Few decisions for a movie enthusiast are more difficult than choosing between conflicting film festivals. Would I travel to Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival (Jan. 15-25), or opt instead for the Palm Springs International Film Festival (Jan. 8-19), slightly over two hours and 134 miles (according to Map Quest) away?

A quick check of the weather in each city would be the determining factor, I told myself. Park City was experiencing single-digit temperatures (be still, my chattering teeth), while Palm Springs was in the throes of a succession of balmy, 75-degree days. Hmmm… what to do? Face the possibility of becoming a human Popsicle, or bop around for a week in shorts and sandals? The answer didn’t require so much as a flip of the coin.

The PSIFF was in its fourth day by the time I rolled into town on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 11. My first order of business was to drop in at the Wyndham Palm Springs Hotel’s hospitality suite to pick up my media pass (my thanks to Steve Wilson at BWR Public Relations) and a program guide detailing the 200-plus films (from more than 60 countries) being screened at the festival. My modest goal was to see at least two films a day, particularly those of interest to the GLBT community (15 were listed on the festival’s website, though that number seemed high, given their plot descriptions), as well as to attend a planned panel discussion centered on queer cinema. Due to scheduling conflicts, time constraints and other practical concerns (like eating and sleeping), I was able to attend only a third of the GLBT offerings, though I managed to make it to 26 movies overall (my favorites: Who Killed Bambi? and Fear and Trembling, both from France) before my week was up. Five top pics:

Adore: Diary of a Porn Star (Italy), a glamorized portrait of a fictional porn star and hustler, written and directed by the film’s leading man, Marco Filiberti (who wore an awful lot of mascara and eyeliner for a porn star); Chouchou (France), a winning, deeply affectionate story about a cheerful drag queen with an affinity for malapropisms, co-written by the film’s star, Gad Elmaleh; Ghostlight (U.S.), a curiosity item detailing the last days of modern dance icon Martha Graham, played by male diva Richard Move as a cross between Tallulah Bankhead and Joan Crawford; and Twist (Canada), a dark, relentlessly downbeat re-telling of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, set in the world of heroin-addicted male hustlers.

The GLBT film with the most “buzz” was unquestionably writer-director C. Jay Cox’s Latter Days (U.S.), a dramedy about a promiscuous West Hollywood party boy (Wes Ramsey) who falls for a closeted Mormon missionary (Steve Sandvoss). Cox, who penned the Reese Witherspoon vehicle Sweet Home Alabama, was present at the packed-to-the-rafters screening (the Festival’s “Gay-La” event), along with three of his exceptionally pretty actors: Ramsey, Sandvoss and Jacqueline Bisset, who plays the owner of a WeHo eatery called Lila’s. Ron Oden, Palm Spring’s openly gay, African-American mayor, introduced the film, which won a five-minute ovation at its end.

On Saturday, Jan. 17, the festival offered a panel discussion at the Annenberg Theatre, housed inside the Palm Springs Desert Museum, entitled “Queer Cinema: Identity Crisis?” Moderated by Festival program director Carl Spence (who also programs the Seattle International Film Festival), the idea was (per the program) to “discuss the effect that mainstream media portrayals of gay and lesbian characters have on our culture, and the ways that these televised portrayals of gay and lesbian culture have affected queer cinema” (quite a mouthful, that). All three panelists were first-time directors with films at PSIFF: Andrew Litvack (Merci Docteur Rey, a U.S./France co-production starring Woody Allen favorite Dianne Wiest), Christopher Herrmann (Ghostlight) and C. Jay Cox (Latter Days).

Each panelist was first asked to give a brief overview of his film, and to say a few words about how his sexuality informed his work. “How can my sexuality not influence what I do, especially after 12 years of therapy?” Litvack commented dryly. He mentioned Hollywood great George Cukor as an example of a director whose sexuality informed his body of work, while Cox cited Far From Heaven director Todd Haynes in the same context. When Litvack expressed surprise that Haynes was gay, Cox — consistently the wittiest of the panelists — cracked wise: “Fuck, I just outed Todd Haynes. As if the Mormons don’t hate me enough.”

Cox was referring to an incident involving Latter Days, which was set for a Jan. 30 release in Salt Lake, only to be pulled at the last minute by Madstone Theaters because of what Cox called “undue pressure from the Mormon church,” which was “threatening a boycott of the entire [theater] chain” — proof, he said, that “movies can be mainstream and still be considered dangerous.” Aware that he had just called his film “dangerous,” Cox, a former Mormon, added: “I am so not on the cutting edge of things. If this movie is dangerous, people need to get out more.”

All three gentlemen agreed that there was still “a lot of work to be done” to make gay themes accessible, despite the popularity of such TV shows as “Will & Grace” and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” It’s okay to be gay on TV, they said, as long as gay characters sublimate their sexuality. “Gay sexuality, alas, is till taboo,” Cox explained. On the other hand, he pointed out, “Movies with crossover appeal can end up blanding themselves out” and alienating the gay target audience.

As for being known as a “gay” director, none of the panelists felt entirely comfortable with that classification. “Fuck gay,” growled Herrmann. “I’m gay and I’m a filmmaker, but that doesn’t make me a gay filmmaker.” Offered Cox, “I don’t see myself as a gay filmmaker. I’m gay and I make films.” Litvack, too, resisted being pigeonholed. “You don’t sit down and say ‘I’m going to write a movie for the gay audience.’ Certainly my film is infused by a gay sensibility, but 95 percent of that wasn’t intentional.’”

Litvack, Herrmann and Cox all expressed the hope that films directed at the gay audience would get better in the years to come. Litvack said he was “sick of coming-out dramas,” while Cox was of the opinion that “there must be something between coming out and dying of AIDS. I want to see gay characters involved in falling in love for the first time, becoming parents, breaking up — all the things that are part of the gay experience.” Herrmann put it more bluntly: “The quality of gay movies sucks. I see one bad movie after another when I go to gay film festivals. Ghostlight is not a ‘gay’ film, nor is it a ‘dance’ film; it’s an impressionistic homage. We need more freshness in our storytelling.”

Said Cox in summation, “The hope is that we’re going to be able to tell stories that the studios wouldn’t touch.”

Kyle Counts is the film critic for the Gay and Lesbian Times.