Their goal is clear: to entertain and inform.
He is in charge of images. Her deal is words. Together George and Beth Gage make highly intelligent, visually seductive documentaries that can make a difference to their neighbors and to the planet.
The mission of the National Film Preserve, the 501 C (3) umbrella corporation under which the Telluride Film Festival operates all year, is to celebrate the art of filmmaking, not the business, which pumps out and promotes easy-to-swallow audio-visual capsules.
Each year, Festival directors Tom Luddy and Gary Meyer, screen hundreds of movies to find the highest quality product about 20 – 30 features, that collectively provide a great perspective of the past, present and future of film. Documentaries are given as much prominence as features.
This year, as in years past, the 35th annual Film Festival was as educational as it was entertaining, and it was played as a contact sport – minus the teeth. On the field, almost no one is overtly mollycoddled or petted. Actors, directors, cinematographers, buffs and students walk side-by-side down Main Street and side streets of town critiquing what they have just seen. But most of the buzz comes from the lines.
Hollywood regularly spits out films featuring the kvetching narcissistic alpha males who rule Tinsel Town. “Revanche” is an indie flick whose star, Johannes Krisch, is a virtual unknown in the U.S. The talented actor is, however, a big stage star at home in Austria, which his countryman, writer/director Götz Spielmann, described as a “more of a theatre place than a movie place.”
Spielmann spoke Monday morning, September 3, at the Sheridan Opera House. He was in town all weekend for the screening of “Revanche" at the 35th annual Telluride Film Festival.
Once the cat is out of the bag – the directors of the Telluride Film Festival are notorious for keeping their selections top secret – and the weekend is in full swing, the “buzz” drives the traffic. Perfect strangers become fast friends chatting on line and at venues all over town about what’s hot and what’s not.
At a Monday morning screening of Götz Spielmann’s classic-in-the-making “Revanche” (see Views below), the elegant woman next to me introduced herself to talk the talk. “My name is Linda Clough. I am Chuck Jones’s daughter,” she said.
The Telluride Film Festival was going on both inside theatres and out on the street. Not everyone was interested in the movies: several young people were jumping on trampolene/bungee setups in the Mountain Village, only a few yards from the Chuck Jones Theatre. On...
It must be in the zeitgeist. The 35th annual Telluride Film Festival was all about change we can believe in.
In film after film, we watched Everyman underdogs beat the odds and triumph over the rich and the powerful, all in the context of unvarnished reality.
A sneak peak world premiere, Danny Boyle’s “Slum Dog Millionaire,” was, hands down, our favorite of that genre.
Only a spoiler would have given a second thought to outsourcing or annoying customer service calls. But there were none in the house. Forget about the Full Maharani. There was no gauze, gaudy colors, bling, or long glance looks – well, a few of those – in this rags-to-riches fairytale about a streetwise orphan boy who becomesone of the new India’s 230 million or so arrivistes.
The only direct quote of Bollywood was a spoof: line dancing in the final credits.
One word of advice- don't miss "American Violet". Telluride loved it. ...
This is our first film this year. On line old friends are greeting not yet adding to the buzz of this film or that. The weather is Telluride beautiful- a few puffy clouds, temperature 73, and an air of expectation. ...
