Now Playing: Newport Film Fest, Take One

Jeff Conner, real estate developer, attorney and film buff, decided he wanted to launch a film festival of his own, something in the spirit of Sundance or Toronto--or even Cannes. Why not? He had the beach for it.

So he called festival directors from Auckland to Berlin, asking for titles of films anointed as favorites by audiences and juries. Thanks to a listing in Variety, his office was deluged with unsolicited submissions from around the world. In the end, he and his assembled committee sorted through 400 movies--full-length and short-subject, documentary and drama--and narrowed the field down to 85 for the first-ever Newport Beach International Film Festival, opening tonight and rolling daily through March 31.

And what did they put together, after months of eyestrain and overseas phone calls? A festival that, for all its international flavor, has managed to uncover an eclectic array of independent films made or financed right in Conner’s own backyard.

Deep in the shadow of Hollywood, the evidence suggests, Orange County is spawning a film scene of its own. “There are five filmmakers within a 10-minute radius of my office,” Conner remarked earlier this week. “That was a nice surprise.”

The festival opens tonight with a Hollywood-style premiere of a new studio comedy called “A Weekend in the Country,” an event promised to be complete with limousines, searchlights and appearances by such cast members as Jack Lemmon, Richard Lewis, Rita Rudner and Christine Lahti. Other festival highlights will include a screening of “Caught,” a highly anticipated new drama starring Edward James Olmos, and the U.S. premiere of an acclaimed Canadian satire, “Louis 19--King of the Airwaves.”

Along the way are sprinkled the local offerings, including “Cityscrapes,” a drama directed by Michael Becker that stars Ione Skye, Donovan Leitch and Daphne Zuniga--financed by a company based in Newport Beach. “Schemes” was directed by Derek Westerveldt of Newport Beach and was filmed there. “Beyond the Screen Door,” “Fools Die Fast” and “Lightning in a Bottle” all have local connections, according to festival organizers.

Perhaps most surprising of all is the number of international films with local addresses. “Le Magique,” a drama set and filmed in Tunisia, was made by Melliti Bros. Productions, which is based in Newport Beach. Such diverse films as “Bollywood,” a spoof on the Indian film business, and “The River Chao Phraya,” a “Huckleberry Finn”-style tale filmed entirely in Thailand, also have Orange County ties.

And then there’s some local subject matter, thanks to the long-shelved “Shelf Life.” Directed by the outrageous Paul Bartel (of “Eating Raoul” fame), it features the twisted tale of an Orange County family that ducks into a backyard bomb shelter after the JFK assassination--and never comes back up.

The reasons for these films’ existence are as far-flung as their locales, but the filmmakers can be said to share a willingness to gamble and a desire to forge their own paths to mainstream success--or at least to some sign that Hollywood has noticed.

Take “Le Magique,” for example (the title is French for “The Magic”), the first feature by Azdine Melliti Fazai, an actor who lives in Newport Beach.

When his family moves to France, a boy of 10 is left behind to guard their village home until it can be sold. What keeps him going, amid his despair at being left behind, are the movies he discovers on his nightly forays into the city of Tunis, a two-hour walk away.

One movie in particular--”Spartacus”--sparks a desire to make a movie of his own with his young village cohorts as the cast. When “Le Magique” was shown at the recent Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, Times critic Kevin Thomas called it “a stunning tale of survival, alternately harsh and tender.”

Melliti, who has been an actor since 1978, came to the United States in 1980 and scored small roles in such TV series as “Cagney and Lacey,” “The Bold and the Beautiful” and “Hart to Hart.” Eventually, though, he “was kind of frustrated in Hollywood. My accent made it kind of hard to get good roles. I wasn’t interested in playing rapists and terrorists.”

He started writing screenplays and decided to direct and finance his own film--running up his credit cards, selling his beloved Mercedes and persuading five brothers, all of whom now live in the United States and work in restaurants, to loan him their life savings. He eventually wound up with--and spent--$800,000.

“Le Magique” has the feel of a personal project, and indeed Melliti says it is based on his own story. Making it was a struggle. At one point, while filming in Tunisia, he had to stop production for several months. “I basically blamed it on the weather. I couldn’t tell them that I ran out of money.”

He finally finished it in 1994. The film netted seven awards at various festivals and ultimately found a distributor, who will open it for a two-week art-house run in San Francisco next month.

So far, Melliti says, he hasn’t made any money. Still, he says, “I’m glad I made the movie. It was a great experience, even though I haven’t made a penny back in almost four years.”

And, through his Newport Beach-based Melliti Bros. Productions, he plans to make more movies. “These kinds of films. No films about violence or sex--there’s too much of that already. That’s why people love this movie--it’s a human story.”

Al Soni also lives in Newport Beach, also spent $800,000 on his first feature, “Bollywood,” also is a longtime lover of film who went overseas to make one of his own, and also plans to make more. But there the similarities end.

Soni, a native of India, makes semiconductors for a living. To make “Bollywood” (which is based on Sashi Tharoor’s well-reviewed novel “Show Business”), he hooked up with B.J. Kahn, a Boston resident who is an assistant director on films shot in Bombay, India. Made in English, shot in India and targeted at a mainstream U.S. audience, “Bollywood” gleefully spoofs the conventions of popular Indian films--the over-the-top passion that must stop short of a kiss, the stylized violence, the Hindi pop songs that break out at the most incongruous moments.

Soni says he and Kahn “used to watch Indian movies and have a good laugh, ha ha, about how ridiculous [the movies] were . . . [but] we never really had the resources to do a full movie until a few years ago.”

Soni financed “Bollywood” himself (“To shoot a film like this in the U.S. would cost you $5 million at least,” he says) and the film has made the festival circuit from Toronto to Berlin. But finding a distributor has proven tougher.

“We were obviously a lot more optimistic, but most distributors don’t want to risk too much money on ethnic films or niche films, so we have to do it ourselves, which is a long and tedious process,” Soni says.

The effort continues, as Soni pursues video and cable deals and plans to penetrate the market in India. It’s time-consuming and sometimes disheartening work, but it hasn’t dampened his interest in making another movie.

Next up, he wants “do a mainstream film for the American market”--with some Indian content, perhaps, but not as a major focus. In the meantime, “my business is computers,” and movies are “still a sideline, until I have my first success.”

For some filmmakers, festivals such as the one opening today simply provide a place for their works to be seen, and the expectations end there. Ken Frank’s animated short subject “Back to the Drawing Board” had a two-week run in Hollywood when it was completed in 1990 but has never been seen in its native county (Frank runs an production facility in Yorba Linda that does conceptual work for animation firms.)

“It’s played at several festivals--Lompoc, Santa Maria--but this is the first time in Orange County, and I’m excited about that,” Frank says.

For other filmmakers, festivals provide not only the opportunityfor an audience but a chance for industry professionals to view works and maybe--just maybe--offer a distribution deal or backing for a follow-up feature.

Festivals can be crucial to such films as “Cityscrapes,” financed by High Octane Productions in Newport Beach. Ten intertwined tales that follow 18 young adults through their lives in Los Angeles, the film will rely on festivals to gain industry exposure. This will be its second festival showing.

“We’re kind of looking forward to Newport Beach,” says director Michael Becker. “Right now the independent film scene is becoming much larger and festivals are becoming more and more important as a way to be seen.”

Some observers of the industry have argued that with the Newport Beach festival, the area festival scene is becoming saturated--what with the Palm Springs Film Festival and, in Los Angeles, the Independent Film Festival, the American Film Festival and the American Film Institute screenings. Independent filmmakers beg to differ.

“I’d have to take the stand that ‘Hey, it’s another venue. I welcome it,’ ” says Ray Cuerdo, a Brea resident who is representing a Philippine film, “Harvest Home,” in the United States. “The more, the better. I think there’s enough distinction between the Los Angeles and Orange County markets.”

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O.C. Connection

These and other films being shown as part of the Newport Beach International Film Festival have local ties. For all synopses, screening times and locations, see page F17:

“Schemes,” directed by Derek Westervelt of Newport Beach; filmed in Newport Beach

“The River Chao Phraya,” directed by Sampson Williams of Aliso Viejo

“Le Magique,” made by Melliti Brothers Productions of Newport Beach

“Cityscrapes,” has High Octane Productions of Newport Beach as executive producer

“Shelf Life,” set in Orange County