TELLURIDE, Colo. --
"This is not a vacation. This is an endurance test."
So said Tony from Tucson in the gondola ride from the Mountain Village down to the town of Telluride. It was 11 a.m. Saturday and unforgivably cold. I had seven short films already under my belt for the day, and there were still five more movies to see before dusk.
Tony, one of many friends made on the gondola trips, had articulated the Telluride Film Festival precisely.
It was hard to say if I was loopy and light-headed from the high altitude, or from the daunting prospect of five straight 19-hour days of screenings and seminars. After all, this is Telluride, the film buff's film festival, whose one-word motto "SHOW" says it all, where sitting through a day's worth of movies is exhausting, exhilarating and goes without saying.
I admit I experienced the festival from a privileged perspective. As part of Telluride's student symposium, which began last Thursday and ended Tuesday, I had access to any of the 30 films premiering and the creators behind each. Between screenings, the symposium had conferences with the likes of documentarian Ken Burns, screenwriter Buck Henry, actress Joan Allen and directors Todd Solondz, Tom Shadyac and Sally Potter. The crop was there, and we had the cream.
Needless to say, there was little time for eating, sleeping and personal hygiene. After all, there were people and movies to see.
School was missed, but a vacation this wasn't.
Four Days in Utopia
A small town 9,000 feet up in the San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado, Telluride is a resort boxed in by snow-capped peaks, a place where multi-million-dollar homes contrast with local dives selling bison and elk meat. Some locals wear trendy mountain wear. Some wear spurs.
And in this unlikely setting, there was Jean-Claude Carri?re and Fernando Arrabal strolling down Main Street in the Sunday morning sun, talking in relaxed, melodic French.
If you don't know who Carri?re and Arrabal are, Telluride Film Festival regulars might say you don't deserve to be there.
Telluride attracts movie luminaries from around the world every Labor Day weekend for a four-day cinethon that challenges the dutiful cinephile to watch as many movies as possible.
Consequently, there is no time for fancy parties (like at Cannes), press conferences (like at Toronto) or high-stakes wheeling and dealing (like at Sundance). In fact, there is no time even for competition.
Instead, movie lovers shirk the mountainous beauty and spend all day in dark theaters, race-walking between the town's eight venues, some of which are converted spaces, like a gym and a Masonic temple. And because the town is so small (2,000 people outside of ski season), you might run into folks like legendary French screenwriter Carri?re ("Belle du Jour") and pioneering surrealist Arrabal without even knowing it.
"All the problems of the world have been solved for four days," says the opera and theatre director Peter Sellars, a festival institution known for his excellent hugs.
And it's true. From Friday to Monday, nothing exists outside of Telluride's valley. The steep drapery of evergreens keep the excitement of movies in and the distractions of the world out.
Telluride is the only place you can sit behind actress Ellen Barkin and watch her squirm during Arrabal's violent surrealist film "Viva La Muerte," or talk about the flurry of September festivals with Roger Ebert as he walks to his room to file a story.
Telluride is the only place where both 69-year-old Greek director Theo Angelopolous and 40-year-old American actress Laura Linney can be-and were-honored for their life's work. It's the only place where Peter Bogdanovich's merits as critic and artist is an acceptable topic of conversation.
But for all its pretensions, Telluride attracts genuine filmmakers and film lovers, whittling out the glamour and giving the underdog a moment on screen. In a year that saw Marlon Brando's passing, Telluride dedicated itself to Fay Wray, the screaming beauty of the original "King Kong," who died Aug. 8.
There is no class system. Filmmakers often watch their work with the audience. And sometimes they even rely on their audience for more.
"The producer needs a ride home after the movie," deadpanned theater manager Gary Tucker before the premiere of low-budget indie "Keane."
Others not only hurdled financial constraints but also bureaucratic ones.
"That it was approved by the Chinese government is kind of a miracle," said director Li Shaohong before her controversial film "Baober in Love" had its American premiere in the 186-seat, aptly named Nugget Theatre.
Added to the mix of premieres were retrospectives and restorations. Carri?re's "Belle du Jour" was presented newly restored. Rip Torn was in town to introduce his 1973 film "Payday." Swede Henning Carlsen took questions after his 1966 film "Hunger," a devastating portrait of dignity amid poverty with a performance by Per Oscarsson that should never be forgotten.
The nostalgic highlight was Hitchcock's 1927 silent film "Blackmail," for which the Alloy Orchestra played a new score live.
The sheer inventiveness of the programming explains why so many people gush about Telluride. The diversity and intensity of the festival is a breath of fresh air, even at the altitude.
Getting In and Getting Seen
Scott Smith sees a familiar face and quickly waves a flyer for his movie in front of it.
"'Charlie the Ox,' it's playing tomorrow, it's a smart, fun caper!" Smith says with practiced enthusiasm as the familiar face continues on, ignoring his performance.
Smith, with practiced perturbation, sits back down at the corner of Main and South Fir streets on the main strip of Telluride.
"You know who that was?" Smith scoffs. "That was Peter Bart. He can't even take a card from a poor, struggling filmmaker."
Bart, editor in chief of Variety and Hollywood mover-and-shaker, is one of a bevy of powerful people sampling movies at the Telluride Film Festival. There are three categories of people at Telluride: those who make, those who watch, and those who have the power to snatch a low-budget independent from obscurity.
Even Smith-author, Sundance Film Festival award winner, and former publisher of digital filmmaking magazine RES-needs to stump to get his film noticed by people like Bart, who fall into the last category.
Of any of the major and most popular film fests, Telluride is probably the one least concerned with scoring lucrative studio deals. But for every safely funded film like "Kinsey," there is a Hollywood hopeful banking on word of mouth.
After all, the fest bore Michael Moore, whose 1989 debut "Roger and Me" premiered in the tiny Masons Hall cinema on Colorado Street. And "The Crying Game" began its march into history there in 1992. "Lost in Translation" also had its world premiere last year in Telluride.
Smith stands on the street corner with his producer, Eric McDonald, and both wear matching red shirts that say "Crime pays. Ask me how. Charlie the Ox." They are pouncing on passersby, distributing cards and even DVDs of their movie to those who couldn't attend Saturday's screening.
"We put up six times as many posters as other people because we're six times as passionate," said Smith, whose aggressive local ad campaign managed to "piss off" Telluride's mayor.
But after coming so far, how could Smith not pepper the town with posters? "Charlie the Ox" was rejected from nine different festivals before finally slipping into Telluride's Indie Film Fest.
"It's a very arduous, uphill battle to get people to see your movie," Smith said.
"Charlie the Ox" was made for about $200,000, and Smith hopes that the film's tone (comparable to 1973 caper "The Sting," he says) and lead (veteran character actor Jon Polito) will get people talking. And when people are talking, distributors listen.
Steve Suh, a 29-year-old student at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., had people talking after his short film "Hearts as One" screened at the Chuck Jones Cinema. Outside the theater, Suh traded business cards with random people who expressed interest in his work.
"I don't think you can beat the beauty and the camaraderie here between filmmakers," Suh said. "Everyone can really relax and be comfortable with each other."
Suh's relaxation came after touring the festival circuit with "Hearts as One," stopping at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis, the International Family Film Festival in Valencia, Calif., the Palm Beach Festival in Florida and finally landing Telluride, his highest-profile gig yet.
It was a long road, but persistence is paying dividends.
"It's a joyous frustration," Suh said. "But as long as I can do what I love, it's come what may."
Smith has the same attitude. He likens the experience of making and exhibiting a film to a sea turtle laying eggs on a beach-a thousand eggs get laid, and nearly all of them hatch, but only a couple baby turtles make it.
"You just have to believe that you're one of those guys that gets to the sea," Smith said, before darting in front of another pedestrian.
The Top 5 Movies at Telluride
1. Yes I was in the front row of the world premiere and was engaged throughout-sitting forward, eyes open in wonder, reveling in the risks director Sally Potter and actress Joan Allen were taking. "Yes" is a film that employs cleaning ladies as a defacto Greek chorus, Shakespearean verse as dialogue, and a story that aspires to the emotional scope of James Joyce's "Ulysses," all under the guise of a 21st-century domestic drama. Allen plays a reserved scientist drawn out of a listless marriage by an intriguing foreigner. What results from the affair is not fiery dinner table confrontations but inward excavations of human connection. Sound ambitious? It is. Release date TBA.
2. The Student Prints It is both heartening and frustrating that the best films of the Telluride Film Festival were the student shorts, shown almost as an afterthought at the mountain-top Chuck Jones Cinema. These seven entries-none of which were over 30 minutes and all of which were made by "amateurs"-showed greater skill than most regular festival fare. Don't expect to see any of these in theatrical release, but remember the filmmakers' names: Liz Blazer, Steve Suh, Cristian Nemescu, Richie Mehta, Goran Kapetaniovic, Jonas Embring and Patricia Riggen.
3. Up and Down (Horem Padem) In a festival of severe, draining movies, this Czech film was like a cleansing spa treatment. A slice of life of Prague, Jan Hrebejk's follow-up to his Oscar-nominated "Divided We Fall" arrives under the appropriate tagline "A comedy that will make you cry, a drama that will make you laugh." "Up and Down" deftly balances ligh and dark tones while maintaining an undercurrent of sly social commentary. Each scene is so alive and engaging that each could exist on its own as a short film. Opens Sept. 16 in the Czech Republic; American release date TBA.
4. Being Julia This is Annette Bening's show, and she shimmers through the movie like a latter-day Norma Desmond or Margo Channing-all glitz and attitude as the West End's most revered (and vainest) actress, Julia Lambert. Julia flits comically about the social strata of 1930 London, achieving her own version of success at the film's end. Istvan Szabo's film provides this year's most intriguing, lovely final shot. Opens Oct. 15.
5. Kinsey Bill Condon has taken one of the 20th century's greatest and least-known stories and massaged it into a literate, humorous biopic. Liam Neeson is a benevolent locomotive as Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who reformed social norms with his 1948 book "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male." Laura Linney finds the perfect tone for Kinsey's sensible wife Mac, and delivers Condon's witty dialogue with divine aplomb. Opens Nov. 12.
