In addition to Steve Winter's images of snow leopards and Jane Goren's sculptural puns around the Symposium's food theme, plus images of rock 'n roll icons, Friday – Sunday of MountainFilm, the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art once again features Himalayan jewelry (old...
[click "Play" button to hear Susan's interview with Lani Alo]
Entrepreneur/author/environmentalist Paul Hawken was a Telluride Mountainfilm guest in 2007. Telluride was a stop in a tour explaining the idea behind his latest book "Blessed Unrest," a sprawling grassroots movement comprised of tens of millions ordinary and not-so-ordinary individuals and groups busily working to safeguard the environment, ensure social justice, and resist the threat of globalization on indigenous cultures. The movement consists of research institutes, community development agencies, village-and citizen-based organizations, corporations, networks, faith-based groups, trusts and foundations, all trying to defend against corrupt politics and climate change, corporate predation, and death of the oceans, governmental indifference and pandemic poverty, industrial forestry and farming, depletion of soil and water, and more… Trying to describe the breadth and depth of the global grassroots commitment would be like trying to hold the ocean in your hand.
Mountainfilm regular, ethnobotanist/author/environmental activist Wade Davis once described the people Hawken is talking about in "Blessed Unrest," as "dharma saints." In a big way, "dharma saints" is what The Goldman Environment Prize is all about, ordinary people taking extraordinary action.
[click "Play" button to listen to Chef Ming]
Chef Ming is MC, Telluride Mountainfilm food symposium
Award-winning chef/entrepreneur Ming Tsai is the keynote speaker of Telluride Mountainfilm's Moving Mountains Symposium, a gallimaufry of ideas on the subject of food.Less is certainly not more when it comes to water and raw materials to grow food. When we spice the pot with increasingly unpredictable weather patterns (which decrease agricultural production), it will take a miracle or a second Green Revolution to increase food production to meet the demand by 2050, when the much quoted UN population estimate of 9.1 billion becomes reality.
[ click "Play" button to hear Susan's interview with Josh Aronson]
Part-time local Josh Aronson is a regular at Telluride Mountainfilm, an event that began as a homespun gathering of gnarly outdoor adventurers and evolved into a crazy quilt of lively talks, memorable exhibits, and yes, films. (Mountainfilm's current program director, David Holbrooke, is also a filmmaker.)
Josh received an Oscar nomination in 2001 for his very first film, "Sound & Fury," which documents one family's struggle over whether or not to provide two deaf children with cochlear implants, devices that can stimulate hearing. Implants are hot-buttons in the deaf community: while they provide easier access to the hearing world, they also challenge one's identity within the deaf culture. "Sound & Fury" screened at Mountainfilm following its premiere at Sundance.
Telluride's Nugget Theatre will be one of the venues for Mountainfilm, Friday through Sunday, May 22-24. Beginning Monday, May 25 through Thursday, the program is two nightly showings of "X-Men: Origins" at 6:00 and 8:30 pm. "X-Men" is rated PG-13."X-Men" is a continuation, based...
[click "Play" button to hear Susan's conversation with Paul Bosch]
Telluride region features regularly in Bosch's art
Pastor and painter of landscapes. Paul Bosch is part of a long tradition dating back to 19th-century America, when artists, particularly of the American West, expressed a rapturous identification with the surrounding terrain. Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Church are two examples. They went way over the top in their depictions of cathedral-like peaks and the Golden Glow that enveloped a scene. At the time, the presiding metaphor was God as Supreme Artist and men like themselves, were simply His obedient servants.
Paul has been painting his entire life. "Someone has said (Picasso? Matisse? Freud?) that painters are basically feces-smearers, and this was true of me in my crib, according to my parents." While he has been a university chaplain or campus pastor most of his professional life, Paul is also author of numerous published articles/essays on the subject of the arts as they pertain to religious faith, and three books on related themes.
[Click the "Play" button to hear Gene Baur]
Editor's note: Animal activist/author Gene Baur is coming to Telluride for Mountainfilm's Moving Mountains Symposium about food. Listen to his podcast to learn more about his Farm Sanctuary and how the one-time McDonald's talking head wound up rescuing and providing refuge for farm animals.
Fido au gratin? Perish the thought. For activist/author Gene Baur of the Farm Sanctuary, dining on Babe is no different.
The cover of his best-seller, "Farm Sanctuary, Changing Hearts and Minds about Animals and Food" says it all: there's Babe, alive and well. On the back cover, you will find an image of The Man cuddling up to a Holstein. The endorsement by Dr. Jane Goodall (the gorilla lady) is the final nail in the coffin: "Filled with hope, this book is written for all who strive for a more compassionate world. I highly recommend it." Who doesn't want to be considered compassionate, especially when it comes to our four-legged friends? The package is enough to make a person swear off bacon cheeseburgers forever. And that's Gene's point.
There is something new this year at Telluride's Mountainfilm, available to everyone, including those who enjoy the "festival without a pass." It is the TIBET ROOM, at the Silver Bell Gallery, corner of S Spruce and Pacific Streets.
Mountainfilm favorites Ace Kvale and Jimmy Chin will exhibit photographs there, next to a collection of fabulous archival prints on loan from theTibet House in New York. An eclectic assortment of artifacts from the Tibetan world rounds out the exhibits.
Astronaut John Grunsfeld has been to Telluride Mountainfilm twice, the first time in 2000, and the second in 2006.
IN 2006, John spoke on the subject was ET, NASA's search for planets with "life signatures." His objective: to help reframe people's thinking about life in the universe. He also addressed "Man, Moon, and Beyond," how NASA was planning its next push towards manned missions. Finally, John provided an astronaut’s eye view of the mountain ranges of our blue planet, not from the Hubble – which Grunsfeld has been in charge of repairing – but from his own Hasselblad. But the Hubble has been one of the astronaut's pet project for years.
[click "Play" button to hear Susan's interview with Jane]
The girl can’t help it. Long before any inconvenient truths, before green became the new red, white and blue, longtime, part-time Telluride local Jane Goren was busy recycling, turning the detritus of people’s lives into edgy fine art.
Jane came buy her obsession naturally: in the corner of Brooklyn where she grew up no one ever threw anything away.
In 1974, Goren moved to Los Angeles. Years later, in this landscape of insecurity both real and imagined, an earthquake struck. The artist began collecting discarded windows, which she painted on the reverse side of the glass in an offbeat attempt to restore order to a disoriented city. These images also allowed Jane to examine issues of voyeurism, surveillance, and the deceitful nature of appearances. The Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, her local gallery, has examples of this work in its stable, and a number of pieces are on display at La Marmotte.
