Sedona, AZ — On October 5, 2026 at 700 p.m. at the Mary Fisher Theater, the Sedona International Film Festival will present a double-feature from Paul and Hollace Davids, who have been Sedona residents since 2021. First is “An Artist Reflects with Clarinet,” winner of Best Experimental Film at the London Vision Film Awards and the Palm Springs Underground Film Festival – experimental for its unique use of art and Paul’s clarinet improvisations. The film has also been nominated for Best Documentary at many film festivals in Europe.
After viewing “An Artist Reflects with Clarinet,” Bob Gazzale (CEO and President of the American Film Institute) wrote to Paul Davids: “I’ve heard Spielberg say it – and Al Pacino told me Diane Keaton said it to him incessantly when they were together…’You cannot call yourself an artist. Others do that for you.’ Well, you sir – are an artist. Filmmaker – musician – painter – I mean stop already! I can barely get out of bed in the morning – and you are constantly creating… what a wonder you are.”
Paul J. Davids was one of 18 students chosen to be Fellows at the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies in its opening year. Having just graduated from Princeton in 1969, and after suddenly abandoning his applications to medical school after having been awe-inspired by the animated feature “The Yellow Submarine,” Paul found himself in a Los Angeles film program with then-unknown filmmakers such as David Lynch, Terrence Malick, Caleb Deschanel (who became one of Hollywood’s greatest Directors of Cinematography), Tom Rickman (“Coal Miner’s Daughter”), Paul Schrader and Jeremy Kagan. There Paul made his first 16mm sound film, a sort of “Twilight Zone” dramatic short called “Examination,” which is the second film SIFF will screen for the double-feature on October 5th. At age 23, at the AFI, Paul was directing Hollywood TV stars such as Paul Picerni (“The Untouchables”) and Don Keefer (“The Way We Were”) in his original script from an award-winning short story he wrote at Princeton. This will be the first public screening of “Examination” since the 1970’s.
After AFI, Paul worked for five years for the great Hollywood agent, Paul Kohner and also for one of Hollywood’s greatest directors, Willliam Wyler (“Ben-Hur,” “Funny Girl”). A project for actor Cornel Wilde got Paul into the Writers Guild of America, and Paul co-wrote (with his wife, Hollace) a film adaptation of “The Hobbit” for George Pal, Sci-Fi master producer of the 1950’s and 1960’s (“War of the Worlds,” “The Time Machine.”)
Paul made the best choice of his life in 1972 when he married Hollace Goodman, a psychology master’s degree recipient from Boston College who had never thought of a career in Hollywood. Within a few years of moving to Los Angeles and marrying Paul, Hollace was on her way to a remarkable career in movies, first as a publicist, then as Senior Vice-President of Special Projects at Columbia Pictures and then for nearly quarter of a century as a Senior Vice-President of Universal Pictures. She managed all the film premieres and premiere parties, and Paul says that as a result he has attended more Hollywood premieres than anyone else in history (of those who did not actually work the premieres).
In 1985 Paul was hired by Marvel Productions to be production coordinator for 79 of the original animated episodes of “The Transformers” (for which he also wrote four scripts).
In the early 1990’s, Paul and his talented wife Hollace Davids were hired by Lucasfilm to write 6 “Star Wars” sequel novels which ended up selling millions of copies worldwide in many languages, beginning with “The Glove of Darth Vader” up through “Prophets of the Dark Side.” Written for 4th to 6th graders, their “Star Wars” books were in virtually every elementary school library in the U.S., and many of those former students have told the Davids that they were motivated to learn to read due to their enthusiasm for those books.
After serving as executive producer and co-writer for the Showtime original film “Roswell: the UFO Coverup,” Paul embarked on a decades-long career as a writer, producer and director of low-budget TV features and documentaries, while also developing his talents as an artist of oil paintings. It was his good fortune that NBCUniversal International Television placed many of his films on international TV, in addition to releasing several as videos and DVDs via Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. Meanwhile, his work as an artist blossomed, especially after producing the film “Starry Night” about Vincent van Gogh, such that now Paul has created hundreds of oil paintings (www.pauldavids.com and www.pauldavids-art.com )
The Sedona International Film Festival has shown many of the Paul and Hollace Davids independent features. After screening three in the film festival in the early 2000’s (including “Starry Night, “The Artist and the Shaman,” and “Timothy Leary’s Dead”), in recent years SIFF has screened almost all of the Davids’s independent productions including “Marilyn Monroe Declassified,” “The Life After Death Project 1, 2 and 3” (three separate documentary features), “The Sci-Fi Boys,” “Before We Say Goodbye,” “Jesus in India” and their foray into producing the world’s first AI TV series: “The Naughty Adventures of Scarlett May Blossom.”
The President and CEO of the American Film Institute concluded his recent email to Paul calling Paul AFI’s Zelig (the Woody Allen character who was present for all the major events of his era). Bob Gazzale then stated “And I am two things – honored that you shared ‘An Artist Reflects with Clarinet’ with me – and sorry it took me so long to “discover” it. AFI stands tall and proud – and why wouldn’t it with founding Fellows like you!”
Paul Davids has just returned from an epic journey to Peru and Chile, that included visits to Machu Picchu, Cusco, Sacsayhuaman, Atacama and Easter Island, where he filmed hours of documentary footage for an upcoming production. And Hollace has just returned from New York where Hollace and their daughter Jordan visited with Hollace’s cousin Gail Eisen, a producer of “60 Minutes.”
Paul and Hollace will be present October 5th at 7:00 at the Mary Fisher Theatre screenings for a Q and A about “An Artist Reflects with Clarinet” and “Examination” and hope that local residents will be there to meet with them and discover these films.