Palm Springs ShortFest debuted an element of movie-making Saturday it hadn’t shown off before.
Jessica Biel and Kirsten Dunst walked down a press line in front of the Camelot Theatres to promote their short films screening in the festival’s “Shooting Stars” program, also featuring films with actors or directors such as Matthew Modine, Tony Shaloub and Kate Hudson.
There wasn’t a red carpet, but a handful of journalists snapped pictures and interviewed the stars as filmgoers entered the theater.
“You’re so polite,” Biel said to the media just minutes before her program was due to begin.
Biel, who received the feature film festival’s Rising Star, Female Award in 2006 for her role in “The Illusionist,” wore a grayish single-shoulder strap dress to play up the natural beauty she played down in her film, “Hole in the Paper Sky,” in which she wore glasses and a smock as an assistant in animal experiments.
Biel told reporters that her boyfriend, singer Justin Timberlake, was inside the movie theater before the film started.
He was then seen quietly leaving before the movie let out.
Dunst, who starred with former Palm Springs resident Tobey Maguire in the “Spiderman” movies, wore a grayish mini-dress over short shorts as she arrived to support her 13-minute film, “Welcome.”
Dunst, who made her directorial debut with “Welcome,” opted to direct because she felt it was time to take that step after growing up as a film actress.
“My friend Bryce (Dallas Howard) had done it, and Gwyneth Paltrow and a lot of people I really care about had done it,” she said. “It was a nice platform to start my — hopefully — directing career.”
Biel, besides co-starring in “Hole in the Paper Sky,” was making her producing debut with the 34-minute film, which is long for a short.
“We had such a hard time cutting it down, our script was so good,” she said. “It actually was a problem because it hasn’t been accepted into a handful of different things because of the length. It’s been one of our hurdles.”
Biel and Dunst had something else in common with their films — actor Jason Clarke, who stars in both of their shorts, but didn’t come to ShortFest.
“I know nothing about Kirsten’s film,” Biel said. “Is Jason Clarke starring in her film too? What? It’s unbelievable! He is so good. I didn’t know that!”
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