Oscar Hopeful ‘Time of Favor’ Stirring Up a Storm in the Desert

Filmmaker Joseph Cedar said he faced a spirited audience last Sunday when his award-winning but controversial feature “Time of Favor” (“Ha’ Hesder”) had its U.S. premiere at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

As is customary at the festival, the director, who was born in the U.S. but raised in Israel, took the stage for a question-and-answer session after the screening. But many who lingered questioned the film’s premise: whether a devout Israeli army officer could really be involved in a conspiracy to destroy the Muslim mosque on Temple Mount in Jerusalem. While Cedar was busy inside the theater defending his work--inspired by a 1994 incident, he said--festival organizers were outside dealing with at least 100 people clamoring for tickets to the sold-out event.

Later, as Cedar fielded pitches from several distributors negotiating for various territorial rights, festival programming executive Jennifer Stark scrambled to add at least two more showings.

Chalk up a win for Palm Springs. The festival, which continues through Monday, is overshadowed by the movie industry’s higher-powered affairs, such as the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, which started Thursday. But it has a devoted following of its own.

“Palm Springs is our secret weapon. It’s kind of an anti-Sundance. No hassle, no attitude,” said Nancy Gerstman, co-president of Zeitgeist Films, a New York-based distributor of art house fare that last year discovered Max Farberbock’s “Aimee & Jaguar” at Palm Springs.

Of course the festival provides a forum for fans to meet well-established stars through its International Filmmakers Awards series. Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom discussed his current film “Chocolat” Thursday night at Festival Arts 1, and Ang Lee will talk about “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” on Saturday at 3 p.m. at Palm Springs High School.

Stark said the festival’s lineup of 150 pictures this year includes 35 of the 46 films that have been submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Oscar consideration in the best foreign-language film category.

The audiences include film fans of all stripe, and notably a cadre of academy members who live in the low desert.

“I have a pile of maybe 30 tapes here from studios,” said Dick Brooks, a member of the public relations branch of the academy who lives nearby. “But most of us like to see the movies on the big screen. Take ‘Chocolat’; it’s a perfect movie to see in the theater. Everybody laughing at the right moment, crying at the right moment, and then big applause at the end.”

And festival secretary David B. Kaminsky said that ticket sales are on a pace to eclipse last year’s 57,000. This despite a boardroom shake-up last November in which the festival’s executive director and chairman both resigned, and Denis Pregnaloto, a co-founder of the festival with the late Sonny Bono, returned to the chief executive post.

Pregnaloto, a former executive with Aaron Spelling Productions, said the festival’s verve is embodied in the lively give-and-take between filmmaker and audience, as the one after the premiere of Cedar’s “Time of Favor.”

An NYU film school graduate who served three years as an Israeli paratrooper, Cedar wrote the screenplay while living in an Israeli West Bank settlement, and based it on the factual case of an Israeli officer falsely accused of terrorism. While Cedar embellished the incident into a feature-length screenplay, the premise broaches important issues of how group ideology transcends individual existence. In winning six Israeli Academy Awards, including best picture, actor, actress, cinematography and editing, the film doesn’t take sides, Cedar insisted.

“The question is what is the limit, how much should an individual person pay for the larger group,” Cedar said. “How much can he sacrifice for a cause?”

The reaction at Palm Springs, he said, is reminiscent of the feedback from test screenings in Israel last summer. Such tests, he said, are somewhat less formal than they are in the United States, but like the American tests, viewers are asked to fill out cards responding to questions about their impressions of the movie.

“People filled out the cards and then asked for more cards,” Cedar said. “They couldn’t care less about the length of the film, or whether this or that character was developed enough, or about the ending. Half said it’s about time somebody said this, and half said the person who made this is the biggest anti-Semite and self-hating filmmaker who’s been around.”

Submitted as Israel’s entry for a foreign-language film Oscar, “Time of Favor,” Cedar said, “is the kind of film that either you like or hate.”

Striking While the Buzz Is Hot

Juggling the schedule is a pleasant frenzy, Stark admitted, as films catch on with filmgoers sometimes unexpectedly. On Monday, for instance, word of mouth sparked a rush of tickets for the Georgian Oscar submission, “27 Missing Kisses,” described as an eclectic sex farce about 14-year-old Sybille (Nino Kukhanidze), who falls in love with a 41-year-old astronomer, whose 14-year-old son in turn falls in love with Sybille.

Stark set to work at the last minute Monday evening to move the screening to a larger venue. A second showing was held Thursday.

The director of “Kisses,” Nana Dzhordzhadze, was in town for screenings of the film, which was greeted favorably at Cannes last year.

“So far, everybody loves my film,” she said with a breezy laugh.

Besides directors Lee and Hallstrom, the third recipient of the International Filmmakers Award, actress and director Liv Ullmann, was on hand for a showing of her new feature “Faithless,” a psychological thriller about a love triangle, which was written by Ingmar Bergman.

Ullmann, pausing in the Palm Springs High School theater lobby before the film, said she discusses her work with audiences as often as possible, at festivals, tributes, university programs and the like. But she recoiled at the American notion of sending a film to a test audience before the final cut.

“That would be terrible,” she said. “Maybe people are coming from a big dinner or they’ve had a lot of drinks or whatever. Are they to decide for just that afternoon something that people have put their talent into for two years?

“We wouldn’t have a Fellini or Bergman or anyone if we had to do that.”

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Palm Springs International Film Festival, through Monday, screenings at Palm Springs High School, 2248 E. Ramon Road; Festival of Arts Theatres, 2300 E. Baristo; Palm Springs Desert Museum, Annenberg Theatre, 101 Museum Drive; Courtyard A and B, 789 E. Tahquitz Canyon Way. (760) 322-2930.