“Industry Leaders on the Importance of Palm Springs International ShortFest”Short films are often given short shrift. Rarely seen and frequently forgotten — can you name this year’s Oscar winner? — they are the seedlings that grow great talent. Case in point: First-time director Quentin Tarantino’s 12-minute short, Reservoir Dogs (1991), grew into his first feature film of the same name a year later before going on to win the International Critics Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and receive a Grand Jury Prize nomination at the Sundance Film Festival.
In a world where people are increasingly consuming short content on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, short films — defined by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences as “an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less” — are seldom screened and mostly lauded as an adjunct to major film festivals. But the annual Palm Springs International ShortFest gives the people who create them and the audiences that love them a reason to rejoice…”
