desertfilmsociety.com

Coachella Valley Premiere -  One Time Screening

In Robert Guédiguian’s taut, internationally acclaimed thriller, set during the French Resistance, Armenian poet Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian) and his French wife (Virginie Ledoyen) lead a ragtag assortment of volunteers — Jews, Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Spaniards and Armenians — in an assassination plot against the German occupiers and their French allies.   News of their daring attacks in this clandestine battle against the Nazi occupation, including the assassination of an SS general, eventually reaches Berlin.   

Director Avi Nesher re-creates Israel during the summer of 1968 in this poignant, engrossing coming-of-age story. Teenager Arik Burstein is the son of a survivor who never talks about his past. When he gets a summer job working as a kind of detective for matchmaker Yankele Bride, he finds himself in the strange and fascinating world of Haifa’s seedier downtown area. Dwarves running a movie theatre showing only love stories, the glamorous and tragic Clara (Maya Dagan) and a carnival of clients for whom Yankele provides “what they need, not what they want” all become intensely involved in each other’s lives, the secrets of their pasts and their dreams of brighter futures. Nominated for 7 Israeli Academy Awards including Best Picture.

A story about a Bulgarian boy who grows up to be a German man. After a car accident Alex can't even remember his name.  In an attempt to cure him from amnesia, his grandfather, Bai Dan (Miki Manojlovic, IRINA PALM), comes over to Germany and organizes a spiritual journey back to Bulgaria and Alex’s past.

Coachella Valley Premiere - One Time Screening

OLD CATS is an emotionally wrought drama between an elderly woman named Isadora (Bélgica Castro) and her daughter Rosario (Claudia Celedón).  Isadora and her husband are

Complimentary admission to all guests

Screening of short films from around the world, submitted to SHORTS SHOWCASE.  You and our audience will vote to select the winners.  Complimentary admission & coffee, so please bring your friends. 

Runtime:  Approx 90 minutes. 

Southern California Premiere - One Time Screening

In the 1970s, Argentina was ruled by a ruthless military regime that waged a so-called dirty war leaving some 30,000 suspected communists missing.  Inspired by actual events in the director's life, I MISS YOU is the evocative and moving coming-of-age story of two brothers: a fifteen-year-old and the older brother he idolizes.  As the political situation heats up upon his return from mandatory military service, it becomes obvious that the older brother now belongs to a group of anti-government activists. 

Gábor, aided by his partner in crime and childhood best friend, has the perfect scam.  He targets lonely women, researches them thoroughly and then becomes their perfect suitor—only to leave them at the altar after having cleaned out their bank accounts.

Coachella Valley Premiere - One Time Screening

The untold story behind a great American novel.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" was the first and only novel by a young woman from the South.  It became one of the biggest best-sellers of all time and she became a mystery.  "Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird" explores the history and impact of the novel and offers an unprecedented look at the life of the novelist.  

                   Coachella Valley Premiere - One Time Screening 

Conservative and tyrannical Jean-Louis Joubert, played by Fabrice Luchini ("Potiche," "My Father’s Guests", "Molière"), is unhappily married to Suzanne, a neurotic Parisian socialite (Sandrine Kiberlain, "Mademoiselle Chambon", "A Self-Made Hero," "For Sale").  Enter a group of buoyant Spanish maids, refugees of the Franco regime, who live in the servants’ quarters on the sixth floor of their building.  Among them are Concepción (Carmen Maura, "Volver," "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown") and her niece María (Natalia Verbeke, "The Method," "Dot the I").  When the family maid suddenly walks out, Suzanne and Jean-Louis hire

West Coast Premiere 
One Time Screening

The fates of three German-born Muslims in Berlin collide as they struggle to find their place between faith and modern life in contemporary western society, caught at a crossroads where alluring liberated lifestyles conflict with deeply-rooted traditions.  Starring: Carlo Ljubek, Jeremias Acheampong and Maryam Zaree

                                  Coachella Valley Premiere            
                                          Sneak Preview

Winner of the Audience Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Maryam Keshavarz's debut film is a lush, innovative coming-of-age story set in the underground art scene of Tehran.  Iranian teenager Atafeh and her best friend, Shireen, are defining the evolving boundaries of their intense friendship when Atafeh's brother Mehran returns home from a drug rehabilitation center and announces he's joining the morality police.  When he makes the girls' questionable friendship his target, Atafeh finds herself the victim of her brother's dangerous obsession.  Summary written by Outfest Film Festival 2011   Opens in NY and LA on Aug 26.

                              FIVE TIME CHAMPION
     Coachella Valley Premiere - One Time Screening

Set and filmed in Austin and Smithville, Texas, a teen-age boy, abandoned by his father, discovers what it means to be a man.  A film about the complicated nature of relationships at every stage in life - love, hope, petty theft, adultery, and the boundless opportunities presented

          Coachella Valley Premiere - One Time Screening

Industrialist executive Stanislas Graff (Yvan Attal) unapologetically leads a Parisian high-life, gambling away fortunes and enjoying trysts in a stunning, modern apartment purchased just for such occasions.

        Coachella Valley Premiere - One Time Screening
                                            1:30 pm
                   co-sponsored with CINEMA DIVERSE
                          GUESTS:  Jay Gianuko - Director/Writer Producer
                                    Susan Barnes - Writer/Producer/Editor
                                       Orin Kennedy and Bernardo Puccio

An Ordinary Couple is a romantic and uplifting documentary following two extraordinary men, Orin Kennedy and Bernardo Puccio, on an unexpected journey from their funeral to their wedding.  Yes, in that order. 

                Coachella Valley Premiere - One Time Screening

Watts, Los Angeles.  One day in the life of a 15-year-old Latina gang leader. She discovers that leaving the gang is more difficult than joining it.  Made in cinéma vérité style, the film stars many local teens, with veteran actors such as Danny Glover & Kate del Castillo in supporting roles.

          Coachella Valley Premiere - One Time Screening

Laure is 10 years old.  Laure is a tomboy.  On her arrival in a new neighborhood, she lets Lisa and her crowd believe that she is a boy.  Truth or dare ?  Dare.

Summer becomes a big playground and Laure pretends to be Michael, a boy like the others… different enough to get the attention of Lisa who falls in love with him. Laure takes advantage of her new identity as if the end of the summer would never reveal her unsettling secret

                                         West Coast Premiere 
                                                One Time Screening

Enthusiastically received at Venice Film Festival, Francesco Cecere's exquisite drama follows Nena (Isabella Ragonese), a young teacher who is posted to a provincial Puglian town where she struggles to connect with the local children while missing her aristocratic boyfriend. 

 Coachella Valley Premiere - One Time Screening 

Born James Slattery in Massapequa, Long Island, in 1944, Candy Darling transformed herself into a stunning blonde actress who in the mid-Sixties became an active player in New York’s “downtown” scene.  In her passionate act of self-creation, Candy Darling mesmerized.  A party fixture, she appeared in Warhol films, and Tennessee Williams cast her in a play.  She was seen and written about, and then, before she turned 30, cancer claimed her life.

                                 Coachella Valley Premiere - One Time Screening 
                                 Co-sponsored with Tolerance Education Center 
                                Special Guest:   Jacques Silvan, who lived this experience

Long a taboo subject in France, the infamous Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup is brought to stirring life in this gripping drama starring Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds, Beginners, Forbidden Love, The Concert),  Jean Reno (The Professional, The Da Vinvi Code, Godzilla, La Femme Nikita) and Gad Elmaleh (Priceless, The Valet, Chouchou, Midnight in Paris).

                  West Coast Premiere - One Time Screening

Belgium-based trio Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy follow their acclaimed ICEBERG and RUMBA with another Tati-inspired, candy-colored romp: this time, a charmingly off-kilter adventure about a hotel clerk who falls in love with a wish-granting fairy.  Opens in NY on Feb 24, 2012.