Telluride Arts: Twenty(by)Telluride, Mountainfilm Edition, 5/24

19 May Telluride Arts: Twenty(by)Telluride, Mountainfilm Edition, 5/24

Twenty(by)Telluride. What’s that you say?

The short answer is a formula: 20 slides x 20 seconds each x a few great minds.

The evening is a bit like the TED Talks, which give each speaker 18 minutes to address the world with his or her transformative ideas.

Telluride Arts‘ Twenty(by)Telluride is a series of fun, lively, fast-paced slide presentations that provide an intimate peek into the creative people who comprise the Telluride’s Arts District and its extended family. Each presenter gets 20 slides, shown for exactly 20 seconds each.

Presenters are challenged to share what makes them tick—their inspiration, their creative process, their passions, their muse. Each presenter has exactly twenty slides and each slide is shown for exactly twenty seconds, challenging each to be precise. The whole event is less than one hour and has a fun, casual vibe.

On Wednesday, May 24, 7:30 – 8:30 p.m., Twenty(by)Telluride takes place at Telluride’s historic Sheridan Bar and showcases some of the creative talent represented at Mountainfilm.

Featuring:

David Byars

David Garrett Byars is a former financial analyst, who left his job in 2008 to pursue his then-nebulous dreams. After his departure, the financial system promptly and predictably crashed. He is now a filmmaker living in Telluride, Colorado.

Byars’ focuses is on feature-length documentaries, but he also creates branded pieces as a freelance filmmaker. As part of Reel Thing Productions, he released the feature-length documentary “Uranium Drive In” (Mountainfilm 2013).

In 2013, he wrote and directed his first narrative short, “Self Storage,” a quirky, dark comedy that follows a worker at a self-storage facility as he struggles to pay off the medical debt stemming from his unlucky brew of common cleaning agents. The result is a delicious brew of its own, filled with black humor, endearing characters, and smart storytelling. Byars coins  the film as “a story of conscience, existential dread and redemption.”

David Byars is the director of “No Man’s Land” (Mountainfilm 2017), the candid film that follows the former occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Garry Charnock

In 2005, Garry Charnock brought a proposal to his tiny U.K. village of Ashton Hayes in England. He asked everyone to band together to become carbon neutral. What happened next was extraordinary: Three-fourths of the population showed up for the first meeting and the community got on board. Ashton Hays has since cut its carbon emissions by 40 percent — without government funds and spearheaded by volunteers — through modifications as simple as changing light bulbs and improving insulation. Aided by a subsequent grant, Ashton Hayes built a low-carbon sports pavilion and has embarked on other social enterprises. For his work, Charnock was awarded Climate Week’s “Inspirational Leader of the Year Award” in 2011 and he continues to spread the good word.

Garry Charnock is a featured speaker at Mountainfilm’s Moving Mountains Symposium, The New Normal, Friday, May 26, and appears at a Town Talk on Monday, May 29.

Daiva Chesonis

Daiva Chesonis

Daiva is a Baltimore-born transplant since 1992, when she came to Telluride with the CTEC crew to build the Gondola and decided to stay put for a while. That “while” has included stints as owner/operator of Vision Design, art director at Telluride Magazine and Telluride Production Group, snowboard instructor, bookseller, and time served as board member for the Telluride Repertory Theatre Company, (now Telluride Theatre), the Horizon Program, and Mountainfilm.

In 2005, Daiva achieved her original academic goal, receiving a Masters Degree in Diplomacy and International Conflict Resolution.

The daughter of Lithuanian immigrants, she grew up protesting in DC alongside her parents for the Baltic nation’s freedom, an experience that shaped her resolve about the freedoms of language and the written word.

Since 2010, Daiva has been co-owner of Between The Covers Bookstore in Telluride.

Rebecca Rusch

Nicknamed the “Queen of Pain” for her superhuman endurance, Rebecca Rusch is one of the most decorated athletes in the history of adventure racing — if not in history. She’s a seven-time world champion across multiple sports, from 24-hour solo mountain biking to masters cross-country skiing. She holds the course record on the Moab-to-Fruita Kokopelli Trail and has won the Leadville 100 mountain bike race four times.

Rusch founded the SRAM Gold Rusch Tour in 2014, which travels to North American races and events to host skills clinics and group rides for women. She is the author of an autobiography, “Rusch to Glory,” and a firefighter and EMT in her hometown of Ketchum, Idaho. As a Red Bull Endurance Athlete, Rusch embarked on a 1,200-mile ride of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 2015 in search of the site where her father’s plane was shot down during the Vietnam War.

Rusch’s trip is chronicled in the documentary, “Blood Road” (Mountainfilm 2017).

Auden Schendler

As vice president of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company, Schendler focuses on large-scale solutions to climate change, primarily through the routes of clean energy and activism. He was named a global warming innovator in 2006 and has testified to Congress on the impacts of climate change on public lands. He is the author of “Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution.” His writing on the subject has been appeared in the L.A. Times, Scientific American, and High Country News.

Telluride Arts promotes a culture of the arts in the Telluride Arts District.  For more information please find us at 970.728.3930, Telluridearts.org, or on Facebook, Twitter or at the Telluride Arts Offices located across from the library at 135 W Pacific Ave in Telluride.