Film Festivals

The narrative arc, that structural phenomenon we often write about but seldom explain, is all about getting from a worthwhile Here to a satisfying There. It's the spinal column of most movies, documentaries or features -- the thing that lets them stand up and take a bow. Or, absent that, fall over into a puddle of their own misbegotten hubris and egomania. In one sense, the narrative arc of America -- post-Columbian, pre-Pacific Ocean -- is a people's movement across a continent.

Indie director Jonathan Parker has a soft spot for the Palm Springs International Film Festival -- and not just because, unlike at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, you can squeeze in a round of golf between screenings and Q&A sessions. "I think Palm Springs is really a film festival that has changed quite a bit," Parker says of the event, which began two decades ago -- it even featured parties at then-Mayor Sonny Bono's house -- and struggled financially in the late '90s.

As the Ojai Film Festival opens its second season tonight, some organizers are concerned about the fledgling event's financial future. "We're crippled," said George Walczak, the festival's director. "We're absolutely just hemorrhaging money." After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many of the corporate and individual donations in this area were earmarked for relief efforts. Walczak said donations to the festival are down 40% from a year ago.

The American Cinematheque's Aero Theatre celebrates "New Italian Cinema" this weekend. Antonello Grimaldi's 2008 drama "Quiet Chaos," starring Roman Polanski, and Ferzan Ozpetek's 2008 tragedy "A Perfect Day" will screen tonight. On tap for Saturday are the 2008 comedy "Her Whole Life Ahead" and the deliciously titled 2007 offering, "Lessons in Chocolate." Rounding out the programming Sunday are 2008's "Talk to Me About Love" and 2007's "Blood of the Losers." www.americancinematheque.com.

You know you're not in Cannes when the all-female marching band, wearing white go-go boots, belts out communist anthems at the opening ceremony. This is a film festival like none other in the world. There are no movie stars, no paparazzi, hardly any press. No studio executives doing deals on their BlackBerrys -- cellphones and other wireless devices are banned in North Korea. For that matter, so are most movies. North Korea is the closest thing the world has to a hermetically sealed society.

L.A. audiences would seem to need no introduction to Mexican cinema. The city has the nation's largest Mexican American population, it's the adopted home of many of Mexico's leading actors, directors, cinematographers and designers, and there are numerous venues and festivals here that regularly screen Mexican films. But in bringing his Hola Mexico Film Festival to Los Angeles for the first time, Samuel Douek wants to show U.S.

There's something about international film festivals that inevitably widens horizons. Walking away from an experience like the recently completed 1991 American Film Institute Los Angeles Film Festival--or AFIFEST--with its schedule of 200 movies in two weeks, you may feel that your cinematic psyche has been permanently changed. Happily so. As you move through these movies, pictures and nations merge, psychological datelines keep getting crossed.

As soon as executives at Sony Pictures Classics saw a rough cut of "Capote," they decided to launch their film at a top film festival. But Sony wasn't focused on Cannes, didn't shoot for Sundance and hadn't singled out Toronto, Venice or Berlin. The company wanted the film to premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, a small Labor Day gathering that isn't exactly at the top of the industry food chain.

Conservatives sometimes say they feel so persecuted they have to hide their beliefs in Hollywood, but this weekend they have a venue where they can vent freely, as what is billed as the company town's "first openly conservative film festival" takes place at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood.

Armed guards frisked attendees at two separate checkpoints and foreign directors skipped the four-day event out of safety concerns. But with its red carpet, half a dozen television crews circling like paparazzi and a roster of 58 films, the Baghdad International Film Festival is rolling on this week to a largely hipster Iraqi crowd enjoying its rare moment in the spotlight.