Palm Springs Fest Finds International Niche

The Nortel Networks Palm Springs International Film Festival has quite literally become a foreign affair.

The 11th annual festival, which runs Thursday through Jan. 24, features 180 films from more than 40 countries, including more than 30 of the official Academy Award entries for best foreign language film. Several acclaimed international filmmakers, such as Hector Babenco, Pedro Almodovar and Zhang Yimou, are scheduled to be on hand to present their films.

Festival programmer Jennifer Stark acknowledges there’s heated competition among the numerous film festivals for product. “A film can’t do all festivals,” she says. “If a film goes to Berlin, Berlin will insist it’s a world premiere outside of its own country. Sundance [Jan. 20-30] requests if films are in competition that they are premieres.”

Instead of having one person select all the films this year, the Palm Springs festival divvied the world cinema among seven programmers.

The festival, Stark says, has always had its eye on foreign cinema. “Our aim was to bring international cinema into the area,” she says.

“What has happened over the years is that Sundance has become absolutely enormous and known for supporting American independent films. So every American filmmaker wants to be in Sundance. There is no begrudging the fact, but it limits our accessibility to those films because they want premieres. In the meantime, we thought what would really work well here? We realized it was international film.”

Besides, she says, the Palm Springs audience is very sophisticated. “It’s older. We get people who have money. There is a large gay population. We get people coming to the area spending the winter and we’re very, very close to Los Angeles.”

Stark says they are getting very positive reactions from filmmakers on the festival. “They will see other films that are here and want to be here,” she says.

The festival opens with Arthur Seidelman’s “Walking Across Egypt” and will close with Sir Richard Attenborough’s latest, “Grey Owl,” starring Pierce Brosnan.

Among the foreign-language films being screened are Regis Wargnier’s “East West”; Sweden’s “Under the Sun,” directed by Colin Nutley; Vietnam’s “Three Seasons,” directed by Tony Bui; Babenco’s “Foolish Heart”; and Raoul Ruiz’s “Time Regained.”

New this year is the state-of-the-art Palm Springs Festival of Arts Theatre complex, which houses three theaters.

The festival’s awards gala takes place Saturday at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Milos Forman is set to receive the Directors’ Achievement Award and actress Annette Bening, the Charles A. Crain Desert Palm Award. This year, the festival will be giving out three international filmmakers’ awards to Almodovar, Yimou and actress Catherine Deneuve.

“This is a way for us to recognize international film, but also bring filmmakers into the area,” Stark says. “I have found over the years, especially with foreign films, it is the director who sells the film.”

Another festival highlight is the second annual cinematographers conference Friday-Sunday. The three-day conference is dedicated to the art and technology of cinematography. “As far as we know, we are the only international festival that hosts a cinematography program,” says Dr. David B. Kaminsky, event co-chair and member of the festival’s executive board.

Last year, Kaminsky says, the conference had tremendous appeal to movie buffs in terms of “people trying to understand why cinematography is so critical to the outcome of the film. I think the public is very interested in knowing how this happens. There is not only a technical but artistic focus behind it.”

This year, he says, the conference is getting tremendous support from the media. “I think it’s really going to attract industry people.”

Highlights of the conference include seminars on still photography; Technicolor dye transfer; a Dogma ’95 seminar; the collaborative relationship between the cinematographer and director; and digital cinema. The latter will conclude with the digital screening of 1980’s “Tom Horn.”

Cinematographers scheduled to participate include Luciano Tovoli, John Toll, John Alonzo, Vilmos Zsigmond and Conrad Hall.

Kaminsky says he’s surprised how the conference has snowballed in just two years. “Cinematographers are dying for exposure for the artist in themselves,” he says. “That is what we are trying to accomplish with this. It is a forum for that to happen.”

* The 11th Annual Nortel Networks Palm Springs International Film Festival, Thursday-Jan. 24. For tickets and screening information: (760) 322-2930.