The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 21

JEfo Inquirer MAGAZIN MONDAY May 11, 1992 SECTION PEOPLE HOME MOVIES THE ARTS TV STYLE HAM Scenes at the cinema festival By Julia M. Klein INIJI'IKKKSTAKKWIMTKH magine your grown-up daughter mocking the corseted bras you used to wear the ones that held your body in an imprisoning grip i 1 I 1 1 1 and left marks when you took them off before a roomful of your closest friends and relatives. You might be a little bit embarrassed. But filmmaker Susan Seidelman's mother, Florence, just laughed and nodded vigorously when that particular confession from her daughter's world premiere showing of Confessions of a Suburban Girl exploded off the screen of the Ritz at the Bourse on Thursday night. "I thought it was terrific! I loved it!" she said The Philadelphia Inquirer MICHAEL BRYANT Susan Seidelman had no trouble filling seats at the premiere of her film, "Confessions of a Suburban Girl." People had to be turned away.

Two experts give directions on the road to making movies later of the BBC-produced documentary. And why not? Florence Seidelman has long since moved with her husband to Center City, become a reading specialist and abandoned her corsets. Anyway, what's a little embarrassment beside fame, even if it isn't much more than IS minutes' worth? After the screening, in an exuberant scene, the director's mother was bombarded by congratulations from family members and old Huntingdon Valley neighbors. None of them seemed to mind either that their whole pre-feminist way of Tiere toe 6een oversold shows and technical foul-ups, but organizers are happy with the results. Just ask the mother of one of the filmmakers.

By Joe Logan 1NC)I IKKKSTAKKWKITKH DISIIAIlllli ipiil you wanna be in pictures? Well, maybe not in them, but make them as in write, goers. The latter event was "every festival's nightmare," said Lainie Lomenzo, the festival's managing director, who appeared almost instantly at the theater to issue alternative festival passes. Despite some misinformation and disorganization, departing audience members accepted the passes with remarkable good grace, while about a third of the crowd patiently awaited the rewinding of the reel. "It's good so far," explained Reema Mewar, 25, a biochemistry graduate student at Thomas Jefferson University who had bought a 10-screen-ing pass to the festival. "I'd like to see how it turns out." The other rough spot for the festival was the sold-out premiere of Confessions of a Suburban Girl, from which even pass-holders who came to the box office hours early were turned away.

"It was just a terrible situation," said Lomenzo, who said the 106-seat theater crammed with Seidelman intimates was "too small a house for an opening film." But pass-holders who thronged the Ritz at the Bourse box office shortly before showtime were more philosophical than angry when their last-minute efforts to get seats proved futile. Told that not even his $300 World Festival Pass (nor a personal appeal to the ubiquitous Lomenzo) could gain him admittance, insurance executive and Festival Committee member Ralph Hirshorn was upbeat. "That's a good sign that the festival is doing as well as it's doing," he said, before walking down the street to see the festival's Polish offering, Escape from the "Liberty" Cinema. As of mid-afternoon Sunday, Lomenzo said, the festival had drawn 4,915 people, or a healthy 90 percent of capacity. Anecdotal evidence suggests that audiences were largely young, college-educated and film-literate, but also culturally and racially diverse particularly for films with strong ethnic themes.

See CINEMA on C.5 produce or direct feature films. You should have been at the International House at the University of Pennsylvania, where, as part of the ongoing film festival, two industry insiders offered 2 'a hours of advice Saturday in a seminar called "How to Break In, Succeed and Remain Sane in Hollywood." Sound impossible, sitting here in Philadelphia? Impossible, no. Unbelievably difficult, yes. But it can be done. Witness the success and apparent sanity of the seminar's co-moderator, Alan Gershenfeld, 29, a native of Plymouth Meeting and graduate of Swarthmore College, now earning a living in Hollywood, mostly in the production end of films (Murphy's Law, Masters of the Universe, Fool for Love, Delta Force, Year of the Gun and more).

He estimates that about 100 or more Philadelphians work in various jobs in Hollywood. The other moderator was Amy Handelsman, 36, a native New Yorker and Harvard graduate who See HOLLYWOOD on C5 life vacuous, snobby and remorselessly superficial had been subjected to gentle ridicule. "I didn't think the kids were thinking that way," said Ceil Field, a real estate appraiser and former Seidelman neighbor. "It's a real insight." The celebratory joy of the first Confessions crowd marking the success of one of their own was one of the early highlights of the first-ever Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, which will run through Sunday. But it was not the only good news for festival organizers.

From the glitzy opening-night gala to the standing-room-only crowds of yuppies, students and suburbanites who filled movie theaters all weekend long, the film bash got off to an energetic and high-spirited start. Even some oversold screenings, which forced the festival to turn away pass-holders, and a major technical foul-up a one-hour delay in Friday night's showing of the second reel of the Canadian film Masala at the AMC Palace seemed not to dampen the enthusiasm of film- The Philadelphia Inquirer RICK BOWMER Get a reference book is the advice of Alan Gershenfeld, a Hollywood producer, for aspiring screenwriters, directors or producers. Closing the book on a mystery The Library Company has solved a who-penned-it. It turns out. the anonymous author of 'Zelica, the Creole' was a Philadelphia innkeeper's daughter.

By Leonard W. Boashrrg IMJl'lKKK STAKK WRITKK during the first week of life. Breast milk II Mother's milk also contains a protein called mucin that combats a major cause of life-threatening diarrhea in infants, a team led by a Johns Hopkins researcher has reported at the combined annual meeting of the American Pediatric Society, the Society for Pediatric Research and the Ambulatory Pediatric Association. Easy money Surprise, surprise the best customers of automated teller machines are baby boomers. Twenty-seven percent of ATM users are aged 35 to 44, and 31 percent are aged 25 to 34, according to Electronic Funds Transfer Association statistics reported in American Researchers say baby boomers prefer ATMs because they save time; they're more interested in completing a transaction rapidly than in receiving personal attention from a teller.

Zi i a 'elico, the Creole, a copy of which is on display at the Library Company, is steamy story of sex and violence. The left stuff Childhood can be a real bumpy road when you're a lefty. Lefthanded children, especially boys, are treated more often in hospital emergency rooms and seem to their parents to have more accidents than their righthanded friends, University of Arkansas researchers say. The researchers will check to see if certain types of game equipment, sports or toys are more likely to be the causes of injury in this group a study that could lead to the redesign of playthings and other equipment. Take a hike Before you answer the call of the wild, consider this: A good hike can humble a good runner.

Even someone who's proud of the shape his legs are in can feel sore for a day or two unless he trained for hiking, says University of Montana exercise physiologist Brian J. Sharkey. "You are using some of the same muscles, but different portions of them." Condition yourself for long hikes by taking short hikes. Breast milk Giving premature infants a nutrient found in breast milk can significantly reduce their risk of lung and eye damage, both frequent complications of being born too soon. The researchers who reported that finding in the New England Journal of Medicine believe that the nutrient, a sugar alcohol called inositol, should be added to the intravenous solution given to premature babies kit J'D mli It's told against the background of the final two years of the slave revolt that drove the French from the island of Haiti, then known as Saint Domingue, that they had occupied since 1697.

While the atrocities and brutality on hnth sidp! during the period examined 1802-1804 are described in considerable detail, the sex is more understood than overt. But then the novel came out in 1821 in an era when novelists generally thought it more discreet to let it all be hinted at than to let it all hang out. In that era, many novelists also thought it discreet not to sign their names, especially if they were women, novel-writing not being considered the sort of thing well-bred ladies did. Zelica, the Creole, its title page declares, was written "by an American." That, too, did not necessarily commend itself to English readers; whoever heard of a really cultured American? So the novel did not make much of a splash, and before long it sank with barely a trace. Until recently, the Library of Congress owned the only See NOVEL on C8 By Marc Schogol, with reports from Inquirer wire services.

Index On theater C4 C5 C6 Radio highlights Television Dance review: American Ballet Theater Film review: The Philadelpnia Inquire JOHN CObTtLL.0 C3 "ci C8 Crisscross Music review: Research librarian Phil Lapsansky holds the portrait of the unknown lady whom he believes to be Leonora Sansay, the brainy author of the steamy novel, "Zelica, the Creole. Philly Pops.