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Festivals

Closing picnic, 2010 The Mountainfilm in Telluride festival is 33 years old this year but there is no resting on laurels as it rolls out a variety of new initiatives. Here is a look at changes to expect this year, and why:

Base Camp Theater – A new outdoor theater in Telluride Town Park, free and open to the public. Screenings will be Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday starting at 9 PM.

Why: We’re all about the outdoors and films so why wouldn’t we? And we love to be able to make our programming available to anyone and everyone.

24 May, 2011 /
[click "Play" to listen to Tim DeChristopher's conversation with Susan]

 

 

Tim DeChristopher Tim DeChristopher could be the poster boy for the 33rd annual Mountainfilm in Telluride. Not only does he embody Mountainfilm's motto, "Celebrating the Indomitable Spirit," Tim is the exclamation point on the theme of the 33rd annual event: Awareness Into Action!

Tim DeChristopher was born in West Virginia, but spent most of his childhood in Pittsburgh, PA. He began his college education at Arizona State, but dropped out and moved to Utah to to work in a wilderness training program for at-risk youth. He then attended and graduated from the University of Utah.

Tim was moved to activism after attending the Stegner Symposium in 2008 and then speaking with Terry Root, PhD, one of the lead scientists on the International Panel on Climate Change and winner (with Al Gore) of a Nobel Peace Prize. Months after meeting Dr. Root, a little over three years ago, in December 2008, in the waning days of the Bush administration, a then 27-year-old Tim DeChristopher put it all on the line.

23 May, 2011 /
[click "Play", Susan speaks with Laura Antrim Caskey]

 

 

Antrim_lightstalkers Laura Antrim Caskey is a photojournalist now living in Rock Creek, West Virginia. Rock Creek is also the home of Appalachia Watch, a grassroots nonprofit group Antrim started in 2006 to focus on the environmental costs of mountaintop removal coal mining.

In April 2011, Antrim became one of eight winners of The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights' 43rd Annual Journalism Award for "Dragline," a photographic exposé of mountaintop removal coal mining and the campaign to end the practice. 

Currently Laura Antrim Caskey is the West Virginia correspondent at Bag News Notes. She is also the poster artist for the 33rd annual Mountainfilm in Telluride. Her image is also on the program for 2011. An exhibition of her work is scheduled to hang at the Telluride Conference Center in Mountain Village, "Appalachia: A Land and People Under Threat."

23 May, 2011 /
[click "Play" to hear Alec Loorz speak with Susan about climate change and young people]

 

kicker: teen activist featured at Moving Mountains Symposium

Alec-photo Ask Victoria Loorz about her Mother's Day. Likely she will respond by telling you what her son was up to.

And no, he was not out raising hell Ferris Bueller style. Neither was behaving like the proverbial teen skulking in his room. For sure he wasn't sexting. The thought would never occur.

For Mother's Day, March 8, 16-year-old Alec Loorz, through his nonprofit iMatterMarch, had arranged for a series of more than 100 marches in states across the country and 25 countries around the world (including Kuwait) to proclaim a teen revolution. The goal: Let the world know climate change is not about money. It is not about power. It is not about convenience. It is about the future of a generation too young to vote, but aiming to protect its future.

Want to know more?

22 May, 2011 /
[click "Play" to listen to Paul Colangelo's conversation with Susan]  

Moose, water, sky Each year, Mountainfilm in Telluride hands out a Commitment Grant. The award is designed to help creative individuals tell important stories in keeping with the spirit of the event: they are about "Celebrating Indomitable Spirits," the theme of Mountainfilm, and turning Awareness into Action, the motto for 2011 and a running subtext of the event.

Mountainfilm's Commitment Grant goes to filmmakers, artists, adventurers and photographers whose projects are designed to have a positive and tangible effect on vital issues concerning people, places and ideas under siege some place on the map. Photographer Paul Colangelo received one of five $5,000 grants handed out last year. The grant was for Paul's photographic exposition entitled "Sacred Headwaters, Sacred Journey" about the shared birthplace of three of British Columbia’s great salmon-bearing rivers, the Stikine, Skeena and Nass.
21 May, 2011 /

Mountainfilm in Telluride kicks off the summer festival season in town. And the official kick-off of that party gets underway with Mountainfilm's Gallery Walk.Twelve different venues around town host receptions (drinks and hors d'oeuves ) for artists selected by Festival director David Holbrooke....

20 May, 2011 /

Multimedia Site Lights the Way to 33rd Annual Weekend and Beyond

In the midst of preparing for its biggest-ever festival, Mountainfilm in Telluride completely re-made its website. Mountainfilm executive director Peter Kenworthy says the timing was just right.

“To be able to unveil our new site just as we announce this year’s film list is perfect,” says Kenworthy. “It will mean immediate exposure. Right away we will engage our audiences as never before in our world. We couldn’t be happier. It made this winter a little busy but a spring launch is ideal.”

20 May, 2011 /
[click "Play" to listen to Wade Davis' conversation with Susan]  

Wade, fireplace Ethnographer, writer, photographer, filmmaker, licensed river guide, Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society and major supporter of Mountainfilm in Telluride, Wade Davis returns for the 33rd annual gathering of the tribe, May 27 – May 30, 2011.

Wade is joined by other wide awake beings, among them, writer Terry Tempest Williams; the voice of youth eco-activists, Tim DeChristopher; eco-adventurer David de Rothschild; Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, co-creators of Peabody-winning PBS documentary "King Corn." With this year's line-up, Mountainfilm director David Holbrooke may just manage to trump last year, which was Mountainfilm's best year ever.
19 May, 2011 /
[click "Play" to hear Jesse's interview with Jake Norton and Wende Valentine]

 

 

by J James McTigue

Jake Norton Jake Norton is an Eddie Bauer First Ascent athlete and world-renowned climber, photographer and guide. He has a list of accolades as tall as Everest, a mountain he has attempted six times and summitted three. His career has taken him to the top of the world’s highest mountains and on explorations across the globe. His newest endeavor is Challenge 21, a campaign to climb 21 peaks, raise 2.1 million dollars and get 2.1 million people involved in clean water initiatives around the world. 

He will be a guest judge for the Charlie Fowler Award at this year’s Mountainfilm in Telluride and a presenter at the Saturday morning coffee talks to discuss climbing the second highest peak in the world, K2. Norton speaks passionately of mountains, but more so of the impact they have had on him.

19 May, 2011 /

Wade, mountains Wade Davis is a fixture at Mountainfilm in Telluride and that's a good thing.

Telluride Inside... and Out interviewed Davis in 1997 on his first ever visit to Mountainfilm in Telluride, the town he took by storm. His subject at the time was his then latest book, One River, a tribute to the life and work of one of his mentors, the legendary explorer/botanist Richard Evan Schultes, about the discoveries Davis and protege Tim Plowman made on their odyssey through the Amazonian jungle in the mid-1970s. Since then, there have been many other books and many miles traveled. With Davis, the sky's the limit. Well, maybe not. The man is unstoppable.

19 May, 2011 /