Abroad Appeal

By ZAN DUBIN

March 25, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The Academy Awards are over, so it’s time for the Goyas, Spain’s Oscars and one selling point of the fourth Newport Beach International Film Festival, which opens today.

Hoping to better serve the area’s booming Latino population, fest planners have nearly doubled the number of Spanish-language films they’ll show in the Festival del Cine series, now in its second year. And, for the first time, the Spanish-language movies will screen primarily at Teatro Fiesta, in mostly Latino downtown Santa Ana.

One of those, the 1998 psychological thriller “Open Your Eyes,” directed by Spain’s Alejandro Amenabar, fetched 10 Goya nominations and was named best picture at the Tokyo Grand Prix last year.

“One of the biggest improvements this year is our Festival del Cine” series, which encompasses 12 movies--up from seven last year--from South America, Cuba, Mexico and Spain, said festival executive director Jeffrey Conner.

“Most festivals,” added Robert Cano, coordinator of the Festival del Cine component, “get maybe two to four Spanish-language films, if they’re lucky. We really wanted to bring these films home to their community.”

In another first that targets the county’s Asian community, films in the fest’s annual Asian Cinema Kaleidoscope series will screen in Garden Grove, at the Four Star Cinema, near Little Saigon, where most of the county’s 200,000 Vietnamese and Vietnames Americans live.

“We want to invite participation from diverse ethnic groups,” said Andrew Le Hoang An, coordinator of the Asian series. “We feel that sometimes Newport Beach”--which is 93% white, according to the most recent census--”can be a little intimidating” to non-whites.

About 112 films--features, shorts and documentaries from 23 countries--will be shown during the event. Other screening sites are three Edwards complexes in Newport Beach and one in Costa Mesa, and Captain Blood’s Village Theater in Orange.

Young by film fest standards, the Newport Beach event is struggling to work out kinks and build recognition, although last year’s attendance of 14,900 reached an all-time high, Conner said.

This year’s films, although the vast majority are U.S. productions, include entries from Canada and Western Europe. Many are world or U.S. premieres.

Conner, a lawyer and film buff who doesn’t speak Spanish, initiated the Cine series last year. This time, in an effort to enhance the series, Conner hired Mexican-born Cano, who speaks Spanish, English, French and Italian and has programmed Spanish-language films at festivals in Long Beach, Washington, D.C., Chicago and London.

A banker by profession, Cano volunteers his time, as do all festival staffers, Conner included.

“I have a big passion for these films that otherwise [might] never see the light of day,” said Cano, a Westminster resident. “And film is such a universal, powerful medium.”

Cano saw “Open Your Eyes” in Utah at the Sundance Film Festival, where it had its world premiere last year. Bowled over (“It totally involves you,” he said), he pursued its distributor and scored a screening.

He hopes that the array of films in the Cine series provides different points of view on issues from teen angst to the pains of growing older.

The latter is explored in “La Paloma de Marsella” (also known as “Take It or Leave It”). The film, directed by Mexico’s Carlos Garcia Agraz, stars some of the country’s most accomplished actors, such as Rosa de Castilla, German Robles and Mercedes Pascual, Cano said.

“It’s based in a retirement home and deals with the trials and tribulations older people go through,” he said, “but it’s done with a lot of insight and care. It’s a very empowering film.”

As does Cano, Asian series coordinator Le gravitates toward offbeat, sometimes untried cinema, calling his taste “anti-bourgeois.” He’s been with the Newport Beach festival since the beginning and last year attended others in Canada, Thailand, Korea and Taiwan looking for material.

“Be There or Be Square,” a world premiere from China, and “Fated Vocation” and “Falling Up, Waking Down,” both U.S. premieres from Vietnam and Taiwan respectively, are among the films Le recommended to the festival’s selection committee.

“I like to encourage first- or second-time directors,” Le said, “and give them a chance to exchange ideas with the local filmmakers and create a name for themselves in the festival circuit.”

Last year, neither the fest’s Asian- nor Spanish-language films were as well attended as were its other movies, Conner said.

To address that, Conner has invited film casts and crews and foreign consulate officials to post-screening galas, open to the public for $20 each. He’s also beefed up publicity efforts.

Santa Ana College is spreading the word at its main campus and at its half-dozen satellites, and 10 area Spanish-language weeklies have written articles or plan to, Cano said.

“The reaction has been ‘Thank you! It’s about time we have this kind of film festival in our community,’ ” he said.

Still, Conner said, without a bigger budget he can’t afford the kind of widespread advertising and promotion he’d like. The nonprofit festival has maintained last year’s budget of about $150,000, most of it donated by corporate sponsors, one of which is The Times Orange County. Conner would like to see that figure double.

Conner stresses, as he has since the festival began, that it’s going to take time to build awareness.

“There wasn’t any concept whatsoever [in Orange County] of what a film festival was all about when we started this,” said Conner, who co-founded it with associate director Michelle Parsons.

Star power helps, of course. Martin Sheen stars in the festival’s opening night film, “Storm”; Cuba Gooding Jr. stars in Friday’s thriller “A Murder of Crows.”

“Storm,” an action-adventure picture, doesn’t have a big name at the helm--it is director Harris Done’s first major film. But Done is an established Hollywood cinematographer and has local-boy-done-good appeal, Conner said. Done was raised in Orange County, and his 1997 Newport film fest entry, “Sand Trap,” won the audience award that year.

Plus, “we look for something that’s fun and that appeals to a wide audience for opening night,” Conner said, describing it as PG-13-equivalent.

Logistical snafus continued to dog the festival last year, causing some delayed screenings or substitutions when films listed in the program didn’t arrive in time.

But, as Conner has said, the event is now attracting more sophisticated filmmakers who can afford to print more than one copy of their movies. He’s also gotten stricter: If entrants don’t send all the proper paperwork, they’re dropped. So far this year, he said, nothing’s fallen through.

To some extent glitches come with the film-festival territory, Conner said.

“No matter what you do, it’s never a perfect system, because even after the schedule is printed, someone will call and say ‘My print was just eaten by termites in Sri Lanka, and I need to get the other print from Japan.’ ”

And, he added, some audiences have a thing against independently made or foreign films. They might have an aversion to subtitles or to the non-Hollywood pace or conventions of indie productions. That kind of thinking only serves to motivate Conner.

“The thing I harp on constantly is that you have to go and see these films,” he said. “Even if you only go once and say, ‘I couldn’t can’t stand it; I’ll never go again,’ so be it. But nine times out of 10, people go and say, ‘That was just wonderful.’ ”

Even if a director or writer’s skills are lacking, he added, many of the fest’s films open a window on unfamiliar lands and cultures.

“They give you a chance,” he said, “to go somewhere you’ll probably never go.”

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