Honoring Makers of Foreign Films : Movies: The annual symposium/party for best foreign-language film nominees has become one of the Academy’s most festive traditions.

For over 20 years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has devoted the Saturday before the Oscar ceremonies to honoring the makers of its nominees for best foreign language film. A morning symposium, open to the public, at the Academy’s Beverly Hills headquarters, is followed by an intimate lunch at Le Dome hosted by the directors’ branch. Nominees then receive plaques during a cocktail party in the academy’s lobby.

Inaugurated by director George Cukor, this annual ritual has become one of the academy’s most festive and civilized traditions.

Saturday’s two-hour symposium, moderated with wit and briskness by director George Schaefer, was one of the liveliest in memory, with all four directors of the nominated films participating wholeheartedly. The four were Russia’s Nikita Mikhalkov, Belgium’s Stijn Coninx, France’s Regis Wargnier and Germany’s Helmut Dietl.

They represented, respectively, “Close to Eden,” a celebration of a pastoral way of life threatened with extinction; “Daens,” a biographical epic centering on an activist priest and his labor movement of a century ago; “Indochine,” another epic, one in which the destinies of two women are interlinked with the crumbling of France’s colonial empire in Southeast Asia, and “Schtonk,” an outrageous, hilarious satire of Hitler nostalgia inspired by the scandal surrounding his faked diaries. In her opening remarks before a packed house, writer Fay Kanin, who is the chair of the academy’s foreign language film award committee, pointed out that all four directors were involved in the writing of their films.

All the directors quickly agreed that national cinemas everywhere were threatened by the dominance of American movies. (Both Coninx and Wargnier said they turned down tempting opportunities to make their films in English.)

“It’s a catastrophe,” said Mikhalkov, the only filmmaker who relied on an interpreter. “It’s as if the Americans were buying a Renoir painting, paying $10 million, for the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and then the U.S. in return sent to France ‘Rambo 7’ and made $15 million off it. The Americans get the Renoir, plus $5 million!”

Following clips from the four nominated films, Schaefer revealed that they were among 33 entries, most of which he said were “rather traditional in form.” He cited three exceptions, including the French-Canadian “Leolo,” a bold and harrowing study of a brilliant child growing up in a crass, crazed blue-collar Montreal family. He reckoned that 25 of the entries were set in comparatively modern times and that, while there was no overriding theme this year, “the family unit was a big item,” there was “much less adolescent romance” and a substantial number of films dealt with lovers separated by barriers of every sort. He described as “wonderful” the fifth nominated film, “A Place in the World,” which was disqualified because the Academy decided it was more a film from Argentina than Uruguay, which had submitted it after Argentina failed to do so.

Mikhalkov spoke of the challenges of filming on the steppes of Mongolia with non-professionals, working only from a five-page script outline--”without hot water, telephones or a fax. I shot 68,000 meters of film without seeing any of it throughout the shoot.”

Wargnier revealed that Deneuve turned down his first film but agreed to do “Indochine,” which brought her a best actress nomination, on the basis of his five-sentence description of it.

Coninx said he fought to maintain a true Flemish spirit for his film while of necessity making it as a co-production with France and Holland--and filming in Poland, apparently the last remaining European country with antique textile machinery.

The irrepressible Dietl, who allowed that “a German comedy is almost a contradiction in terms, like planting palm trees in the North Pole,” stated that when the federal government’s funding commission predictably turned his film down, he got it to reconsider, saying, “I will cry out loud and tell everybody why you don’t give it!”

During lunch at Le Dome, Arthur Hiller, president of the Directors Guild, urged the foreign visitors to support the guild’s push for artistic-rights legislation, designed to protect the integrity of every kind of film, foreign and domestic, shown in the United States.

Billy Wilder, a loyal attendee at the annual lunches, typically had the last words of wit and wisdom. “I lost 15 nominations and won six,” said Wilder. “It’s not a matter of life and death. If you don’t win, that doesn’t mean you will have to start selling maps to the movie stars’ homes. And if you win, I give you a wonderful title for your next film, ‘Crying Game II.’ ”