A desert abloom with world views

Originally founded by then Mayor Sonny Bono, the Palm Springs International Film Festival has over the years become one of Southern California’s premier outlets for foreign language films, while at the same time remaining an unfairly unheralded event.

Among the strongest features of the festival is its tradition of screening many, if not most, of the movies eligible for the Academy Award for best foreign language film. As the festival kicks off its 16th year tonight, 45 of the 50 films in contention for that honor are scheduled for screening, and festival programmers are still hard at work trying to secure the remaining stray titles. In all, the festival will screen nearly 200 films from about 65 countries by the time it wraps up Jan. 17.

Building on that world cinema core, executive director Darryl Macdonald -- who now has a full year as festival chief under his belt -- has made the rather bold decision to initiate a “clear, central focus” on a “Cine Latino” showcase. He and the festival’s director of programming, Carl Spence, hope to make the Palm Springs Festival a launching pad for the films from Spain, Portugal, and Central and South America in much the same way that the Vancouver International Film Festival has fashioned itself into a gateway for Asian film.

“For the last decade, Asia has been a focal point for world cinema because there were so many exciting artists exploding from that scene,” Macdonald explains. “And while there is still lots of great talent in Asia, and, for that matter, Europe, Latin America right now is just bursting with talent.”

Macdonald had been involved with the Palm Springs film festival for its early years, before moving off to other jobs. He returned just before last year’s festival, determined to reverse what he considered a troubling shift in focus.

“The festival, in terms of profile, had kind of wandered in the desert for a few years,” said Macdonald, explaining that he believed the festival had been allowed to drift from its core mission of ferreting out the world’s premier films.

“They had a succession of executive directors who, in truth, were not film people,” he said. “They were more businesspeople and weren’t really grounded in the film industry and didn’t have a good perspective on the priorities that a festival should have. And so as a million festivals have blossomed over the last decade, many of them in resort towns, the Palm Springs festival didn’t continue to get the kind of coverage it deserved.”

Well, nothing attracts the media quite like celebrities, and this year’s festival has been engineered to include plenty of Hollywood glamour.

The awards gala on Saturday is scheduled to feature tributes to Nicole Kidman, Kevin Spacey, Kirk Douglas, Laura Linney, Samuel L. Jackson, Liam Neeson, Bryce Dallas Howard and composer Howard Shore.

Among the new features of this year’s festival is a “Super-Charged Cinema” section, featuring late-night screenings of edgier fare, including Angela Robinson’s lesbian espionage spoof “D.E.B.S.” and the latest from “Grudge” director Takashi Shimizu, “Marebito.” The highlight of the section is undoubtedly “Steamboy,” the much-anticipated new film from Katsuhiro Otomo, director of the landmark anime “Akira.”

Part of the inspiration for the “Super-Charged” sidebar was fairly straightforward. As Spence explains, “there’s not much going on in the desert late at night.”

It is always difficult for programmers to pick out favorites for fear of slighting another film, but both Macdonald and Spence make special mention of “The Story of My Life.” Directed by Laurent Tirard, the film is billed as a laugh-out-loud comedy about the wobbly love lives of a group of thirtysomething Parisians.

Macdonald is also particularly fond of “Kontroll,” a Hungarian film shot entirely in the underground subway system of Budapest. Spence mentions “Americano,” which features Joshua Jackson and is one of the few American independent films on the program in Palm Springs, although the story takes place in Spain during the running of the bulls at Pamplona.

There are quite literally too many films of note to mention them all.

Among those films that have been on the festival circuit are “Breaking News” from one of Hong Kong’s reigning directors, Johnnie To; “Downfall,” the staggering German docudrama about Hitler’s last days; and “The World” from art-house heavyweight Jia Zhang-ke.

Among the numerous Argentine entries is Lucrecia Martel’s “The Holy Girl,” which was produced by Agustin and Pedro Almodovar. “Say Yes Quickly,” a relationship drama that marks the directing debut of Gregg Hale, who was a producer on “The Blair Witch Project,” will also screen.

Comparing this year with last, when he had only three months to organize the festival, Macdonald said: “I think we’ve made tremendous headway, and I feel the festival has started to turn a corner in terms of exposure and recognition both within the film industry and with the public. Following this year’s festival, I have hopes we’ll be seen among the front-runners of film festivals in the U.S.”