Movie Industry Ussr

While Hollywood directors waited anxiously to see who would get the ultimate film prize this week, Soviet emigre director Boris Frumin wrestled with a more modest goal. He is hoping his recently released "Errors of Youth"--made in 1977--will be a ticket to work again as a director.

While new Russian independent filmmakers are concentrating on turning out adventure and action films, it seems that the best Soviet films to be seen in years may be emerging from the shelves of newly opened archives. Since the late 1920s, when Stalin consolidated his grip on Soviet power, stories abound of films being made and never shown. If a director was lucky, a film went to a storeroom. If he was unlucky, he went to prison or, in some cases, to his death.

They are political prisoners, branded "enemies of the people" under Stalin. They have been banished to a ramshackle fishing village in the Soviet north, where they live alongside but apart from the villagers. Their names are Luzga and Kopalych, and they are the heroes of a new Soviet film that illustrates the country's confusion after the death of Joseph V. Stalin in March, 1953, and its continuing attempt to come to grips with his legacy.

The makers of a number of U.S.-Soviet co-productions and domestic film and television projects scheduled to be shot in the Soviet Union are anxiously watching events unfold to determine whether and when they can proceed. Two Home Box Office projects are among those in limbo. "Stalin," a three-hour miniseries starring Robert Duvall, was to be shot almost entirely in Moscow, beginning Oct. 14.

Five years ago, "Stalin's Funeral" would have been a sensation. Written and directed by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Soviet Union's best-known modern-day poet, the new film depicts life under Josef V. Stalin as a nightmare, which culminated in hundreds of deaths in the frenzied crowd outside the Moscow hall where the dictator's body lay in state in March, 1953.

The Soviet film companies are buying as well as selling. The country now purchases about a dozen or more American films annually--up from 6 to 8 a few years ago. Recent titles include "Mississippi Burning," "Platoon" and "Romancing the Stone." The latter, says Sovexportfilm public relations representative Oleg M. Sulkin, proved to be "a major blockbuster--everybody had to see it."

Just as Soviet film makers were savoring the new freedom brought by the reforms of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the country's film industry has become a major battleground in the struggle between conservatives and those pressing for more radical changes. "We are truly on the front line, with every studio a virtual war front," Eldar Ryazanov, a leading Soviet producer, said at the Union of Cinematographers last week.

According to your Oct. 1st article, the latest supermarket gimmick is bonus checks and points for "loyal customers." As with trading stamps, then "store" coupons and double coupons, soon all the major chains will offer similar incentives. But if one of the supermarket chains wants to demonstrate that it truly cares about its Southern California customers, it should reschedule its receiving hours to the hours between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.

A small Laguna Hills investment firm said Wednesday that it has formed a joint venture with a Soviet film studio to produce low-budget movies in the Soviet Union. Rolan A. Bykov, president of Moscow-based All Union Movie and TV Centre, said the agreement calls for the production of 20 movies over a five-year period, with each picture budgeted at a cost of between $8 million and $10 million.

The Union of Cinematographers announced Tuesday that it has formally asked the Soviet government to review its 1974 decision to deport the dissident writer Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature, and to strip him of his Soviet citizenship.

A garish, life-size cardboard cutout of a blond-haired woman wearing a black miniskirt and silver elbow-length gloves greets the curious at an American booth at the Moscow film industry fair. "Robo CHIC: part cop . . . part machine . . .," reads the caption, "All woman!" Although the largest U.S.

If the American boycott of the Soviet film market has accomplished anything, it has put the issue of video piracy smack in the public eye at the 17th Moscow International Film Festival, which opened Monday. The boycott, launched last month by the eight largest U.S. film studios to protest widespread Soviet video piracy, has pervaded media coverage of the festival. At the festival itself, however, the boycott has not seriously disrupted the program. Two U.S.

The blood looked suspiciously like ketchup in some places and chocolate in others. The twanging musical build-up to moments of suspense could have been lifted directly from Alfred Hitchcock classics. And the female demon appeared to have snitched her black veils, lace gloves and spike heels from Madonna's closet.

A few hundred paces from the Oktyabr movie theater, where "Gone With the Wind" opened last fall to packed houses, stands a modest little kiosk that is souring the plans of U.S. film distributors to exploit the commercial potential of the vast Soviet entertainment market. Located on Arbat Street, the privately owned kiosk sells pirate videos of foreign, mainly American films. Of the list of 181 films on sale, at least 90% are U.S.

When "Taxi Blues," the Soviet Union's candidate for the 1990 best foreign-language film Oscar, premiered in Moscow last summer, extra police had to be called in to hold back the crowd, and the pleading for spare tickets began more than a block from the October Theater. Footage of the premiere went straight onto the nightly news, and the ovation in the theater lasted long after the lights came up. A Soviet film sensation had been born.

Five years ago, "Stalin's Funeral" would have been a sensation. Written and directed by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Soviet Union's best-known modern-day poet, the new film depicts life under Josef V. Stalin as a nightmare, which culminated in hundreds of deaths in the frenzied crowd outside the Moscow hall where the dictator's body lay in state in March, 1953.

The working title might be "To Russia With Net Profit." The production? Teaching Soviet film makers and lawyers the art of the Hollywood deal--including the occasional double-cross. Above the line, below the line, break-even point, pickups, backend deals, indie deals, union contracts--the whole arcane business, with its jargon, is about to be dissected for the Soviets by a top entertainment lawyer, Eric Weissmann.

The makers of a number of U.S.-Soviet co-productions and domestic film and television projects scheduled to be shot in the Soviet Union are anxiously watching events unfold to determine whether and when they can proceed. Two Home Box Office projects are among those in limbo. "Stalin," a three-hour miniseries starring Robert Duvall, was to be shot almost entirely in Moscow, beginning Oct. 14.

A small Laguna Hills investment firm said Wednesday that it has formed a joint venture with a Soviet film studio to produce low-budget movies in the Soviet Union. Rolan A. Bykov, president of Moscow-based All Union Movie and TV Centre, said the agreement calls for the production of 20 movies over a five-year period, with each picture budgeted at a cost of between $8 million and $10 million.

In the big, long, gloomy boardroom lined by dark heavy wood, the two Oscars in a glass cabinet catch the eye. They are meant to. Here at Mosfilm, the world's largest movie studio, these Oscars have assumed a special significance in the last 18 months. They represent everything Mosfilm is now working toward--international recognition, worldwide audiences and, above all, money from wherever the studio can find it.