Mountainfilm Blog

Slackliner Andy Lewis, who was featured at Mountainfilm in Telluride 2012 in the film Sketchy Andy, found global fame when he danced on a slackline during Madonna’s Super Bowl Halftime show in February of 2012. This led Lewis, who lives—and plays—in the desert town of Moab, Utah, to being invited by Madonna to join her latest world tour.

In spite of the life-changing opportunities presented by the Material Girl’s offer, he turned her down. Why? For a man who regularly balances on a piece of webbing hundreds, if not a thousand, feet off the ground, maybe it’s no surprise that he wants to avoid the imbalance to his life that would come with such a tour. As he puts it, “Real life was pulling me in a direction away from me."

In 2000, we launched Mountainfilm on Tour, thinking that the magic of the festival might travel well. Much like a circus or carnival, the original concept was to reach a broader audience by visiting communities around the world. We started with shows mostly in the American West, but the tour has expanded in its dozen years. Just last year, Mountainfilm on Tour visited China, Sierra Leone, Scotland, Brazil, Norway, Chile and Canada.

How does it work? Each traveling program is a customized, tailored in collaboration with the hosting organization. Our partners include first-rate theaters, such as the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, Colorado, or The Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City, but we also play at universities, secondary schools, civic and nonprofit organizations. Sometimes our host is simply an individual whose mind was blown by what he or she saw at the festival in Telluride and who believes that the inspiring stories of Mountainfilm would work well in his or her neighborhood.

Most people enjoy the Oscars’ glamour and glitz and eagerly await the opening of the envelope for Best Picture, but at Mountainfilm in Telluride, our attention is focused on the decidedly less sexy Best Documentary Feature (and the short doc category, as well). Lots of our festival favorites have been nominated for Oscars, and many have won that gold statue, including Louie Psihoyos for The Cove, Alex Gibney for Taxi to the Dark Side and Roger Ross Williams for his short Music by Prudence.

“Perhaps the only other place one sees such public jubilation by Afghan men is at weddings," writes photojournalist Jonathan Saruk about movie theaters in Afghanistan. A place as stark as Afghanistan needs all the buoyancy it can get, especially when you hear stories like that of Skateistan.

Skateistanis the name of a skate park for kids in Kabul and also the title of a lovely short doc that screened at Mountainfilm in Telluride in 2011. As happens all too often in Afghanistan, triumph can turn to tragedy in the time it takes a psychopath to detonate a bomb, and that is what happened at the skate park.

As attendees of Mountainfilm in Telluride know, the festival is not just about film. It also celebrates artists and authors, and we usually hand over the main stage to someone with a knack for words on paper. Some recent literary luminaries from that stage include Terry Tempest Williams, John Valliant and Pico Iyer.

With the holidays on tap, we put a call out to list of some of the best Mountainfilm books. We were inspired by our friends at Banff, who presented a panel called The Best Mountain Book Ever Written at their 2012 festival. Banff’s programming mission hews more closely to alpinism, so their choices reflect that focus, while Mountainfilm in Telluride’s interests are broader.

Of course,that only makes this assignment that much more foolhardy. As it was, one judge in Banff said that their task was “a utopian and elusive project,” while another — Bernadette MacDonald, an author herself (and a guest/judge at our 2012 festival) argued that “it is irresponsible for us to do this.”

This is the final blog in a three-part series about film festival submission by Emily Long, Mountainfilm in Telluride’s Program Director. (Read the rest of the series: part one, Making a Film is Only Half the Battle, or part two, The Secrets of Film Festival Selection.) Hopefully, these blogs will help filmmakers understand this sometimes-confusing world because Mountainfilm is now accepting entries for our 35th festival, held May 24-27 in Telluride, Colorado. (Submit your film or learn more.)

This is the second blog in a three-part series about film festival submission by Emily Long, Mountainfilm in Telluride’s Program Director. Part 1 was titled “Making a Film is Only Half the Battle.” Hopefully, this series will help filmmakers understand this sometimes-confusing world because Mountainfilm is now accepting entries for our 35th festival, held May 24-27 in Telluride, Colorado. (Submit your film or learn more.)

So you’ve filled out the application for Mountainfilm in Telluride, provided an online screener link and thrown down a credit card to pay the entry fee. Now what happens with your film behind the scenes?