Film festivals aren’t quite a dime a dozen these days, but there sure are a lot of them. So many, in fact, that one might wonder what a new festival can hope to accomplish. I couldn’t have possibly answered that question a week ago with any real authority, although to call my own bluff, that wouldn’t have kept me from trying, but today, after being involved as both a volunteer and a community member of the inaugural Palo Alto International Film Festival for the past three days, I can say with the authority of a festival participant, the only authority there should be for such an event, a film festival has the possibility to represent no less than a coming of age celebration for an entire city.

    It isn’t that Palo Alto hasn’t been a city for many years already, but in this brave and bold first effort at an international film festival, Palo Alto is throwing its hat in the ring to declare itself a grown up city by its own merits, not merely as a suburban satellite to San Francisco, no longer a place one feels compelled to describe as “on the peninsula” as if it were some poor stepchild to what area residents from all sides of the bay have collectively agreed to call “the city” (the city of San Francisco that is), not just as a one street wonder that feeds into Stanford University. Oh no. Not now. Palo Alto is a real city of its own and proud to declare it.

    The first inkling I had that the stars were aligning towards such a moment of critical mass was after a screening of The Social Network where the energy of the audience response for the first time hit me in my solar plexus the way that screenings in L.A. often used to do when I lived there. The following day which just happened to be the Sunday of the 2010 Oscars, a chance encounter with Mark Zuckerberg buying apples at the California Avenue farmer’s market confirmed that while Hollywood might still be the place doing the celebrating over films and even the casting and production of them, the Silicon Valley was quietly becoming the topic worthy of cinematic examination.

    The programming for this first entry in what will hopefully be an annual standing event, has been ambitious, inventive, and focused on the strengths and unique contributions of the silicon valley, as well as a broader examination of the confluence of arts & technology, owing to the fine curatorial eye of the festival’s Director of Programming Alf Seccombe. Seccombe’s sensibility has apparently been honed by what was decidedly a broadening and illuminating seven years of programming for Sundance. The festival itself has been generously funded by the Palo Alto Institute whose mission “Think. Teach. Tell.” is entertainingly and invitingly supported by such an enterprise as an international film festival.

    A thirty speaker program spread across three days at Talenthouse on High Street has featured film talent ranging from veteran editor Walter Murch whose credits include Apocalypse Now and the English Patient, to DIY movement filmmaker trio Encyclopedia Pictura. A hundred film program of everything from shorts to features has included the crowd sourced and crowd pleasing Life in a Day a film incorporating the amateur films of hundreds of individuals from around the globe shot on the same day, July 24th, 2010 and edited into a compelling collective narrative which screened outdoors and under the stars on Ramona Street on a gigantic inflatable screen as the festival kick-off, and Something Ventured an examination of the birth of the western phenomenon known as “Venture Capitalism” with a post screening Q & A attended by no less than five of the venture capitalists featured in the film including Reid Dennis, Bill Draper, and Don Valentine whose collective fiscal support and acumen has stewarded the growth of companies from Atari to Fairchild Computers and coached earnings into multiple billion dollar territory. With what has already screened and what is still yet to come in the next 36 hours the festival has remaining, there is certain to be additional cinematic sustenance. Cinema lovers like me always hunger for more great cinema, of course, but more importantly, inhabitants of a place, any place, yearn to feel a part of that place, and yearn for that place to have a vital part to play in a greater world. The PAIFF already feels to be helping the city of Palo Alto skip along the road into that direction.