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Festivals

[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 /

Telluride's summer cultural season is winding to a close as the 36th annual Telluride Film Festival officially opens for business Labor Day weekend, Friday, September 4 and runs through Monday, September 7.

Thanks to Ralph and Ricky Lauren, however, the Telluride Film Festival  kicks off unofficially for passholders and nonpassholders alike today, Wednesday, September 2, and Thursday, September 3, with two free al fresco screenings at the Abel Gance Open Air Cinema in Elks Park, beginning at sunset, around 8:30 p.m.

MV5BMTM3NzgyMzIzMF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTYyMTYyMQ@@._V1._CR0,0,216,216_SS80_ Wednesday's film is "Hidalgo," a 2004 film made by director Joe Johnston, based on a story from 1890 about an American cowboy, Frank T. Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen), the first outsider or infidel to be invited by a wealthy Sheik (Omar Sharif) to race in the greatest long-distance horse race ever run, the "Ocean of Fire," a grueling 3,000-mile survival horse race across the Arabian Desert with the winner receiving $100,000 as prize money and the honor of being the best in the world. When the sheik's emissary approaches him, Hopkins, once a dispatch rider in the U.S. Cavalry, is working Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. The race itself, held every year for the last thousand years, has only been open to the purest line of Arabian horses ever bred. Hopkins' horse, Hidalgo, a small mixed-breed mustang, was regarded as impure, and therefore not fit to run wth purebred Arabian stallions.

02 September, 2009 /
[click "Play" for John Fago on his photography and Telluride]

Jf_TFF31_08_14 The Telluride Film Festival opens this weekend, September 4 – September 7. The perfect warm-up is a trip to the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art to view the work of long-time Festival photographer John Fago.

Fago claims to have been born at a very young age of artist parents: dad, an animator and mom, a painter/journalist. Growing up just outside New York surrounded by creative types, Fago never once considered a real job. At college, he studied painting but switched to photography in the mid-1970s.  His robust career has included extended photographic journeys to Asia and North Africa. He is currently pursuing a multi-year project in Brazil.

01 September, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with John Sir Jesse]

100-0056_IMG_3 In Telluridespeak, the event is known as Mushfest. The 29th annual Mushfest, aka Telluride Mushroom Festival  – billed as "the nation's oldest mycological conference exploring all things fungal" – happens this weekend, August 27 – August 30.

In the context of the Telluride Mushfest, the world wide web takes on a whole other meaning: we are talking about mycelium, the sentient  web of cells, which, in just one magical phase of its life cycle, fruits mushrooms. Shroom evangelists from writer Terence Kemp McKenna and avant garde composer John Cage to Paul Stamets, a Mushfest regular, filmmaker Ron Mann ("Know Your Mushrooms),  and this year's special guest Gary Lincoff ("Mushroom Magick") head the list of true believers who contend fabulous fungi have the potential to save the planet.

28 August, 2009 /
[Click "Play to hear Eileen's interview with festival director Art Goodtimes]

TMF_2009Poster The 29th annual Telluride Mushroom Festival takes place Thursday August 27th through Sunday the 30th with Fungophiles from around the world attending what has been dubbed as "the nation's oldest mycological conference exploring all things fungal."  MushFest, as Telluride locals call it, is part education and part outdoor fun, with daily workshops and lectures on a variety of topics as well as forays into the mountains to search for all types of edible and some not so edible mushrooms.   There will be a tent in Elks Park, on Main Street, where anyone can bring their found mushrooms to have identified. There will be book signings, poetry readings, a vendor bazaar, drumming and dancing and the whimsical Mushroom Parade, which will take place Saturday at 5 pm beginning from Elks Park. Art Goodtimes, renowned performance poet and long time director of the Telluride Mushroom Festival, tells us what's in store this year and shares some special memories in this podcast. 

26 August, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Eileen's conversation with Kenny Gilbert]

Chef Kenny Gilbert Headshot - Capella Telluride A trifecta of the arts is taking place August 13th through the 16th in Mountain Village as Telluride celebrates it 2009 Festival of the Arts with a fabulous line up of food & wine, art and music.  Top celebrated chefs will be on hand to showcase and demonstrate their culinary expertise.  A gallery of more than 40 artists with national and regional acclaim will exhibit and sell their work throughout the weekend.   Grammy nominated and multi-platinum artist, Joan Osborne will perform in a free live concert at the Sunset Stage on Friday the 14th.

A highlight to Telluride’s Festival of the Arts is the ‘Celebrating the Arts ’ Celebrity Chef Dinner.  Kenny Gilbert is executive chef of Telluride's five star ultra-luxury resort, Capella Telluride, and is one of the culinary experts taking part in the weekend festivities.  Gilbert's celebrated international cuisine is showcased in all three of Capella's dining rooms including the fine dining restaurant Onyx, the casual Gray Jay Cafe and the popular Suede Bar.  

13 August, 2009 /