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A Community Effort Against Child Abuse : Movies: Celebrities, City Hall, companies and neighbors help the producers of a small film send a message with ‘Blackbird Fly.’

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Esther Rolle and Whoopi Goldberg donated their talents.

The entertainment industry unions waived salaries and the City of Los Angeles skipped the usual filming permit fees.

Eastman Kodak, Deluxe Labs and Panavision provided free film services.

And Cleo Lewis and Harrison Ketchum, the owners of the tiny C & H Market on Dalton Avenue in South-Central Los Angeles, as well as many of their neighbors, allowed their property and homes to be used.

The rallying point?

“Blackbird Fly,” a 28-minute drama about adolescent sexual abuse.

“We didn’t have any budget,” said co-producer and writer-director Ashley Tyler, who remains deeply impressed by the cooperation and generosity, months after the movie wrapped shooting last spring. “Beginning last January, I sent out more than 100 letters to the industry seeking corporate sponsors. In most cases,” he said, “the answer was, ‘Just let us know what we can do.’ ”

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Tyler and co-producer and wife Holle Robertson estimate that $525,000 of goods and services were donated to the film.

Now “Blackbird Fly,” which also features Rain Pryor and Garrett Morris in the cast, is about to make its theatrical debut. Beginning today, it will be shown each morning at 10:10 at the Samuel Goldwyn Cinemas at the Westside Pavilion, for free. Gary Meyer, the head of Landmark Theaters, which operates the cinemas, called the film “a really good effort that I think can help kids who see it.”

The movie also is being screened for Academy Award consideration in the short-film category in screening rooms donated by the Raleigh Studios, and will be shown Feb. 27 on the Learning Channel during prime time.

Tyler said the goal is to get the movie picked up by movie theater chains so that it will be seen around the country. So far, only Landmark has come through, he said.

In the film, Pryor, who appears on ABC’s “Head of the Class,” plays a teen-age girl who tries to free herself from the emotional imprisonment of her sexually abusive father, played by Morris. Goldberg shows up as her neighbor and piano teacher who encourages Pryor to become more independent, but it is only when the girl stops at a community center and talks with a counselor (Rolle) that she begins thinking about taking control of her life.

It was a Tracy Chapman song, “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution,” that set Tyler to thinking about writing the film in the first place. “It’s about people breaking out of old ways of thinking and standing up for themselves.

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“So often,” he said, “abuse victims don’t realize they can find help.”

At first, he wanted to present the statement as a music video, but Robertson guided him into the film format and brought her own perspective of having an incident with a would-be rapist eight years ago. “I had been sexually abused when I was a very young woman by someone not involved in my family. And my best friend as a child had been abused by a stepfather.

“Since Ashley and I have always been interested in equality issues and since we found out there were no educational tools dealing with child abuse, especially from the teen-age and minority perspective, we ended up setting the film in the black community.”

The emphasis on the teen-age abuse problem drew applause from the Chicago-based National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse. In a letter to Tyler and Robertson, the group praised the “sensitive way in which incest was treated” and the fact that the victim was a “bright, attractive teen-ager from a middle-class family.”

Robertson said that the pivotal role played by Goldberg, as the neighbor, was written to “show that people can intervene in these situations. They don’t have to be passive.”

The movie was shot on Dalton Avenue--in homes, at the C & H Market and on the street--because, said Robertson, “it reflected a nice neighborhood and shows that child abuse can occur anywhere.” Locations also were used at the nearby Children’s Institute International, which is a center for child-abuse prevention, treatment and childrens’ shelter programs.

One of the major hurdles in putting together a freebie production was arranging a shooting schedule to fit the time of the busy cast. In the case of Rolle, the arrangement required the actress, who appeared in “Driving Miss Daisy,” to work a regular five-day week, then two more days on “Blackbird.”

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But, said Rolle, who is proud of the finished effort: “It was my feeling that if I don’t do it, who will? I enjoy doing anything I can that might help. I hope it does the children some good.”

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