The Palo Alto International Film Festival (PIAFF) announced its 2012 Film Program, with special events and over 75 features and shorts in competition, including for Best Animation/VFX.

Returning for the second year in a row, Former AWN/VFXWorld senior editor Bill Desowitz will be moderating a panel called The Future of Cinema: Extended and Experiential on September 29, 2012, at 1:00pm. Joining him for discussion about the changing shapes of future cinema and the rising insurgency of experiential entertainment will be filmmaker/technologists John Gaeta (creative director/founder, Float Hybrid), Kim Libreri (VFX supervisor at ILM), Rudy Poat (creative director, Microsoft Studios), and Habib Zargarpour (creative director, Microsoft Studios).

A swiftly navigated round table will span topics ranging from the Enduring Hypnotic Power of Wide Screen Passive Cinema to the Equally Powerful Emergence of Experiential Cinema to the accelerating evolution of “Camera” and “Performance” capture to Social, Interactive and Connected “Theater” Platforms to Audience Interfaces to Hybrid Entertainment Formats to Augmented, Explorable and Playable Exposition to Silicon Hollywood to the next generation of “moviegoers,” the panel will explore how cinema will be driven in the coming decades.  Audience interaction will be highly encouraged.

Other highlights include a 30th anniversary screening of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, September 28, 7:30pm, at the Outdoor Festival Village Stage in Palo Alto. Presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and hosted by Variety’s David Cohen; and a presentation of Disney’s ground-breaking animated Paperman short before Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder in 3-D (courtesy of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging) on September 27 at 9:00pm at the Outdoor Festival Village.

Source: PIAFF