2007 PSIFF—General Dispatch On Palm Spring's Retirement Demographics

These days I'm feeling not so much a film journalist and more a circus act, juggling film festivals while balancing a tight rope on rollerskates. Todd sent me and contributing Evening Class writer Michael Hawley down to Palm Springs for their recent international film festival, I covered San Francisco's Berlin & Beyond (which I'm contining to write up), am launching into San Francisco's Noir City this evening, with S.F.'s IndieFest looming around the corner. If I drop a ball now and then, please forgive.

With regard to the 2007 Palm Springs International Film Festival, I decided to focus on the foreign language submissions, Cine Latino, and interview possibilities, while Michael Hawley approached the festival more eclectically and will be focusing on overviewing the French fare. For starters, I thought some general notes on Palm Spring's retirement demographics might be fun.

There was a snowy frost on the peaks surrounding Palm Springs, as well as on the audiences attending the festival's fare. Peter Martin—who covered the festival for Twitch last year—forewarned me the crowd would be senior but didn't tell me how young they would make me feel! In my mid-50s, I was a veritable spring chicken in this barnyard. That's not to say these senior cineastes were any less enthusiastic or entrenched in their cinematic habits. Some were even unruly; line chiselers never mature. They pretend they're daft and dotardly just to get to their favorite aisle seats. God forbid your head should be in the way of their subtitles.

I was quite amused by the various ways well-meaning elderly volunteers delivered house announcements before the screenings. They reminded audiences to hand in ballots (often instructing them on exactly how to tear them: not between the numbers and no more than half an inch in) and to turn off all phones, Blackberries, and other electronic devices that beep, buzz, light up, bark outloud, moan embarrassingly or that were—as one wry individual put it—not absolutely necessary to keep you alive. Sage advice for this particular crowd.