Festival Focuses on Cents and Sensibilities

Santa Clarita, of all places, will be staging the world premiere of a new movie Tuesday night, but nobody’s expecting search lights and limos, movie stars and paparazzi. It’s not that “A Prayer in the Dark” is a small film, but it’s not a big film either.

This USA Network production, starring former Wonder Woman Lynda Carter, is destined for the small screen. The plot concerns a Quaker town that relies on its faith, wits and pacifism to resist the invasion of some escaped convicts.

The uplifting story line made it a perfect fit for the Santa Clarita International Film Festival (SCIFF), an event that could get the Bob Dole seal of approval. SCIFF rules prohibit all the usual ingredients of those nightmares of depravity, such as profanity, frontal nudity, gratuitous sex and violence.

The key word, SCIFF organizers say, is gratuitous, for “A Prayer in the Dark” certainly has its share of violence. As executive director Chris Shoemaker puts it: “There are explosions, but no flying body parts.”

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“No flying body parts” might well sum up the sensibilities of SCIFF, which this week is making its third appearance after a one-year hiatus. The timing is excellent and the setting is perfect. Drive up Interstate 5, exit Magic Mountain Parkway and head east. Soon you’ll find the 5-year-old Valencia Town Center shopping mall and 10-screen Edwards Cinemas. What better place to stage a film fest that promotes family-oriented entertainment than a prototypical multiplex in a prototypical suburb just a short drive from Hollywood?

To be more precise, SCIFF has booked Edwards’ screen No. 10. Small films you’ve never heard of--”Hasten Slowly,” “Getting It Right,” “The King’s Falcon”--are thus competing for attention against such heavyweight productions as “The English Patient” and “Jerry Maguire.”

But that’s OK, because SCIFF seems comfortable with the role of the underdog. Today, SCIFF will be screening a couple of heavyweights of its own in “West Side Story” at 2 p.m. and “E.T.” at 5. Even so, organizers brighten at the notion that theirs is the little film festival that could, chugging uphill in the fight to promote the kind of wholesome cinema the entire family can enjoy.

The festival is the brainchild and labor of love of a small group of Santa Clarita residents, including Shoemaker and his wife, Suzanne, and their friends Mitch Matovich and his wife, Patte Dee. It was a good idea when it began in 1993 and is perhaps a better idea now, as debate continues over the meaning of “family values” and Hollywood’s influence on American culture. “The climate is perfect for what we’re doing,” says Dee, the program director.

SCIFF has grown every year. Shoemaker says that this year, especially, the festival succeeded in courting interest from the mainstream film industry. Among the special events is a screening of the critically acclaimed 1996 film “Fly Away Home”; the presentation of a Life Achievement Award to Robert Wise, producer of “West Side Story” and “The Sound of Music”; and a discussion featuring “E.T.” star Dee Wallace Stone. On Monday night there will be an autograph party featuring a group of child stars.

The festival, meanwhile, is trying to live up to the “international” in its name. Shoemaker was discussing a Czech entry called “The Princess from the Pond” and a German film called “The Music Box” when two special visitors arrived.

One was Sherwood Hu, a young actor and filmmaker who divides his time between Los Angeles and the People’s Republic of China. Hu was accompanied by Huang Shixian, a professor at the Beijing Film Academy and, according to Shoemaker, one of China’s most influential film critics.

Only since 1994, Shixian said, have American films been shown widely in the People’s Republic. Last year, he said, nine Hollywood productions accounted for 40% of the box office, with “The Bridges of Madison County” leading the way. China itself, meanwhile, produced 144 films--and claimed only 45% of the box office.

Shixian is expected to participate in some of the panel discussions.

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Although SCIFF is nurturing its Hollywood ties, small-budget productions may better capture the spirit of the festival. “Common Ground” was made with grant money by a group of Pacoima Middle School students. “The King’s Falcon” is a 22-minute film based on a medieval legend that was financed, produced, directed and written by Deborah G. Hofstedt.

“Francois Truffaut is an auteur,” Hofstedt says, laughing. “I’m just me.”

A Santa Clarita resident, she considers herself a homemaker first, a filmmaker second. Married to a Disney animator and the mother of three children, she is a Sunday-school-teaching Mormon who studied screenwriting at Brigham Young University. Among her credits is the screenplay for “Seasons of the Heart,” a film produced by a Utah company and marketed to a Christian audience.

After screening “The King’s Falcon” for a visitor, Hofstedt told how she borrowed against her savings to finance the film. It is, she says, the centerpiece of a planned trilogy of tales, all with a moral that parents can discuss with their children. There’s nothing overtly religious in the tale, but so far it’s only available in Mormon bookstores. Hofstedt is hoping to sell it in other Christian markets and schools.

She shot in six days in a national forest outside Salt Lake City. “It cost a lot less than they make a TV commercial for--and those only last a few seconds,” she says.

Meanwhile, she says, her 7-year-old minivan “is falling apart.” Her kids, she says, keep bugging her to buy a new one.

“I tell ‘em we’ve got ‘The King’s Falcon’ instead.”

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311 or via Internet to scott.harris@latimes.com. Please include a phone number.