Palm Springs 70mm Fest kicks off with secret double feature

A secret, soon-to-be-released 70mm film will anchor a massive sold out opening night double feature as the Palm Springs 70mm Fest returns for its second year this weekend.

The three-day event runs Friday through Sunday at the Palm Springs Cultural Center’s Historic Camelot Theatre, kicking off Friday night with a blockbuster pairing. Audiences will first see a new 70mm print of Steven Spielberg’s director’s cut of his 1977 film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” followed immediately by the unannounced, top-secret screening of a major upcoming modern movie.

Landing a brand-new, modern film in a specialized format is a massive get for the Coachella Valley. Typically, major studios reserve specialized 70mm formats for new releases exclusively for population centers like New York and Los Angeles, forcing local cinephiles to make a multi-hour drive to get the full picture. This weekend, local audiences can see cutting-edge cinema right in Palm Springs.

The rest of the lineup features classic cinema designed for the largest canvas possible like John Ford’s “The Searchers” (1956), screening Saturday morning. Starring John Wayne, it’s widely considered the definitive American western and has influenced countless filmmakers with the sweeping vistas of Monument Valley.

“I go back to ‘The Searchers’ all the time,” Martin Scorsese wrote in The Hollywood Reporter in 2013 (Spoilers for the 70-year-old movie in the article!).

Writer Glenn Frankel wrote in his book, “The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend,” that the movie “is perhaps the greatest Hollywood film that few people have seen,” emphasizing its outsized influence on the medium.

On the biggest screen in Palm Springs, the frame functions as a living canvas, letting the audience experience the vast, unforgiving frontier exactly as Ford intended.

On Sunday evening, the festival closes with Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s “West Side Story,” (1961). Winner of 10 Academy Awards, the musical was filmed in Super Panavision 70 to maximize the impact of its vibrant colors and explosive choreography.

On a standard screen or streaming service, the intricate, athletic geometry of Robbins’ choreography gets lost and the colors feel muted. The Camelot’s 70-foot screen restores the film’s theatrical grandeur, turning the opening prologue and legendary dance numbers into a towering, physical experience that cannot be replicated at home.

German director Tom Tykwer said of the film, “Out of all the 70mm productions which had been reduced to 35mm, the most convincing one with regard to picture brilliance, even better than “Lawrence of Arabia,” must have been “West Side Story.”

“We saw such an enthusiastic response from audiences at last year’s festival,” said Lauren Wolfer, producer of the Palm Springs 70mm Fest. “There’s something incredibly special about seeing these movies in 70mm on a huge screen. The Historic Camelot Theatre was built for this format, and it’s incredible that we have this here in the Coachella Valley.”

The Historic Camelot Theatre was originally built in 1967 as one of Southern California’s first prestige roadshow venues, designed specifically to present large-format films of the era. Now operated by the nonprofit Palm Springs Cultural Center, the theater is equipped with vintage Norelco AA-II projectors and a signature curved screen.

The rest of the lineup includes Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” (1997), and David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962).

Because 70mm film stock is twice the width of standard 35mm film, it captures unparalleled visual detail and color depth. It requires specialized projectionists to manually thread and handle hundreds of pounds of physical film. Only a few dozen theaters in the United States are currently equipped to screen it.

Tickets are available online. Friday’s double feature is sold out, but there’s still hope! Festival organizers tell us there will be a standby line ahead of the screening. Individual tickets are priced at $20 per film. A MUBI Reel Pass covering all six screenings is available for $89.

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