Leo Zahn's film is based on Alan Hess's book The Palm Springs School: Desert Modernism 1934–1975 (Rizzoli, 2025). Hess narrates it himself, and there are no on-camera interviews—the story is told entirely through his voice and the architecture. It argues that the Coachella Valley's architecture was no provincial offshoot of European Modernism but an original movement in its own right.
Across 76 minutes, the film follows the forces shaping the work of Albert Frey, William F. Cody, E. Stewart Williams, Donald Wexler, Richard Neutra and John Lautner: nature, technology, and a culture of pleasure and recreation. It runs from Lloyd Wright's Oasis Hotel of 1924 through the glass houses, country clubs, inns and department stores that turned a resort town into a laboratory of Modern design.
Using the most advanced digital techniques, archival photographs are virtually expanded into the third dimension, letting the camera move through rooms as they appeared when new, each sequence faithful to the original image. These passages alternate with Zahn’s own cinematography of the same buildings today, setting the archive beside the living architecture.
Leo Zahn trained at USC's film school and spent three decades directing commercials. His documentaries include Desert Maverick (2016), about Palm Springs architect William F. Cody, the popular Sinatra in Palm Springs: The Place He Called Home (2018), Iconicity (2020) and The Green Desert (2024). His films have screened at more than twenty film festivals worldwide and stream globally on major platforms.
A Q&A with Zahn and Hess follows the screening.
VIP Pre-screening Reception PLUS VIP Seating tickets $100. Reception is 5:00 PM-6:30 PM in the Museum's sculpture garden adjacent to the theater.
Film Only Tickets are $35. Film begins at 6:30 PM and is 76 min, followed by a Q+A with Zahn and Hess.
The Palm Springs School: Desert Modernism 1934-1975 - Official Trailer