Palm Springs International Film Festival
Thursday, February 9th, 2012
Monsanto, the agriculture biotech company maligned in such docs as Food, Inc. and King Corn, found renewed opposition this month with the launch of an online petition gone viral called “Tell Obama to Cease FDA Ties to Monsanto.” The petition protests the president’s 2009 appointment of the company’s former VP, Michael Taylor, to the position of senior advisor to the FDA. That this years-late call to action has inspired more than 380,000 signatures attests to the toxicity of this particular marriage between government and a multinational corporation.
If you’ll remember, Monsanto is the company that brought us DDT and Agent Orange, both of which were banned at some point for their harmful effects on people and the environment. As the world’s largest producer of genetically modified (GM) crops, the company has achieved its position through a means of strong-arm tactics, ambitious mergers, and, as the petition points out, collusions with the U.S. government.
If these points don’t spark your indignation, then Bitter Seeds will. The documentary, directed by Micha X. Peled, traces Monsanto’s sizable footprint on an agrarian community in central India. The film has been traveling the festival circuit since last year, winning the “Green Screen Competition” Award at the 2011 IDFA (in a jury presided over by Joe Berlinger). After garnering acclaim at last month’s Palm Springs International Film Festival (PIFF), it is featured in the “Meet the Docs” series at the Berlin Film Festival.
Bitter Seeds sets down in remote village in the state of Maharashtra, where locally grown, renewable seeds have been phased out by genetically-modified, non-renewable seeds. In a region where the majority of farmers are rain-dependent and unable to pay for the fertilizers that GM seeds require, the influx of the new product into the marketplace has caused extreme indebtedness, leading as many as 25,000 farmers to take their lives since 1997. Bitter Seeds asks the question of whether a cotton farmer, Ram Krishna, will “be next.”
If that sounds sensational, it’s because it partly is. Contrary to the film’s conspicuous marketing, however, the documentary is among … Read the rest
Monday, January 30th, 2012
There’s no better time of year to be in Palm Springs than early January. The air is rejuvenating, the desert landscape alluring, and amidst all the easy living, PS kicks annually kicks off film festival season. Now in its 23rd year, the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) prides itself on appealing to both the first-time moviegoer and the seasoned connoisseur. For the former, there were easily digestible films like Lasse Halstrom’s Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, which opened the Festival, and the Tilda Swinton-starrer We Need To Talk About Kevin; for the latter, the 276-minute Taiwanese film, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale. For those looking to kill an entire weekend watching one documentary, the festival obliged with Mark Cousins’s 15-hour epic, The Story Of Film: An Odyssey.
In the last couple of years, the Festival has pared down the number of foreign film Oscar submissions. According to Festival director Darryl Macdonald, “It was becoming clear that some of these films weren’t measuring up to the quality of programming we wanted to present.” Altogether, 188 films from 73 countries ran during the 10-day Festival, including 40 of the 63 foreign language Oscar entries. Macdonald declared that “The balance of programming was stronger than ever.” With more than 130,000 filmgoers and 220 filmmakers (writers, directors, and actors) in attendance, the PSIFF remains a movie lover’s paradise.
Given its proximity to L.A., the Golden Globe Awards, and Sundance, the Festival has never been shy about courting Hollywood glamour, with the Convention Center hosting its annual Black Tie Awards Gala honoring notable films, stars, and directors from the previous year’s films. This year, the star wattage was hotter than usual, with Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Michelle Williams, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, and the ensemble cast from Young Adult, among others, walking the red carpet. For some, the excitement proved too much: a 65 year-old man collapsed and died while watching the red carpet festivities. Inside, the sight of Brangelina turned the normally blasé PS crowd into giggly autograph hounds; they besieged the couple’s table with cameras … Read the rest
Thursday, February 17th, 2011
Palm Springs, jewel of the desert, playground of the Hollywood rich, not to mention thousands of prosperous retirees who enjoy golf, tennis, and dinner at five, is also the home of a pretty cool film festival, started by Sonny Bono in 1990. Once, it was a sleepy little affair where audiences could see multiple films in the same theater on the same ticket, and no one paid much attention to the results.
Those days are emphatically over. Wrapping its 22nd year on January 17, the Festival broke its own attendance record in 2011, as more than 130,000 cinephiles crowded into theaters. Hollywood noticed. A front-page article in the Palm Springs Desert Sun ran a leading quote from Daily Variety’s editorial director, Peter Bart, who opined that “in many ways PSIFF has become more important than Sundance, which is ‘more like a marketplace.’”
“Every festival has that moment when it all comes together, when everything is clicking on all cylinders,” said PSFF executive director Darryl MacDonald. “This was our year.” MacDonald himself wouldn’t go nearly as far as to say Palm Springs had eclipsed Sundance in terms of prestige, but he did call this year a “quantum leap forward” in terms of worldwide recognition. He attributed the spike in attendance to the increased number of filmmakers and stars, who came out not only for the Festival’s annual Black Tie Awards Gala, but for special event programs. Javier Bardem and Colin Firth discussed their craft in the Talking Pictures series; Michael Douglas emerged from his months-long battle against cancer to make a rapturously received public appearance before a screening of Solitary Man, and Ryan O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal chatted with the audience and signed autographs before a closing night special screening of their beloved 1973 film, Paper Moon. Actors honored at the Gala included Natalie Portman, Firth, Robert Duvall, and the entire cast of The Social Network.
A major part of Palm Spring’s appeal, in addition to the balmy January weather and the hulking San Jacinto Mountains ringing the city, is that it’s a laid-back place that caters to … Read the rest
Friday, January 15th, 2010
Now in its 21st year, the Palm Springs International Film Festival Festival (Jan. 5-18) continues to be the place to be seen for foreign film Oscar contenders, 41 of which screened in this year’s Festival. U.S. films, for the most part, take a distant back seat, since most serious American filmmakers don’t want to risk of alienating the Sundance Film Festival, which comes on the heels of Palm Springs and insists on its films being U.S. premieres. While there were a smattering of U.S. indies, the majority would never be confused with Sundance entrees, except for the very fine The Most Dangerous Man in America, the Daniel Ellsberg doc (and likely Oscars favorite) that was my favorite film in the four days I was here. But more on that in a bit.
Compared to the hipster flash of Sundance or the frenetic marketplace that is Cannes, PS flies under the radar, close enough to L.A. to preserve an aura of Hollywood glamour, far enough to remain unspoiled by the elitism that can pervade in New York or Venice. With its azure desert skies and well-heeled senior demographic, PS is normally a placid experience. This year, however, controversy intruded on the proceedings, as the festival found itself in the middle of a diplomatic imbroglio.
Early last week, the festival’s executive director, Darryl MacDonald, received a call from the Chinese consul in Los Angeles, asking that the festival not show the documentary The Sun Behind The Clouds, about Tibet and the Dalai Lama.
“I explained that it was a foreign co-production, not just Tibetan,” MacDonald recalls. “They said, ‘you can’t play this film because it’s not accurate. It purports that Tibet is being suppressed by China – even your own government agrees that Tibet is part of China.”
MacDonald was not about to let a foreign country dictate what he could and could not show at his own festival. “I said, this is a question of freedom of expression,” he says. “It’s an artistic event, not a political event.”
MacDonald refused to pull the film. Days later, the Chinese filmmakers … Read the rest
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007
The Palm Springs International Film Festival (January 4-15), with a budget around $2.8 million, advertises itself as the fest “where star power and the cinema come together.” The order is significant. On opening weekend, this 18th edition and the fourth under director Darryl Macdonald hosted a meretricious gala at the Convention Center — replete with a video-clip homage to emcee Mary Hart of Entertainment Tonight — saluting the canonized talents of the past year. These shining lights feasted with, and courted from the stage, 1,800 high-rollers — good PR for the studios as awards season commenced. Among the honorees were Kate Winslet, Jessica Biel, and the entire cast of Babel (Brad, too), including Cate Blanchett, who, at just 37, received a career achievement award. The festival invited the L.A. film press, nearly all of whom returned home by the next morning with their Tiffany swag.
The following eight days comprised most of “the cinema” portion of the formula. Once the “star power” waned, so did the overall energy. Yet attendance, much of it reflecting the area’s retiree demographic, was good at many screenings of the 254 features. The program is a mixed bag — too many bad French films, for one — although the Cine Latino and Eastern European selections were a cut above. Scattered throughout the gala screenings, New Voices/New Visions (its jury awarded Argentinian Verónica Chen’s Agua), Scandinavian sidebar, doc section True Stories, and World Cinema Now were many of the usual fest suspects, more than 20 LGBT features, and a plethora of so-sos.
What IS distinctive about Palm Springs is “Awards Buzz,” an Oscar preview section that includes 55 of the 61 submissions for Best Foreign Language Film — an opportunity to inspect some sort of barometer of last year’s worldwide production. Having viewed them as a juror, I couldn’t help but wonder how individual countries make their choices. Quality? Connections? Second-guessing the elderly Academy members who vote in this category? Better films were made last year in several of the represented nations.
Almost all of the movies that merited serious discussion had been discussed and … Read the rest
