“Life in a Day,” “The Troll Hunter,” “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” Among Films At Inaugural PALO ALTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Film Lineup Set For Inaugural PALO ALTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Palo Alto, CA – The Palo Alto International Film Festival (PAIFF) has announced its film program for the 2011 festival. The lineup includes 20 features and 74 short films curated from award-winning films and film festival favorites that exemplify PAIFF’s theme of innovation in art, film and technology.

PAIFF proudly presents a lineup that challenges the art form, taking creative risks with technology in films like Braden King’s cross-platform feature “Here,” to the artistically inventive “Bombay Beach” by music video director Alma Har’el to documentaries like “Something Ventured” which delves into the world of Venture Capital firms.

“We’re seeing a new movement emerging – films are trying to live outside the cinema. They’re breaking out of traditional storytelling structures,” said PAIFF’s Director Programming Alf Seccombe. “This festival spotlights the creative risk-taking that is inherent in innovation.”

The 2011 festival kicks with a free outdoor screening of with Kevin McDonald’s “Life in a Day,” a documentary shot by filmmakers all over the world that serves as a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on July 24, 2010.

The kickoff event will take place on Ramona Street in downtown Palo Alto. The rest of the main program will play at Palo Alto Square and Aquarius Theater over the remaining three days. PAIFF will announce its Speaker Series and Workshops later this month.

Tickets to individual screenings and shorts programs are now available at www.paiff.net.

The complete film lineup is as follows:

Thursday, September 29

8 p.m.  “Life in a Day” by Kevin McDonald (also screens 10/2 at 9:30 p.m.); “YouTube My Facebook” by Cedric Vella, winner of the 2011 PAIFF-Talenthouse Short Film Contest, will screen before the feature.

Friday, September 30

10:30 a.m.  “PressPausePlay” by Victor Köhler, David Dwarsky. This documentary tackles the effect a democratized culture has on art, film, music and literature. (also screens 10/2 at 10:30 p.m.)  

12:30 p.m.  Digital Natives – High School Invitational program
“I’m Here” (Spike Jonze), “Making Future Magic” (Jack Schultze, Timo Amall), “Guide Dog” (Bill Plympton), “Leonardo” (Jim Capobianco), “Muybridge’s Strings” (Koji Yamamura) and “Spider” (Nash Edgerton)

1:30 p.m.  Live Action Short Program
“Two Cars, One Night” (Taika Waititi), “Incident by a Bank” (Ruben Östlund), “Spider,” “I Am a Girl” (Susan Koenen), “We’re Leaving” (Zachary Treitz) and “The Fifth Column” (Vatche Boulghourjan).  (Program also screens 10/2 at 4 p.m.)

“Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff” by Craig McCall.  A look at the life of the renowned cameraman behind such classics as “John Huston’s “The African Queen” and King Vidor’s “War and Peace.”

4:30 p.m.  “Bombay Beach” by Alma Har’el. This documentary reveals three lives teetering on the brink of the American dream in the Salton Sea, with a haunting soundtrack by Beirut and Bob Dylan. (also screens 10/2 at 3:30 p.m.)

6 p.m.    Digital Natives Shorts Program (ages 9-12)
“The Lost Thing” (Andrew Ruhemann, Shaun Tan), “Love Bug” (Kat Candler), “Lost for Words” (Sean Wainsteim), “Western Spaghetti” (PES), “Oktapodi” (Julien Bocabeille, François-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier), “Salesman Pete” (Marc Bouyerbouyer), “Marcel The Shell” (Dean Fleischer-Camp), and “Dragon Boy” (Bernardo Warman, Shaofu Zhang, Lisa Allen).

 7 p.m.     “Road to Nowhere” by Monte Hellman.  The legendary director’s first feature in more than two decades, a romantic noir within noir, has a distinct perspective on digital art and truth. (also screens 10/1 at 9:15 p.m.)

7:30 p.m.  “Resurrect the Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles” by Jon Foy. “Toynbee Idea In Kubrick’s 2001 Resurrect Dead On Planet Jupiter” Tiles with this message have been found embedded in the asphalt of cities in the Americas since the 1980s. Curious about the maker and meaning of this meme, underground artist/writer/musician Justin Duerr dug into the enigma.

10 p.m.    Digital Natives Feature (ages 16-18)
“On The Ice” by Andrew Okpeaha MacLean.  (also screens 10/1 at 12 p.m.)

10:15 p.m.  “Three (Drei)” by Tom Tykwer. This feature takes a candid and sometimes comical look at homosexuality, Tykwer (“Run Lola Run”) invents a new-fashioned twist on the traditional love triangle.

Saturday, October 1

9 a.m.    Animated Shorts program
“Photographs of Jesus” (Laurie Hill), “Something Left, Something Taken” (Max Porter, Ru Kuwahata), “Tord and Tord” (Niki Lindroth von Bahr), “Love & Theft” (Andreas Hykade), “The Boy Who Wanted to be a Lion” (Alois di Leo), “Western Spaghetti” (PES), “Skhizein” (Jérémy Clapin), “John And Karen” (Matthew Walker) and “Madame Tutli-Putli” (Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski)

10 a.m.    Digital Natives Shorts Program (Ages 6-8)
“Chyrsalis” (Aubrey Millen), “Huhu Pole Hole” (Alexei Alekseev), “Clankety, Clank” (Mauricio Leiva-Cock), “Ormie” (Rob Silvestri), “The Lost Thing” (Andrew Ruhemann, Shaun Tan), “Private Eyes (2D)” (Nicola Lemay), “Fishing w/ Sam” (Atle S. Blakseth), “Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” (Moonbot Studios) and “The Snowman” (Kelly Wilson and Neil Wrischnik).

12 p.m.    “Industrial Light and Magic: Creating the Impossible” by Leslie Iwerks
Narrator Tom Cruise recounts the history of ILM, George Lucas’ visual effects house, which revolutionized film and gave us “some of the most iconic images that cinema has ever seen.”

12:30 p.m.  “Submarino” by Thomas Vinterberg
A boyhood tragedy leads to the estrangement of two impoverished brothers. (also screens 10/2 at 9:30 p.m.) 

1:45 p.m.  Disposable Film Festival Shorts Program
“Thrush” (Gabriel Bisset-Smith), “FOLDed” (Surabhi Saraf), and “Echo Lake-Young Silence” (Dan Nixon).

2 p.m.   “A Trip to the Moon” with Digital Remastering presentation by Tom Burton, sponsored by Technicolor.
Technicolor presents the Northern California Premiere of George Méliès’ famous 1902 film with a talk about the restoration process. (also screens 10/1 at 4 p.m.)

4 p.m.    “Something Ventured” by Dayna Goldfine, Dan Geller
The first “venture capitalists” were a small group of men who banded together in Silicon Valley in the 1950s to partner with technology entrepreneurs. Where others saw only risk, why did these investors see the seeds of opportunity? (also screens 10/2 at 1 p.m.)

6 p.m.    “Here” by Braden King. In a vocation called “ground-truthing,” Will Shepard (played by Ben Foster of “Six Feet Under” and “X-Men: The Last Stand”) land-surveys satellite images around the world to check for accuracy. (also screens 10/2 at 4 p.m.)

Digital Natives Feature (Ages 9-12)
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) presented by The Film Foundation.  Cathy Gourley will speak briefly upon the concept of a film as a historical/cultural document. The short “Duck and Cover” will set the tone for the Robert Wise’s 1951 , providing insight into the Cold War and society’s fears of an atomic attack.

10 p.m.    Digital Natives Shorts Program (Ages 16-18)
“The Queen of Cactus Cove” (Anna Christopher), “The Maestro” (Adam Anthony), “Double Happy” (Shahir Daud) and the Local High School Short Winners.

11:55 p.m.  “The Troll Hunter” by André Ovredal
Mysterious bear killings shrouded in speculation intrigue two Norwegian college kids. Armed with a hand-held video camera, they track Hans, a man suspected to be the poacher. 

Sunday, October 2

10 a.m. Digital Natives Feature (Ages 9-12)
“Aurélie Laflamme’s Diary (Le JOURNAL D’AURÉLIE LAFLAMME)” by Christian Laurence.  Aurelie Laflamme feels alone in the world, especially since her father’s death five years ago. What if her father had been an alien who left Earth to return to his own planet? In that case, Aurelie would be an alien too.

“The Real Revolutionaries” by Paul Crowder.  Nobel Prize-winning physicist William Shockley had handpicked eight brilliant men and brought them to the apricot orchards of the Santa Clara valley to work on a Transistor different from the one that had won the Nobel Prize. When Shockley’s plan failed to come to fruition during the civil rights era, Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and the rest of the “Traitorous Eight” made other plans and forged their own paths. Visually inventive, this documentary lays bare the divergent personalities that revolutionized our world with the silicon chip

1 p.m.    Digital Natives Feature (Ages 6-8)
“Mia and the Migoo” by Jacques-Rémy Girerd.  One night Mia has a premonition. So after saying a few words of parting at her mother’s grave, she sets out on a journey across mountains and jungles to search for her father, who is trapped in a landslide at a remote construction site.

6 p.m.    “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” by Werner Herzog.  Herzog uses 3D to “capture the intentions of the painters” who worked 32,000 years ago inside the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc cave in France. Suggesting the motion of horses, rhinos and bison in the tracings of the contours and slants of the cave wall with painted lines (and torch-light), these painters created what Herzog suggests is a “proto-cinema.”  “Thicker Than Water” by Tommy Tripodes, a dark 3D comedy will screen before the feature.

Passes for the 2011 Palo Alto International Film Festival are also available. To be notified of any changes to PAIFF’s Program and Schedule, text PAIFF to 80474.

PAIFF’s goal is to facilitate, fuel and ignite current and future cinematic revolutions through education and entertainment. PAIFF convenes artists, media and technology professionals, and attendees in an intimate environment where they can experience great cinema, learn about cutting-edge technologies and ideas, and celebrate the artists and innovators shaping the world of moving pictures. Experience. Learn. Connect.