in the republics.”

Yet there is little doubt that new freedom exists. For the first time, Soviet filmmakers are using films to detail the problems of their society. Films in the different republics tend to be “very folkloric,” Ciesol learned, and very specific in addressing issues within the particular republic.

“Filmmakers had seized upon the opportunity of glasnost, the opportunity to educate the populace,” he said. “They’re doing so with real popular entertainment, thrillers and mysteries, from a surprisingly Western approach.”

Despite the success last year of “Little Vera,” a surprisingly frank look at a young woman’s quest for independence that was the first Russian film to receive mainstream release in the United States, Soviet films still are not finding a broad audience in the United States. Ciesol believes it is because Soviet filmmakers are concentrating on making films for Soviets, not Americans.

“A lot of Soviet films right now are showing Soviet people things they have never seen on the screen before,” Ciesol said. “But we have seen them forever. There is nothing new in ‘Little Vera’ for us.”

Of the several republics he had visited, it was in Kazakhstan that Ciesol found unusual youth and energy, a regional film-making spirit unlike any other he had encountered in his travels. Other than low budgets, the young filmmakers shared little more than a willingness to try new and different ideas.

“Filmmakers not even finished with film school were directing films,” Ciesol said.

It was not an accidental explosion. Several young, aspiring Kazakhstan filmmakers, many of whom were working at other professions, were invited to the Moscow Film School. There they came under the tutelage of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Solovyov.

“In film schools, they are put into a group, and the group has a mentor, and Solovyov is a rather avant-garde director,” Ciesol said.

Ciesol’s favorite is “The Needle,” a thriller about a young man’s fight against the local drug Mafia, directed by Rachid Nugmanov, who also directed “Ya-Ha.” Another personal favorite is “Revenge,” directed by Yermek Shinarbaev. It is described as a look at “violence versus the life of art and peace.” Originally scheduled to conclude the La Jolla series on June 27, it may not be shown because of shipping problems in Russia. Ciesol discovered it during his most recent trip to Kazakhstan in February.

“I was very impressed,” Ciesol said. “It is a very Oriental film, revealing the influence of living 180 miles from the Chinese border.”

Besides the Kazakhstan series, Ciesol annually puts together a series of Soviet films for a festival in Vancouver. He also is organizing a look at Soviet films to screen in conjunction with the Goodwill Games this summer in Seattle.

He moved to San Diego with his “significant other,” Gail Goldman, who is coordinator of art in public places for the city’s commission for art and culture. Ciesol has several film series in the works, including more Soviet film projects in San Diego.

“I’m favorably impressed” with the San Diego film audiences, he said. “There is a reasonably sophisticated film community here.”

He wants to continue to expose Soviet films to the United States and Canada, perhaps focusing on different republics, several of which are in the news for their clashes with the Russian government.

“For me it is an opportunity to introduce not only the films but the people and their cultures,” Ciesol said, noting that people in the republics are eager to establish ties with the United States. “To me, we’re adding to the understanding of the Soviet Union and the world.”