FLICKS FILM AND VIDEO FILE : Importing Culture : The Mayfair Theater is making a move to foreign films. The Ventura Arts Council is involved in the effort.

Ventura’s Mayfair Theater, most recently a venue for general release movies, will turn to first-run foreign films beginning Feb. 8. The new venture will kick off with a showing of “Madame Bovary,” a Golden Globe nominee for best foreign film.

The move to foreign films is a joint effort by Starplex Management, which runs the theater, and the Ventura Arts Council. Council Director Laura Zucker, who moved here from Los Angeles County last year, said she’s had foreign films in mind for some time.

“Literally from the first week I arrived, I’ve been trying to reach people running the Mayfair to create such ongoing programming,” said Zucker, “but they really wanted to make a go as a general release theater.”

But things didn’t go.

“It was OK, but nothing grand,” said Barry Hartsfield of Starplex. “We were approached by many different people for us to show foreign films, but not knowing demographics-wise how the area was, rather than just dabble in it, we wanted to kind of check into it.”

Opening night will be a $10-per-person affair with dessert, coffee, searchlights and possibly live music, and Zucker said she expects a sellout.

To aid the theater operators in the longer term, local arts organizations have offered their mailing lists so that the Mayfair’s operators can aim their marketing at about 20,000 culturally inclined Ventura County residents.

There is also talk of linking the theater at 793 E. Santa Clara St. with a downtown restaurant for a dinner-movie package.

“The Mayfair Theater is an important component if we want to see downtown as a cultural center,” Zucker said. “The bottom line is that this is a commercial enterprise, it’s not nonprofit. If the attendance is there, it will stay alive. If people don’t attend, it will go away.”

“Madame Bovary” is expected to run for about three weeks. The regular daily admission will be $6 general and $4 seniors. To reserve tickets for the grand opening, call the Ventura Arts Council office at 653-0828.

Everyone, it seems, wants to be first at something. And now Learning Tree University is counting on that idea to fill a new class called “Sneak Previews with David Sheehan.”

Sheehan is the entertainment editor at KNBC Channel 4 in Los Angeles. Beginning next Tuesday and continuing weekly through Feb. 11, students will join him at the Agoura Hills Mann multiplex to view sneak previews of upcoming general releases.

“Generally speaking, the movies will be shown about two weeks in advance (of the release date),” said David Webb, who created the class.

Webb said the first film probably will be the Fox production “Shining Through,” which stars Michael Douglas and Melanie Griffith and is scheduled for official release Jan. 31. Other titles are uncertain, Webb said, but “Hard Promises,” starring Sissy Spacek, also is on the course’s tentative list.

Sheehan will lead discussions after each movie, and offer “some background on the movie itself, or the movie makers and the actors involved,” he said.

The course costs $65 per person or $115 per couple, plus a $6 registration fee. For more information, call Learning Tree’s Thousand Oaks campus at 497-2292.

On Sunday, the Ojai Film Society will show “Angel at My Table,” a film made in New Zealand, directed by Jane Campion and released last year. The story, drawn from the autobiography of writer Janet Frame, follows a woman’s life from childhood through adulthood, including her eight years in a mental institution after a doctor’s misdiagnosis. Rated R. The show begins at 4:30 p.m. at the Ojai Playhouse, 145 E. Ojai Ave. Admission is $6.