A team from the Palo Alto Institute gathered together in Palo Alto and asked the question, “Does the Bay Area need another film festival?”
When answering that, they realized three things: 1) while there are 20 or so film festivals in the San Francisco Bay Area, there aren’t any in Palo Alto, 2) the movie industry has a huge base in Silicon Valley (Dreamworks and Pixar are here, for example), and 3) the very first movie was not made by the French or by Thomas Edison, but by a man named Eadweard Muybridge in Palo Alto. Muybridge used 24 cameras to get 24 frames per second of California Governor Leland Stanford’s racehorse galloping.
The team that put together this festival (many of whom worked at Sundance, Tribeca, and other film festivals) decided that the theme should represent Silicon Valley, which, of course, is best known for its technology.
Running from Thursday, September 29 to Sunday, October 2, the Palo Alto International Film Festival’s theme is: “Celebrate innovation in film.” The festival started off with a free screening of Life in a Day, a film made entirely of YouTube videos. Over 80,000 videos were submitted, and those that were chosen and pieced together into this 95 minute video. If you missed it, you can still catch it on Sunday morning.
It takes place in a series of venues in Downtown Palo Alto. The festival hosts a repertoire of 30 full-length films and 74 short films that use technology creatively and have been screened at other festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, and Sundance. It includes a restored print of the first science fiction movie ever, George Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon. In addition to the screenings, there are also workshops and speakers, such as Craig Barron who has done digital work on films such as Titanic and The Serious Case of Benjamin Button; and Paul Debevec, who has worked on many films including Spider-Man 2 and Avatar).
You can get more information and buy tickets at http://paiff.net/ .
Have questions while at the festival? Look for one of the smiling people in the maroon VOLUNTEER shirt.
“Films,” Palo Alto International Film Festival
“Our Team,” Palo Alto International Film Festival