VALLEY WEEKEND : OUTINGS : Growing Into the Part : Star Is Rising for Santa Clarita Valley’s International Film Festival

Sundance it ain’t.

The Santa Clarita Valley International Film Festival doesn’t cause the Valencia Hilton to sell out months in advance or turn Valencia Boulevard into a parking lot full of cineastes. No one has to get up at screenings and beg the assembled honchos to turn off their cellular phones.

Not yet. But director Chris Shoemaker believes that it’s only a matter of time until the home-grown film festival, which starts Friday and continues through Sept. 28, is as big as Telluride, Toronto, San Sebastian and other major fests.

“Sundance started with just a couple of hundred people showing up,” Shoemaker points out. And his faith isn’t shaken by the fact that the name-brand film festivals have multimillion-dollar budgets and professional staffs, while the Santa Clarita venture makes do with volunteers and less than $100,000 a year.

The first Santa Clarita Valley film festival drew 4,000 people last March despite the quake, and it has already grown dramatically, Shoemaker says. Film submissions have increased fourfold, to more than 75. Several of the 28 movies that will be screened are currently making the international festival circuit, including Dean Hamilton’s “The Road Home,” a he’s-not-heavy-he’s-my-brother film with teen heartthrob Will Estes, that is the festival’s closer.

Besides more films to choose from, the second festival reflects important new liaisons, Shoemaker says. The Producers Guild of America has become a sponsor and participant, as has CalArts, which is known internationally for its superb animation program. Even the festival venue has been upgraded, from last year’s discount movie house to a screen at the spiffy Edwards Valencia 10 in the Valencia Town Center.

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Another step forward, Shoemaker says, is this year’s screening of the 13 finalists in the annual student film competition sponsored by the Producers Guild. The short films were made at UCLA, USC, New York University and other top film schools. And since young filmmakers know that a festival prize can make their reputations overnight (who had heard of Edward Burns of “The Brothers McMullen” before Sundance?), many have added Santa Clarita to the list of festivals it couldn’t hurt to apply to.

“I’m already getting calls from students who say ‘I missed this year, but I want to get in for next year,’ ” Shoemaker says.

Inevitably, participation by talent from A-list schools has piqued industry interest in the festival. “All of a sudden, studios find out there’s this film festival doing student projects, and they start coming out,” Shoemaker says. “Our phones are ringing off the hook this year.”

What distinguishes Santa Clarita from other festivals, for good or ill, is that it is strictly G-rated, or at least PG-13. “We are still the first and only exclusively family film festival,” Shoemaker says. Animated films have been an emphasis from the start. And while some of the festival’s movies may feature fleeting nudity and references to sex, you are not going to hear the F-word or see anyone doing amateur surgery with a chain saw. There won’t be any incest comedies in the “Spanking the Monkey” vein, either.

As Shoemaker puts it: “We don’t expect to have any Quentin Tarantino.”

The festival’s commitment to wholesome entertainment has obvious appeal for studios with a Mormon emphasis, such as Utah-based Leucadia Films, which submitted three movies, and Feature Films for Families, which entered one. But Program Director Patte Dee emphasizes that the festival has no religious or political affiliations. Only one of the films to be screened has overt religious content. “There must be 20 references to Allah in the animated film from Kuwait, ‘Salam’s Journey,’ ” Dee says. Shoemaker, too, says that the festival does not seek out religious products. “We’re really an artistic enterprise here.”

Family is as loaded a term as you’ll hear in America today, and Shoemaker is quick to say that the festival uses it in the broadest sense.

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When some people hear family entertainment, he says, “they immediately feel there’s going to be no conflict, that it’s going to be sugary sweet.” Not so. The film festival would love to have a “Mrs. Doubtfire” or a “Shawshank Redemption,” says Shoemaker, an actor, director and producer between festivals.

Nor are all the films about families. “You may not walk the story line with a family through the film,” he says, “but it’s a story line that will appeal to families.”

Last year, the Santa Clarita festival gave its first lifetime achievement award to legendary animator Isadore (Friz) Freleng, who died May 26 at the age of 89. The award was named the Friz to honor Freleng, who created classic cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny, Sylvester and Tweety, Speedy Gonzales, Yosemite Sam and, after he left Warner Bros., the Pink Panther.

This year, the Friz for lifetime achievement in animation will go to Joseph Barbera, co-founder, with Bill Hanna, of the Hanna-Barbera studio in Universal City. Hanna and Barbera won seven Oscars for the brilliant, manic Tom and Jerry cartoons they made over two decades at MGM. And when the major studios shut down their animation departments in the 1950s, they almost single-handedly invented a new industry--TV animation.

The 84-year-old Barbera, who last year published his autobiography, “My Life in ‘toons,” will be honored at the festival’s awards banquet Tuesday.

Filmmaker Stanley Kramer will also be honored for lifetime achievement. According to Shoemaker, Kramer was chosen, in part, because of his willingness to take courageous stands on important issues in such films as “High Noon” (1952), which he produced, and “The Defiant Ones” (1958), “On the Beach” (1959), “Judgment at Nuremberg” (1961) and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (1967), which he produced and directed. Kramer, who is 81, also made the much admired comedy, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” (1963). The movie, a virtual catalogue of great comics, will be screened Tuesday at 5:30 p.m.

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The festival officially opens Friday at 8:15 p.m. with the Canadian film “Born Wild,” starring Brooke Shields, Martin Sheen and David Keith. Shields plays an American TV producer who goes to Africa to document the work of a conservationist, played by John Varty, who also co-directed with Duncan McLachlan. Where “Born Free” had a charismatic lion, “Born Wild” has a pair of adorable orphaned leopard cubs.

The festival closes Sept. 28 at 7:30 p.m. with the U.S. premiere of “The Road Home,” a Canadian-made feature starring Charles Martin Smith, Will Estes, Kris Kristofferson, Dee Wallace Stone, Mickey Rooney and Danny Aiello. Director Hamilton and Estes, co-star of the WB series “Kirk,” will appear at the screening.

The Santa Clarita Festival will feature a screenplay competition, workshops on acting, animation and producing, tours of local movie studios and other events. But often it is celebrity appearances that fill festival seats.

His ability to draw a crowd is the only reason the festival is co-sponsoring an appearance Wednesday at the local Target by long-haired model, Fabio. Dee says, in his defense, that Fabio is as squeaky clean as the festival itself. “Fabio has never done anything off-color,” she says. “Women may think R-rated. . . .”

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DETAILS

* WHAT: Santa Clarita Valley International Film Festival.

* LOCATION: Most screenings are at Edwards Valencia 10, Valencia Town Center, 24201 W. Valencia Blvd., Santa Clarita.

* WHEN: Friday-Sept. 28.

* PRICE: $3 per screening for most films. Tickets for the final awards banquet Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Odyssey Restaurant, 15600 Odyssey Drive, Granada Hills, are $50.

* CALL: (805) 257-3131.