Will Geiger

The only temperamental actor on the set was the film's aging star: a 30-year-old ambulance with a psychedelic paint job and a broken transmission. This star has no lines but is nonetheless essential to the story. After all, what is a road picture without a car?

The only temperamental actor on the set was the film's aging star: a 30-year-old ambulance with a psychedelic paint job and a broken transmission. This star has no lines but is nonetheless essential to the story. After all, what is a road picture without a car?

A Polish-made film about four kinds of love relationships has won the top prize at the 1998 Newport Beach International Film Festival. "Love Stories," a contemporary morality tale starring and directed by Jerzy Stuhr, who also wrote the screenplay, took the Jury Award for best picture at a ceremony on Thursday in Newport Beach. The Audience Award for most popular film went to two low-budget pictures that tied in festivalgoers' balloting.

What's it take to make a movie and get it screened? Five Orange County amateur movie-makers with entries in the Newport Beach International Film Festival, which starts Thursday, say inspiration and determination count more than connections or cash--none spent anything close to six figures. And one, David Sperling, spent only $300.

Twenty years ago, "Big Wednesday," the film tracing the surfing exploits of buddies Jan-Michael Vincent, Gary Busey and William Katt from the early '60s through the '70s, opened--and promptly flopped. But since that time the movie has built an audience as a cult film--and one of the very few, surfing aficionados say, to really capture the surfing life.

The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival opens tonight at 7:30 at the Directors Guild with Roberto Benabib's "Little City," a tale of romantic entanglements set in San Francisco. Among the other films available for preview are a pair of terrific, quintessentially New York movies--intimate, passionate, bristling with intelligence and vitality--screening Friday at Raleigh Studios. The first of them, Heather Johnston and Gordon Ericson's "Lena's Dreams" (at 7:30 p.m.