About Us

What Is Mountainfilm?

A simple question. But not a simple answer because it needs to incorporate so many big flavors and subtle essences.

Mountainfilm is a film festival, of course – we bill ourselves as America’s leading independent documentary film festival. But we’re much more.

In addition to screening leading independent documentary films from around the world, the festival includes a full-day symposium on a pressing contemporary issue such as energy (2007), water (2008), food (2009) and the extinction crisis (2010). In addition to films and speakers, the festival includes art exhibits, book signings, student workshops and a forum for other non-profit organizations aligned with Mountainfilm’s mission and programming.

Over and above these things, Mountainfilm is an assembly of people who have come together to see what the human spirit can achieve. Our festival is a place for understanding how another human being’s struggle is also our own; a place for both asking impossible questions and explaining the previously unexplainable; a place to learn, be inspired and to celebrate indomitable spirit.

Our Mission

Mountainfilm is dedicated to educating and inspiring audiences about issues that matter, cultures worth exploring, environments worth preserving and conversations worth sustaining.

The Domino Effect of Mountainfilm?

What emerges from the unique, counter-point profusion of art, ideas, causes and conversations at Mountainfilm is inspiration. That is the overwhelming effect of our programming on our audiences. That inspiration, in turn, leads to action and that action has the power to change lives. Every year we document new examples of this phenomenon that we call The Domino Effect of Mountainfilm.

The History of Mountainfilm

The Mountainfilm festival began in 1979 as an opportunity for climbers and mountaineers to enjoy the rugged outdoors surrounding Telluride during the day and watch films about mountains and mountain cultures at night. It has evolved over the intervening decades to embrace a much wider and more diverse audience and our programming now stretches to the leading edges of contemporary social, cultural and environmental issues.

An orientation toward activism has increasingly defined the festival since the mid-90’s, a function of both a change in leadership as well as growing public appetite to better understand modern challenges and to help solve them.

Further history

Over thirty years ago, a group of climbers and friends cut the ribbon on Mountainfilm in Telluride. Largely the plan of Telluride locals Bill Kees and Lito Tejada-Flores, the notion was inspired by Tejada-Flores’ trip to a film festival in Trento, Italy, to screen his newly minted Fitzroy and Kees’ idea that Telluride’s historic Sheridan Opera House would make an ideal setting for an American version of a mountain-related film festival. Throw in the available climbing and skiing, enough good beer, the best of the era’s 16mm films, and an idea got rolling. Add neighbor Royal Robbins, the American Alpine Club’s Bob Craig, and you could darn well print a letterhead. Former Climbing owner/publisher Michael Kennedy and Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard joined up shortly thereafter and an idea crept toward becoming an institution. That first Mountainfilm consisted of a mere dozen or so films spaced out over three evenings. The daytimes were spent climbing. For over a quarter of a century, the Festival has sustained the founder’s dream—evolving (mutating perhaps) but still true to the core idea that friends, adventure, passion, and powerful ideas are as seductive as ever.
- RICK SILVERMAN, FESTIVAL DIRECTOR, 1993-2003