Mountainfilm Blog

Last year Dr. Rick Hodes, who works with Ethiopian children who suffer from tuberculosis of the spine and whose story is told in Making the Crooked Straight, won the Moving Mountains Prize. His medical program was awarded $5,000, and with it he was able to help a young patient named Meiraf. Meiraf attended this year's festival, and read a moving letter to a full crowd at the Palm Theatre. It's another example of what we call the Domino Effect of Mountainfilm; using inspiration to truly make positive change. For those of you that missed it, here is Meiraf's entire letter:

Thanks to our presenting sponsor First Ascent (that's their good looking Airstream above) for putting together this great recap video. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5sJtQtIC3Q&feature=player_embedded]

We wrapped up Mountainfilm 2010 with a huge picnic and our awards ceremony yesterday afternoon. With so many great films we knew it would be hard to nail just a few down to hand out awards to. It's important to recognize all the excellent films that were shown throughout the weekend, as well as the support of all of our festival goers. This festival certainly wouldn't be the same without the energy and emotion of all of our attendees. So a big thank you to everyone who came out! Now for our winners:

Moving Mountains: Fish Out of Water

It's Sunday afternoon and by now you have watched some incredible films, listened to inspiring people talk and taken in powerful images. Just walking down the Main Street, it's impossible to not feel the buzz of energy, the slight unrest and the overwhelming inspiration. So, now with all of that inspiration, what will you do to create positive change? How will you turn that inspiration into action?

To help you plan out your final day of films, here's a listing of Monday's TBAs: Khumbu, Monday, 9:30 a.m., Sheridan (playing with Eastern Rises) Eastern Rises, Monday, 9:30 a.m., Sheridan (playing with Khumbu Climbing School) Stone River, Monday, 11:00 a.m., Sheridan (playing with Waste Land) Waste Land, Monday, 11:00 a.m., Sheridan (playing with Stone River) Ultra Runner, Monday, 9:30 a.m., Masons -- Timmy O'Neill's first halting steps into the intimidating and intense sport of ultra running. With a hot dog in his pants.

Ready to see what TBA's we've got for this Sunday? Here's your full list, we hope it gives you the chance a few more films this weekend!! Restrepo, Sunday, 7:00 p.m., Palm Legend of Aahhh's, Sunday, 7:00 p.m., Sheridan Bearwalker, Sunday, 9:30 p.m., Sheridan (Screening with We Love You) The Fence, Sunday, 9:30 p.m., Nugget (Screening with Somewhere Near Tapachula) Somewhere Near Tapachula, Sunday, 9:30 p.m., Nugget (Screening with The Fence) Fishman, Sunday, 9:45 p.m., Masons (Screening with Green and Flathead Wild) Green, Sunday, 9:45 p.m., Masons (Screening with Fishman and Flathead Wild) Flathead Wild, Sunday, 9:45 p.m., Masons (Screening with Fishman and Green)

We're off to a great start here in Telluride, and if you weren't able to make it to the festival this year we want to make sure you know what we're up to! We kicked things off with beautiful weather and great food on Thursday night for the Filmmaker's Dinner. Then Friday we dove in head first with our symposium. A special thanks to all of our symposium speakers and our emcee, Josh Bernstein. Extinction Crisis was a difficult subject to tackle, but the symposium ended up leading to some moving, educational and inspirational discussions. Here are some of our favorite quotes from the symposium:

"Documentaries are the most powerful weapon in the world... I call them weapons of mass construction - Louie Psihoyos "If we're not aware of what we're doing, we're not going to change our action" - Maya Lin