Foreign Language Films

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.

For the first time in its 65-year history, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Thursday rescinded an Oscar nomination, taking "A Place in the World" out of contention for best foreign-language film of 1992. No other film will be nominated in its place, the academy said in a Thursday announcement. Shortly after Oscar nominations were announced last week, questions were raised that the movie, submitted by Uruguay, may be more of a product of Argentina.

Perhaps there's a poetic logic to the new location of AFIFEST--or as it's more officiously known, the American Film Institute International Film Festival. When AFIFEST starts Friday--with a two-week program of 208 features, shorts and seminars from 40 countries--it will be based only a couple of blocks from the Pacific Ocean, in Laemmle's Monica 4-Plex Theatres in Santa Monica.

The president of Iceland is on the telephone, eager to talk up moviemaking. It's that way up near the Arctic Circle. Ask and the president, a three-term president at that, returns the call: "Maybe it is not well known," says President Vigdis Finnbogadottir, "but we have what we call the Iceland Film Fund, which provides up to $1 million for our filmmakers.

A group of leading German filmmakers has written an open letter in support of "Europa Europa," the film that a committee of German producers declined to submit for a best foreign-language film Academy Award. The letter, addressed to writer-director Agnieszka Holland and scheduled to be published in today's Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter, states "We deeply regret the decision" of the German Export Film Union "to not enter 'Europa Europa' for Best Foreign Film in the Academy Awards . . .

For illustrating the opposing mentalities and styles of the doves and the hawks in the war on drugs, your juxtaposition of articles March 15 ("It's a Drive as Natural as Food or Sex" by Ronald Siegel and "Some Among Us Would Seek to Surrender" by Daryl Gates) is the best yet in your series. Siegel, a psychopharmacologist at the UCLA School of Medicine, after a professional lifetime studying drugs, has logically worked from facts to a sensible conclusion (" . . .

Oscar nominations are valuable assets for foreign-language films being distributed in the United States, so politics and economics often determine which films will be officially submitted by their countries of origin. That means some of the greatest foreign-language films are never even seen by the nominations branch of the academy. The five films nominated this year are a mixed bag, in quality as well as language.

Home-video enthusiasts know that most movies currently playing in theaters will be available to them on cassette within five months to a year. Unless it's a foreign-language film they want to see. In the giant home-video business, foreign-language films are a small, specialized division.

Where did you learn about life? When did you first have a glimpse that politics could be a literal life-and-death matter, and that sex could have a sheen of sophistication? For many of us, the answers to those questions are "Z," "Jules and Jim" and a dozen other titles of provocative movies that came to us from over there. For a lucky or daring few young Americans in the Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson years, the world was discovered first-hand.