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Festivals

[click "Pay" to hear Eileen's interview with Alvin Lee]

Lee Boys 2 The 16th annual Telluride Blues and Brews Festival takes place September 18- 20 on the Fred Shellman Memorial Stage in Telluride's Town Park.  The Lee Boys, out of Miami, have been given the revered opening spot for Sunday’s musical lineup.  Out to prove there is no resting on Sunday, The Lee Boys guarantee to have the soulful crowd on their feet within moments of hearing their sacred steel musical styling.  Rooted in gospel, The Lee Boys' music is infused with rhythm & blues, jazz, rock, funk, hip-hop and country as well as influences from the world music scene.

16 September, 2009 /
[double click to view in larger format]

Film is a window on the world. The Telluride Film Festival uses the medium to enhance participants worldview, one reason the directors require an artistic as well as a screen presence. In-depth Q & A sessions follow many of the screenings.  Free seminars in town parks  and "Conversations" at the courthouse feature celebrated guests talking about cinema, culture, and the culture of cinema. Programs such as City Lights and the Student Symposium offer high school and college students respectively a weekend of immersion in film and film discussion. Sunday at the Palm provides local teachers with curriculum ideas to incorporate monthly film selections into lesson plans.

In this context, From Russia with Love is not the second film in the James Bond series. From Russia with Love describes a partnership between the Telluride Film Festival and CEC ArtsLink to co-host a group of emerging filmmakers from Russia for a residency that brought them first to Telluride over the long Labor Day festival weekend. Last year, the young Russian directors screened their films at the Telluride Film Festival. This year they came as observers. (New projects will be screened in Boulder, Colorado and New York.) Participants were selected for their cinematic accomplishments in a competitive nomination process.

15 September, 2009 /

IMG_5491
Anne Thompson, George
Gittoes, Nicholas Cage,
and Jason Reitman
at Labor Day seminar

The Telluride Film Festival invented downsizing: for 36 years, the directors of the event have selected just 20 – 30 movies from among the hundreds submitted to them each year, which explains why the celluloid celebration appeals to discriminating cinephiles. Elitist? Unapologetically. This year as every year, the Telluride Film Festival shunned the usual suspects, going out on a limb to inspire and educate.

The Telluride Film Festival is also about making connections. Over the long Labor Day weekend, the tail end of moviedom's so-called popcorn season (Memorial Day – Labor Day), actors, directors, cinematographers, producers, distributers, and buffs chat like long lost friends on Main Street, the Gondola, and in lines, about what gladdened, saddened and maddened.

14 September, 2009 /

IMG_5356 Director Todd Solondz, whose "Life During Wartime," had its North American premiere this past weekend at the Telluride Film Festival, is distinguished as an independent filmmaker who dares to go places others fear to tread. Solondz takes on universal themes – "Life During Wartime" is about forgiving and forgetting –  in character-driven stories whose denizens are quirky in the extreme. In high relief under bright lights, these eccentric individuals become Everyman, warts and all. The character actors in "Life During Wartime," both young and old, are fearless, giving flawless performances of very flawed individuals.

09 September, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Hannah Rothschild]

HBO contact sheet Jazz Baroness Hannah Rothschild's "The Jazz Baroness" hit a high note at the Telluride Film Festival, the documentary's North American premiere.

Like jazz itself, "The Jazz Baroness" is based on a melodic line – the leitmotif is Rothschild's great aunt,  Baronness Pannonica de Koenigwarter or "Nica, " an exotic beauty and mother of five, who left home in 1951 headed for New York in search of the man who wrote 'Round Midnight. Variations on the "melody,"  the improv, is provided by virtuosic friends, jazz musicians and historians – Sonny Rollins, Quincy Jones, Thelonius Monk junior, Roy Haynes, and Curtis Fuller among them – whose lives were touched by the exotic butterfly. The Duchess of Devonshire and other luminaries tell their side of the story too. Rothschild is the bandleader, deftly, sensitively defining the rhythm and pace of her ensemble cast, debunking myths, replacing scandal with fact.

07 September, 2009 /

The Telluride Film Festival is not only about film. Conversations between film buffs in the theater waiting lines, a hike in the hills surrounding Telluride between films, face time with actors, directors, and the chance to watch William Wegman sign your personal copy of...

06 September, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Kate Sibley speak of TFF's educational outreach]


2006 alumni The Telluride Film Festival stands out among the more than 2,000 similar events around the globe for lots of reasons, not the least of which is location, location, location.

The Telluride Film Festival is known to frown upon brown-nosing stars or the media. Quality trumps quantity: the Festival directors vet their selection down to just 20 – 30 films, new and restored, feature length and short. (Only New York does the same diligence.)

05 September, 2009 /

In 1966, long before I had even heard of Telluride, I fell in love with Anouk Aimee, one of the Telluride Film Festival's tributees for 2009. I was a young 707 pilot for Northwest Airlines and saw "Un Homme et une Femme" on a...

04 September, 2009 /
[click for Gary Meyer's conversation with Susan about the Festival program]

Pasted Graphic It is deja vu all over again as the curtain goes up on the 36th annual Telluride Film Festival, this weekend, September 4 – September 7. The picture on the world screen is dark as pitch: war, genocide, political debauchery and corruption, economic bubbles burst. If there's a silver lining, the toughest times may produce the greatest art – or not.

In 1929, after the global stock market crash, the top grossing film was "The Broadway Melody," escapist treacle based on a backstage show business love triangle. "Broadway Melody," MGM's first musical, was also the first sound film to win Best Picture at the Oscars. The recession of the early 1990s produced "Home Alone," a feel-good family classic featuring an eight-year-old left behind when his family heads out for a Christmas vacation. In 2001, the year America lost its innocence – and possibly its mojo – the trifecta of 9/11, the collapse of the dot.com bubble and corporate scandal led to another socio-economic contraction. The film to beat: "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," a movie about a boy magician and his fight against Voldemort and the forces of evil. (Parsing the metaphor is child's play.) Which brings us to the present crisis and the sanguivorous. (And more obvious metaphors about blood-suckers.)

04 September, 2009 /

[click "Play" to hear Gary Meyer talk about "the big picture"]Julie Huntsinger, Tom Luddy, Gary Meyer There are about 2500 film festival across the globe, of which about 1700 are similar to the Telluride Film Festival, still, TFF is widely regarded as in a league...

04 September, 2009 /