About the Festival

Mountainfilm in Telluride is a four-day, six-senses event & film festival held over Memorial Day weekend (the last weekend in May). Mountainfilm is celebrating 30 years of annual festivals in 2008.

Mountainfilm Main Street Rainbow. Photo by Doug Berry

The Moving Mountain Symposium, on the Friday before Memorial Day, kicks off the festival, followed by a gallery walk and happy hour. Opening night films begin Friday evening and the festival continues throughout the weekend with film screenings, guest presentations, book signings, parties & other events. The festival always ends with the closing picnic and awards ceremony at 1:00pm on Monday, Memorial Day.

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

THE MOUNTAINFILM History
In 1979, 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

ABOUT THE BLOG
MF Blog is an informal vessel for the Mountainfilm staff to share thoughts, ideas, gossip, inspirations, frustrations & info that doesn’t necessarily fit into the format of our formal web site.