by Bruce Fessier

In the 24 years leading to tonight, no festival has opened with a better splash than the inaugural opening night film, "Cinema Paradiso." In the daily video series running on mydesert.com, I asked more than 25 people involved with the festival for their festival highlights and the most common response was seeing "Cinema Paradiso," this magical film by Giuseppe Tornatore about how a filmmaker fell in love with cinema as a child through the influence of the projectionist at his village theater.

The film opened at the renovated Plaza Theatre and the boy's experience mirrored the experience of that night's filmgoers. As if to validate their feeling, the film went on to win the Best Foreign Language Oscar and Palm Springs became known as the festival that showed the Best Foreign Language Oscar nominees.

Read more

Source: http://www.mydesert.com/