thenationofartists.com

By Elliot V. Kotek
(from the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival)

The Palm Springs International Film Festival kicked off its 22^nd edition Thursday night to much fanfare and the opening film from François Ozon, the crowd-pleasing “Potiche,” starring Catherine Deneuve, followed by the traditional opening gathering at the Palm Springs Art Museum.

Simply said, this festival is different. Not only does it provide incredible audiences (130,000 festivalgoers attended the fest’s films last year), but every year the care taken to contribute to the filmmakers’ experiences increases. PSIFF strikes the rare combination of being both a filmmaker’s festival and an audience festival.

Indicative of this investment in society’s commentators, 20 filmmakers were invited to an inaugural filmmakers retreat at the new, as-yet unopened Annenberg Center at the Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage. For a day and a half, near the corner of Bob Hope Drive and Ginger Rogers Road, filmmakers gathered to discuss their experiences.

Outside the prying eyes of the media, this was a sharing opportunity for the directors to sit and really discuss their visions, their responsibility to the subjects and subject matters of their movies, the joys, difficulties and “eureka” moments of their work, and the ethics of their profession. I was lucky to be the sole journalist attending the final session of the retreat (run by the festival’s director of programming Helen du Toit), and the gratitude and appreciation of the filmmakers for the opportunity to just discuss their profession with other independent minds was highly evident.

The documentary filmmakers and narrative helmers included Lucy Walker (“Waste Land”), Davey Frankel (“The Athlete”), Juanita Wilson (“As If I Am Not There”), Nelson Walker (“Summer Pasture”), Travis Fine (“The Space Between”), Tchavdar Georgiev and Amanda Pope (“The Desert of Forbidden Art”), Javier Fuentes-León (“Undertow”), Hossein Keshavarz (“Dog Sweat”), Ann Marie Fleming (“I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors”), Jan Kidawa-Blonski (“Little Rose”), Jon Siskel (“Louder Than a Bomb”), Lisa Gossels (“My So-Called Enemy”), Hilda Hidalgo (“Of Love and Other Demons”), Michael King (“The Rescuers”), Feo Aladag (“When We Leave”) and Larysa Kondracki (“The Whistleblower”).

There’s more to come in this space, including reviews of the films I saw on the first day — Davey Frankel’s “The Athlete,” Fábio Barreto and Marcelo Santiago’s “Lula, The Son of Brazil” and Srdjan Karanovic’s “Besa” — as well as details from the Penfolds(RED) party at the Riviera Resort and Spa in Palm Springs. Until soon!

Photo: About 20 filmmakers gathered at the Annenberg Center at the Sunnylands estate Rancho Mirage for a pre-fest retreat; photo by Elliot Kotek