Probably the most unusual feature film currently being made in New York is Logos Films' "Curfew USA," a dramatic picture about American revolutionaries of today which has been lensing sporadically for the past two years.

Pic relies heavily on what its filmmakers describe as "guerrilla filmmaking," secret shooting incorporating NYC parades and other "found" events, in addition to traditional staged scenes and second unit footage already shot in Gotham, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Europe and Latin America.

Genesis of the epic-scaled project dates back well over a decade to an essay by Pier Paolo Pasolini on the myth of Promethea, a character who was planned as lead role of an unrealized Pasolini film project but emerges as a supporting character in "Curfew USA."

Tamerlis Star, Coprod

Following Pasolini's death in 1975, French writer-director Christian De Lorent, with self-described "dogged perseverance and even a bit of obstinacy," fashioned a massive, 500-page script covering the subject of revolutionaries and terrorists in the world today (focused on America).

Project gained momentum when young Gotham-based actress Zoë Tamerlis saw a "Curfew USA" leaflet six years ago and, fascinated by the dramatic and topical nature the fllm, responded and became de Lorent's production partner and leading lady in the picture.

While pruning his screenplay to manageable proportions, De Lorent noted constructive criticism of people who have read it (saying "This should be a novel") and is in the process of publishing the original-length material in three separate volumes.

"The novel version of the script is a practical tool for attracting finance," he maintains. "It is much easier to get people interested and involved in our work-in-progress by handing them the novel to read, and it is also useful for the actors to understand their characters in the shortened shooting script," he says.

"Curfew USA" has been financed thus far mainly through private partnerships, with de Lorent reporting that about 10 hours of footage has been shot which when edited down will comprise about half of the two-hour feature's running time.

In the dual role of Magdalena/Promethea, a woman who appears mysteriously on the radio broadcasting hopeful, revolutionary messages to the world before it's discovered she is a woman transmuting (and transmitting) with a man's voice, is Madrid-based thesp Nuria Espert, who previously co-starred in Fernando Arrabal's classic "Viva La Muerte." Espert's role has been completed, but major sequences to be filmed in New York, Los Angeles and the Southwest remain to be shot.

Tamerlis and De Lorent currently are seeing end money financing to complete the picture, hoping to shoot the major setpiece "The Motorcade" (which comprises one-third of the original novel/script) in York next spring. Film climaxes in Rockefeller Center, which will require location footage, but will rely on sound and fleeting images to represent the pandemonium that erupts, allowing much of the actual shooting to be done elsewhere.

De Lorent and Tamerlis use their own mobile camera unit to facilitate quick shoots between her outside acting assignments (she starred in Abel Ferrara's "Ms. 45" and Larry Cohen's "Special Effects").

Tamerlis describes their film as "not a tract, but a dramatic film told with irony. It casts an honest eye at both the State Dept. and what passes for the American Left."

Besides her own lead role as feminist/revolutionary Una Horn, script includes many satirical figures ranging from "the Nikon liberal" Sen. Gerald Tart (fond of fact-finding missions) to various specious Leftists such as the familiarly clad "27-pocketers."

De Lorent calls his work "a film of authentic fiction: authenticity based on feelings, sentiments and ideas that, for better or worse, erupt in events and contemporary headlines."

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