Palm Springs International Film Festival

So this past weekend I went to the Palms Springs International Film Festival courtesy of my recent employers, Moving Pictures Magazine. As a sponsor of the festival, Moving Pictures Magazine was offered in the filmmakers lounge at festival events but wasn’t participating in any interviewing for the festival. So I was there to observe and enjoy the spectacular array of global cinema the festival prides itself on celebrating. I saw a total of fourteen films in three days and only two of those titles were in the English language. So aray of global cinema...check!

The drive down to Palm Springs was nothing short of spectacular. You’ve never seen the desert until you’ve seen it at night. There was this enchantingly eerie field of larger than life windmills on the drive down. Eerie because it bore a striking resemblance to a location in one of the defining films of my childhood, Mac & Me. Otherwise once in Palm Springs your surprised at how a small and synthetic it seems. I was thinking of Blazing Saddles the whole time and just waiting for some of the buildings to blow over like cardboard.

The average age of the inhabitants of this town is about Sixty-eight. I can’t help but be skeptical about the elderly because most of the ones I know in my life, coming from small towns in Italy, are rather narrow-minded and don’t care to know much else about the world around them then what they already know. But the folk in this town, well some live up to the stereotype I’ve just reiterated, but the ones that I had the pleasure of speaking with were rather delightful and refreshing. Despite all this I still couldn’t help but get the film Cocoon out of my head. (Click the photo to see Governor Schwarzenegger’s address to the festival)

Over the next few weeks I will post my reactionary revelations about five of my favorite films that I saw at the festival. Hope that if I can achieve anything, you are intrigued enough to look into the films and hopefully watch them. Enjoy!