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December 24, 2007
This coming Wednesday night, the filmmakers Charlie & Willie Ebersol (Ithuteng, MF ’05) will be hosting a special MF screening of their new doc on snowboarding/skateboarding phenom Shaun White, titled Don’t Look Down.
Shaun White
The Skateboarder’s Journal blog picked up the Telluride Watch story about the upcoming screening.
December 24, 2007
Here are a few reviews about David’s film Hard As Nails, which premiered on HBO last week:
“Although no actual Christians are harmed in the making of these makeshift passion plays…” read more from the New York Times.
“The film, directed with equal doses of editorial intelligence and compassion by David Holbrook…” read more from the New York Sun.
Justin Fatica is “nuts for sure but has somehow also managed to attract a following that’s nearly as fanatical as is he…” read more from the Hollywood Reporter.
Happy Holidays!
December 20, 2007
I ran across this article in the BBC today about a family in Scotland trying out a “locavore” diet. (Locavore—a combination of “local” and “omnivore”—refers to a person who only eats food sourced within a certain radius of where they live, usually 100 miles.) Those of you who attended our Moving Mountains Symposium on Energy last year will remember our attempt at a locavore lunch—which had mixed success. (Buffalo burgers and brats were good, I hear, but in general the meal was said to be a bit…bland…)
On an average trip to the grocery last week, I bought pineapple from Thailand, tuna from Hawaii and peppers from Ecuador. A locavore argues that our current system of food distribution isn’t sustainable, not to mention that it does little to promote local economic growth. But what would happen if we limited ourselves to only regionally produced food? Right off the bat, you’re left with much less diversity.
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Elk—our winter locavore diet in Colorado.
In the winter, our options in Colorado would be severely limited. Visions of sugar plums dance in our heads, but we couldn’t get sugar or plums here. (The closest plums are grown is the Northeastern US.) Chesnuts roasting on the fire? Nope. (Bolivia.) For egg nog, we’d have to leave out the vanilla, nutmeg, sugar (Mexico, Indonesia, Carribean)…and the rum.
So it is possible to eat a truly locavore diet? Is it even desirable? Transporting food thousands of miles is not a new concept. We associate Italian food with tomatoes, for example, but tomatoes were a New World transplant to Italy in the 1500s. Like your Thai food spicy? There is not a single species of pepper native to Thailand.
I certainly identify with the desire to live a more sustainable life, but where do we draw the line?
Posted by Emily Long
December 17, 2007
I wanted my first post on the MF blog to be a little more thoughtful. You know, introducing myself and explaining my vision for the festival. Instead I am going to do just a little bit of self-promoting as a film that I directed premieres on HBO tonight called Hard As Nails. (Click here for more info.)
Justin Fatica, unordained Catholic minister
The film played at MF this past year and actually won the Student Award which was really nice.
I promise my next post will have something a little more MF-relevant. In the meantime, you can also check out this piece I wrote for the Huffington Post about Film Festivals (it mentions MF).
Posted by David Holbrooke
Editor’s Note: Read David’s newest Huff Post article about the making of the film here.
December 14, 2007
A composite still from the film King Lines. Photo by Corey Rich
The past six weeks have seen some major action for King Lines, the climbing film about Chris Sharma that Mountainfilm presented in Telluride this September. First, they won Best Climbing Film at Banff, then the grand prize at Kendal (in the UK). Now, they have been profiled on Apple’s web site for their facility with Mac computers and Final Cut editing software. Click here to read the full article.
Posted by Emily Long
December 11, 2007
It’s great to get out on the road with Mountainfilm. Although our Tour shows can only hint at the variety and mix of our festival programming, it’s a treat to be able to introduce, or re-acquaint, people to what we’re about.
Last week I was in Washington, D.C. for four shows. The first was at the Chevy Chase Club—an exclusive, blue-blood venue, for sure. Notwithstanding Mountainfilm’s rabble-rouser credentials, I could not have been more warmly received. And what a hoot to play hardcore, extreme, adventure films jacked-up on rap and hip-hop tunes to a mostly white-haired crowd—and to have them love it!
Our show at National Geographic the next night was a sell-out and, apparently, the biggest show of the season for their Live! Series, which featured twenty-two programs prior to ours this fall. Not bad for our maiden effort with the series and the crowd seemed pleased with the program.
Small shows at Woodrow Wilson High School (DC’s largest and most culturally diverse comprehensive school) and the Bell Multicultural School (in conjunction with The Latin American Youth Center) rounded out the week. At the Bell show we had special permission to screen one of my favorite films from the 2006 festival—“Favela Rising”—an exceptionally well-told and inspiring story of personal and community redemption.
Ando from the film Favela Rising. Photo courtesy Favela Rising, LLC
The four DC shows were radically different in terms of playlists and audiences. The cool thing for me was that Mountainfilm could span such vast programming and demographic differences and still make solid connections at every show.
Click here to read a blog post from a member of the audience.
Posted by Peter Kenworthy
Editor’s note: Today is Peter’s birthday. Please join me in wishing him a very happy birthday!
December 7, 2007
Our little corner of the world, in Southwest Colorado, is relatively unpopulated. Telluride is a downright metropolis when you consider our neighbor, Ridgway, which hovers around 737 people. How is it that such a small community can have such a profound impact on the world? Ridgway, Colorado is home to the dZi Foundation. Named for the ancient Himalayan etched bead that bestows its wearer with good health and protection, the dZi Foundation is the human form of that bead.
Jim Nowak and Kim Reynolds founded the dZi Foundation over ten years ago to help at-risk girls in the Himalayan region. The focus is still in the Himalayas, but the reach of the program has grown to the areas of education, health and welfare. Nowak and Reynolds had the foresight to realize that in order for these programs to succeed, they had to be developed within, accessible and embraced by the local communities. The only way to have more than a fleeting impact was to develop a sustainable program with focus on the local cultures and traditions.
I’m inspired by something everyday, and I know many others who are as well. But how many people act on their inspirations? How many take those inspirations as an impetus to make the world a kinder place? Thanks to Nowak, Reynolds and the rest of the folks at dZi who do just that. I don’t know how many of the other 735 inhabitants of Ridgway are involved, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion the number is pretty high.
Posted by guest blogger Brook Sutton
December 7, 2007
“Today, Mountainfilm in Telluride is one of the world’s most prominent festivals of films on mountain sports and conservation, and is now sponsored in part by National Geographic”…read more
The blogger Brian from OutdoorType recently wrote up a review of our recent Mountainfilm on Tour show at the National Geographic Society theater in Washington, DC. Click here for the full article.
…gets posted on our blog!
December 6, 2007
I missed my regular Tuesday post this week because Justin and I were in Vegas for the International Film Festival Summit. I attended sessions on programming, festivals as the new art cinema, filmmaker distribution, media revolution in festivals, and the filmmaker’s perspective, and Justin focused on development, public relations, and his expertise, technology.
We’re giving the Summit mixed reviews. While it was great to meet and network with other festival staff and talk about issues that we all deal with, we felt we were constantly being pitched at. A fellow participant from Las Vegas agreed, and said that “some of the sessions came off as glorified sales pitches.” He listed examples like a panel on ticketing solutions that turned out to be advertisements for various online ticketing companies.
Regardless, it was still a worthwhile weekend. It was great to have a forum to network and meet other festival staff. We all face many of the same challenges, and it was good to look at and talk about different solutions that other people have come up with. But now I’m excited and happy to be back in the office, and ready to crank hard for festival content!
Posted by Emily Long
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