Palm Springs ShortFest wraps up
The Palm Springs International ShortFest & ShortFilm Market will wrap up today.
More than 300 films were screened at the 19th annual festival, whichstarted Tuesday. There will be several “best of the fest” screenings today,starting with animation shorts at noon.
A total of $110,000 in prizes were given in 19 categories on Sunday.Jury award winners included French film “Delicate Gravity” for best offestival, French film “Stranger Brothers” for grand jury award and Germanfilm “Rhino Full Throttle” for future filmmaker.
Winners were also announced in student and audience categories. Allwinners are listed on the festival’s website.
“This has been a spectacularly successful year for ShortFest on allfronts. Attendance figures spiked, with more sold out screenings than everbefore, the number of filmmakers attending the festival jumped by 30 percentover last year and industry participation has doubled,” said Darryl Macdonald,ShortFest programming and executive director.
“Those numbers, coupled with the rapturous response to the films andprograms by filmgoers attending the festival, means we’ll be doing some seriousplanning to accommodate the rapid growth of ShortFest in the off season leadinginto next year’s event.”
This year’s festival featured shorts from 49 countries, 70 worldpremieres, 55 North American premieres and 14 U.S. premieres. Eleven films werechosen for the ShortFest Online Film Festival and are available via thefestival’s website. They will play online for two months after the festival,according to organizers.
First-place winners in four categories are automatically eligible forconsideration by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an AcademyAward nomination.
For information, tickets to today’s screenings, a listing winners or towatch the online films, go to www.psfilmfest.org. Call (800) 898-7256.
