Palm Springs International Film Festival
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“If We Wanted To Visualize This at All, We’d Have to Do It Ourselves”: Steve James on A Compassionate Spy
Steve James’s A Compassionate Spy is an unexpectedly charitable portrait of a man who betrayed his country for a higher cause. Specifically in the case of physicist Ted Hall—still a teenage undergrad at Harvard when, in 1944, he was tasked to help develop the atomic bomb—the greater cause of world peace. But unlike far more famous contemporaneous “traitors” Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in 1953, Hall managed to do something even more remarkable than simply smuggle secrets to the Soviets—he escaped accountability for his actions. FBI surveillance aside, he went on to enjoy a surprisingly normal life with his adoring […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 6, 2023 -
“Being an Outsider to Palm Springs Was an Asset”: Sara Newens, Mina T. Son and Courtney Parker on Racist Trees
Sara Newens and Mina T. Son’s provocatively titled Racist Trees begins as an innocent investigation into the root (no pun intended) of a half-century dispute over a line of 60-foot tamarisks separating a historically Black section of Palm Springs from its historically white (and now overwhelmingly gay cisgender male) neighbors on the other side of a city-owned golf course. The film morphs into something much more shocking than merely another example of systemic inequality and the longstanding “polite” racism of white liberals who prefer gaslighting to admissions of culpability. Indeed, in the slyest and boldest of moves, the white and […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 6, 2023 -
The Gunman Actor Peter Franzén on Being a Global Artist (and Working with Sean Penn)
“Peter Franzén – remember that name,” is what I told everyone who asked me if I’d made any big discoveries covering the Finnish Film Affair in Helsinki in September 2013 — I’d even called this talented thesp “Finland’s ridiculously charismatic answer to Guy Pearce” in my coverage. But unlike that Australian actor, Franzén also writes and directs. His woefully underexposed directorial debut Above Dark Waters is based on his semiautobiographical novel, told through the eyes of a child living with a loving police officer father who happens to be a violent alcoholic. When I learned Franzén would be attending the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Mar 19, 2015 -
Talking Legends with Terence Stamp
The 2013 edition of the Palm Springs International Film Festival was filled with glitzy events and screenings, including a Talking Pictures sidebar featuring movies followed by conversations with noteworthy actors like Alan Cumming (discussing Any Day Now) and Naomi Watts (for The Impossible). But it was the closing night gala for Paul Andrew Williams’ Unfinished Song, starring Vanessa Redgrave as a cancer-stricken septuagenarian in an old folks choir, that really grabbed my attention. Actually, it wasn’t the film (which I haven’t seen) so much as the possibility of interviewing the actor playing Redgrave’s character’s devoted husband that made me stand […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 8, 2013 -
The 24th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival: 4 Days, 3 Greats, 2 Duds
Palm Springs, California blossomed in the 1930s when Hollywood royalty started calling this Coachella Valley city, a couple hours drive from L.A., (second) home. It still has a sort of old-timey vibe, evidenced by the hundreds of names engraved in its downtown Walk of Stars, the majority of which faded from the collective celebrity conscious decades ago. And though the Palm Springs International Film Festival has only been around for 24 years – actually a ripe old age for an American film fest – it too feels like a throwback to another era, one in which the term “kick starter” […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 18, 2013 -
Five Questions with Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean Writer/Director Matthew Mishory
What began as a short film, Joshua Tree 1951: A Portrait of James Dean, became a feature film almost by the insistence of social media. Director/writer Matthew Mishory says the initial shoot for the film took place in Joshua Tree, California, over a few days in 2010. When he returned to Los Angeles, he edited a trailer and posted it online, not thinking much of what would happen. Almost immediately the trailer went viral and expectation was that it was going to be a feature film. “Our production team got together and decided, well, we really ought to be making […]
by Carolyn Moloshco on Jan 8, 2013 -
Director Micha X. Peled on Bitter Seeds
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 […]
by Daniel James Scott on Feb 9, 2012 -
2012 PALM SPRINGS FILM FESTIVAL
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 […]
by Graham Flashner on Jan 30, 2012 -
THE PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
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 […]
by Graham Flashner on Feb 17, 2011
