While Rome, affectionately referred to as la Città Eterna (“the Eternal City”), is often visited due to its rich history, its stunning architecture or renowned cuisine, later this month from the 18th to the 27th of October, visitors can experience the Rome Film Festival. Although it is only in its second year, it has attracted a high number of private sponsors, and the City Council of Rome, in the name of the Mayor and film-buff Walter Veltroni, the Province of Rome and the Lazio Region all strongly support it both in terms of institutional communication and economic investment.

The actual title of the festival in Italian is Festa, which could be translated as feast, not festival, and is apt, since it is more a celebration of the joy of cinema than a regular film festival. Indeed, though the Rome Film Festival’s jury includes a renowned director as its president, last year Ettore Scola, the rest of the 50 jurors are not film professionals but are, in fact, regular moviegoers selected both in Italy and Europe.

Although it enjoys fierce rivalry with the Venice Film Festival, The Rome Film Festival has attracted its own audience and this year will host the world premiere of 11 new films. Among the most exciting is ‘Youth Without Youth’ – Francis Ford Coppola’s first feature film in a decade. The film is about a timid Romanian professor who becomes young again after being hit by lightning. The five-time Oscar-winning director wrote the film based on a novella by Romanian philosopher-author Mircea Eliade and has been described as his “third renaissance” after ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘The Godfather’.

The Hollywood film industry is an amalgamation of technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking. It generally consists of film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, actors, directors, and film personnel.

Today the Hollywood film industry is positioned across the world. In this 21st century, the major business centers of filmmaking are concentrated in United States, India and China. Hollywood is a district in Los Angeles, California that is situated in west- northwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural individuality of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a connotation for the cinema of United States which is popularly known as the Hollywood film Industry.

The history of the Hollywood Film Industry probably started in the hands of D.W. Griffith when the Biograph Company sent him and his crew. They started filming on a vacant lot in downtown Los Angeles in early 1910. Soon the company decided to explore new territories to find that the region was quite friendly and enjoyable for shooting.

My husband and I began visiting Palm Springs in the late 1970’s. We rented a small condominium on Ramon Road near to downtown which we’ve kept for many years. Then we began to explore. From our first visit we knew we would return to the desert many times more and we have. It was then that we discovered the Palm Springs International Film Festival which has become famous around the world. In the words of the Festival’s Vision statement the “….. society strives for a world in which enlightenment, knowledge and tolerance prevail.” The best was yet to come.

In 1994 we happened upon the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films now in its seventeenth year and the largest short film festival in the United States. Now commonly known as The Shortfest, it attracts an incredibly eclectic group of industry people and films which now exceed over three hundred screenings each season from filmmakers from over 40 countries. Last year nearly 15,000 people, two of them being George and I, attended the festival which now includes twenty awards in six categories. First place winners are available to be considered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and those winners in the action and animation categories are automatically eligible for consideration. Three of the recent films to have been screened are Nine, Precious and the Hurt Locker.

It has been said that the Shortfest, which typically runs in June, is a spin off of the International Film Festival which is held in January of each year but to us it is so interesting and enjoyable that we feel it should and can stand on its own. In fact, almost 50 of the short films have gone on to be Academy Award nominees and each year $70,000 in prize money is awarded and awards are given in the category of the “Best of the Fest” and for us the “Future Filmmaker” category is our favorite.