MOVIES - Jan. 22, 1988

The recently-formed Filmmakers United Against Apartheid, a group of 100 American directors, has gotten into the fracas over Dolf Lundgren’s “Red Scorpion,” an independently-financed film now shooting in Africa. Jonathan Demme, a co-founder of the directors’ group, said the organization had been asked to get involved: “We were not set up to be any kind of a police force, but we do find it extraordinary that any (American) film company would do this.” Demme added the group also had been asked to inform its membership of the African-based production, issue a public statement protesting the project, and appeal to the major Hollywood studios not to pick-up the film for distribution. The project, about a Soviet agent sent to assassinate an African resistence leader, has drawn fire from anti-apartheid groups in Africa and the U.S.