Festival Films

“Slumping” is a frightening geological phenomenon that’s happening to the town of Santiago Mitlatongo, Mexico, and After the Fall uses photographs from Orion magazine photojournalist Matt Black to tell the story o

Alison Gannett is a renowned professional skier who understands the connection between the environment and outdoor pursuits.

Nineteen-year-old Slater Jewell-Kemker is a climate activist, the daughter of filmmakers and has been making movies since she was 6.

Filmmakers Beth and George Gage have brought unforgettable characters to Mountainfilm audiences — the men of the Tenth Mountain Division with Fire on the Mountain and Carrie Dann with American Outrage — and they do it again with Bidder 70, which tells the story of Tim

Hairy spiders, giant millipedes, pale, phlegmatic larvae can be the stuff of nightmares. Yet it may come as a surprise to learn that we are not born with fear and aversion toward these critters. We learn those feelings from others.

Solutions to climate change are challenging enough to implement, but opposition from a well-organized and deeply funded group — that doesn’t accept global warming as the result of human impact — makes it near impossible.

Governor Andrew Cuomo is considering lifting a moratorium against fracking in the state of New York. As he ponders this decision, he faces tremendous pressure on both sides.

The tragic, yet inspiring, story of Tim Hetherington is told in the moving documentary Which Way is the Front Line from Here? In the brilliant and haunting Diary, Hetherington tells his own story.

Indie band Django Django became obsessed by the infamous Indian “Well of Death” riders in Allahabad. This music video for their song “Wor” features a bunch of guys with the most rock-solid testicles in India as they outpace gravity to the delight of spectators.

Mountainfilm audiences have come to know the hyper-achieving Dr.

John Bedford is a 75-year-old man obsessed with the butterflies. Traveling around the globe — from the jungles of Vietnam to Mayan ruins in Guatemala — to watch and collect the beautiful insects, Bedford’s passion for the extraordinary takes the form of visual poetry in this short documentary.

The parting shot of this short documentary makes the surprised viewer want to go back and watch from the beginning more carefully.

After introducing the memorable Music by Prudence to Mountainfilm in 2009, Director Roger Ross Williams returns with a different look at Africa.

Filmed in Hawaii and Nicaragua, Here & There is about great surf and big air and reminds us that surfing is no longer just about riding the wave — it’s about what can be done above it.

In part because of long, systemic poverty, Ireland has managed to keep alive traditions that might have otherwise gone the way of progress. Home Turf takes us to a bog where a band of old turf cutters have assembled to work and catch up on news and banter.

Aaron Huey is a photographer whose evocative and richly textured work has graced Mountainfilm’s gallery walls more than once.

Tony Donoghue has brought the locavore philosophy to filmmaking.

“From the youngest age, we are taught to believe that safety is our greatest need. We created Icarus and his dream of flight, and then we walled ourselves in with cubicles tight.” So begins the poem in Joy of Air, which demonstrates that safety does not necessarily mean “no fun.”

It’s odd to consider that the one person who has exhaustively tracked, detailed and archived Himalayan expeditions of the past half century is someone who has never climbed a mountain herself.

Did these men and women travel here, to the windswept and starkly beautiful grasslands of Spioenkop, South Africa, to fight on historic battlegrounds, or did they come for celebration? Both, it would seem. Inspired by T.S.

You want indomitable spirit? Sixteen-year-old Sam Berns has it in abundance. This impressive young man is not necessarily that young because he has progeria, a rare disease that ages the heart rapidly and kills most by age 13.

Sometimes, in men’s ice-cold eyes, only scarce things become precious. While the premise is quite serious, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by this short film’s humorous turn.

Osama Bin Laden became Public Enemy Number One after the diabolical attacks of 9/11 but as Manhunt thoughtfully explains, American intelligence was deeply concerned about him for more than a decade.

Jake Conner loves to mountain bike. Because of a spinal injury that left him paralyzed, he rides a specially designed hand cycle and tears up the local terrain in this short produced by the Telluride Adaptive Sports Program.

A snowboarder shreds a sick line in this sweet stop-motion animation film.

The sound of pattering hooves is punctuated by a pig-like rutting noise — but deeper and more mysterious — and we see a mesmerizing sight: a herd of reindeer spinning in circles, their instinct to run so ingrained that they continue, even when penned.

In a year when cycling has suffered with the disgrace of Lance Armstrong, it’s a relief to see racers who recognize that it’s not all about the bike. This film relates the remarkable story of the Rwandan race team, cyclists who are pedaling away from the horror of genocide.

We hold ordinary heroes in the highest regard at Mountainfilm, so E.J. Scott should feel at home in Telluride as he fits the description perfectly.

Four decades ago, a couple of young guys hauled a bicycle up Mont Simmerstein in a rugged pocket of the Austrian Alps and attempted to ride down. The mountain — known as the Sea of Rock for its jagged armor of boulders, stones and cliffs — destroyed the bike.

How has John Kitchin found a way to connect physically to the center of the world and spiritually to the divine? By rollerblading. Sounds crazy, but before you write Kitchin off as certifiable, you should consider that his actual certifications are in neurology and psychiatry.

On April 6, 2011, Roger Strong was skinning to one of his favorite backcountry runs on Washington’s Snoqualmie Pass with some friends when he triggered a violent avalanche. The slide tore through the couloir, leaving Strong and the other skiers badly injured.

Andreas Fransson is an extreme skier who has garnered attention for dicey first ascents in a half-dozen countries and a horrific accident that nearly killed him.

Too often, true heroes do not get medals. Which is not to say that Kevin Pearce, the subject of this unflinching film by Oscar-nominated director Lucy Walker, has not had his share of podium time.

Impeccable rock, one-of-a kind setting, good and trusted friends: the stuff of climbers’ dreams. Real life is rarely so straightforward, though, and this story of a climbing trip in Kyrgyzstan is haunted by the specter of an earlier one that had frightening and dire results.

Anything can have a personality, including a colored pencil. Created by primary-school students from Portugal, this film is about a family of pencils who come to life through stop-motion animation, and one particular pencil learns how to draw the world

The only problem with this film is that it’s short. The brief glimpse we get of calf roper Kendrick Dominingue’s life, and the introduction to his dream of being the best roper in the land, is like catching the scent of a rich feast and having to settle for just a lick of the gravy.

Archery is in the Mongol blood. After all, Genghis Khan conquered half the world with it.

A lion’s roar is supposed to be deep and loud, but Bapoto, the smallest cub in his pride, is worried about the sound of his roar. The lovely animated short The Squeakiest Roar shows us that being different can be beautiful.

Here’s a climate solution: Reverse the trend that has doubled the size of the average American home over the last 40 years. This enlightening and fun documentary is about idealists who decide to live in small spaces, some no bigger than a single-car garage.

There’s a certain effervescent quality to this short film about some older Irish men and women who have a childlike love of bicycling. As one of the featured cyclists puts it, “It’s a great place to dream, a bicycle.”

If you head out of Telluride approximately 50 miles to the northwest, you’ll come to a cluster of small towns — Naturita, Paradox and the ghost-town of Uravan — which are collectively called the West End.

In the plant kingdom, carnivorous organisms hold a certain allure. Despite their viciousness, they are beautiful, complex creations that have inspired in some people an interest that verges on obsession.

This film features bloody knuckles, all-out grunt sessions and willful participation in pain. Welcome to the world of off-width crack climbing, a sub-genre that attracts a rare breed willing to jam elbows, knees, torsos — whatever it takes, really — into large cracks for climbing ascents.

The wolves featured in this short live in a shelter and have never known life in the wild. But you would never know that by looking into their eyes or listening to their howls, which express a connection to a deep, abiding and mysterious place that has no link with captivity.