FILM/SNEAK PEEK : IMAX'S ELEPHANT DRAMA.

Byline: - Bob McCarthy

Michael Caulfield didn't want his film about African elephants to be just another IMAX ride through postcard scenery, one that amazes your eyes and knocks your socks off. Instead, he was aiming for somewhere in between.

The heart.

The Australian director has found his mark with ``Africa's Elephant Kingdom,'' a 40-minute feature for Discovery Channel Pictures. Stunning scenery of Kenya fills the seven-story-tall screen as you'd expect, but his script - narrated by a wise elephant named ``Old Bull'' - adds an emotional dimension to a film format that has been high on documentary, low on drama.

Audiences have come away surprised by the sensitivity and sophistication of these largest of land mammals. In one remarkable scene, the family of parched elephants comes across a mother whose baby has just succumbed to the drought. They interrupt their own life-or-death trek to comfort her.

``The thing I'm most proud of are the moments after the film when audience comes to me with tears streaming down their face, saying, `Something touched me.' I want that, that feeling,'' Caulfield said.

``It was one of the things I was really determined to get because I'd seen some large-format films and while I, too, was impressed with the technology, there were very, very few that connected with me. I had spent enough time with the elephants that I felt there was this kind of life going on.''

Beasts, both great and small, face grave danger when the early rains fail and drought grips Kenya National Park. Led by the clan's matriarch, the elephants must rely on her instincts to survive. Avery Brooks (Cmdr. Sisko on ``Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'') narrates the story of their uncertain fate as they lumber day and night in search of water and what little vegetation remains.

Caulfield wrote, directed and produced the film in the expansive national parks of Kenya with the assistance of scientific consultant and conservationist Iain Douglas-Hamilton and executive producer Tim Cowling, who, like Caulfield, has worked on nature documentaries for the Discovery Channel.

``The first project we did was a breakthrough film about the ivory trade called `Ivory Wars.' It covered a very controversial issue but wasn't really the ultimate elephant film that imparted to the audience their potential for intelligence, their complicated social and family structure,'' Cowling said.

While their size and brute strength are frightening, the elephants are capable of tenderness that makes them seem human.

``What I really wanted was for people to get a tiny feeling of what it's like to be with them,'' Caulfield says.

``Africa's Elephant Kingdom'' opens today at the California Science Center IMAX Theatre, 700 State Drive, in Exposition Park. It will be shown at noon, 2, 4, 6 and 8 p.m. daily through June 30. Tickets cost $6.25 for adults, $4.75 for students with valid ID, $4.25 for seniors and $3.75 for children 4 to 12.

Movers and shakers

Eight films that changed the way we look at sex, war, migrants, teen-age rebellion, drugs and hired killers are back by popular demand Thursday for the fourth annual Westwood Village Classic Film Festival.

The ``Cinema That Shaped Our Culture'' films can be seen at 7:30 p.m. in various Mann theaters. Admission is free, and tickets are limited to eight per person on a first-come first-served basis. To reserve seats, call the Westwood Village Community Alliance at [phone].

The films being shown are:

``It Happened One Night'' (1934), ``Grapes of Wrath'' (1940), ``Rebel Without a Cause'' (1953), ``The Graduate'' (1967), ``MASH'' (1970), ``Taxi Driver'' (1976), ``Saturday Night Fever'' (1977) and ``Pulp Fiction'' (1994).

1950 doubleheader

Two Oscar-winning films from 1950, including the Bette Davis classic ``All About Eve,'' will be screened at 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday by the Alex Film Society in Glendale.

20th Century Fox has struck a new print of ``All About Eve'' for the screening at the Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. The second film is the Short Subject winner from the same year, ``Gerald McBoing-McBoing,'' an animated film about a boy who speaks in sound effects that is based on a Dr. Seuss book.

Tickets are $7 for the matinee, $8.50 for the night show and $6 for film society members. For information, call [phone].

Greek tragedies

By all accounts, Theo Angelopoulos is a torchbearer in the grand tradition of Greek storytellers. His directorial style has been described as ``deeply personal and poetic'' and his films as experiences in themselves.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents two award-winning films by Angelopoulos, starting at 7:30 tonight with ``Ulysses' Gaze,'' which took the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. In the movie, Harvey Keitel plays a Greek-American filmmaker whose search for lost reels takes him on an odyssey through the war-ravaged Balkans.

Saturday, the director's 1975 masterpiece ``The Travelling Players'' employs the Greek tragedy of ``Electra'' in the telling of the modern history of Greece. In it, the divisive political climate of the 1930s manifests itself in the lives and performances of a company of local actors.

Tickets are $6 general admission. $4 for museum members, AFI members and students with ID. The museum is at 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: ``Africa's Elephant Kingdom'' plays today through June 30 at the California Science Center IMAX Theatre in Exposition Park.