Mountain-town event a magnet for purists and rebels|Archivist Edith R. Kramer is a purist.
“Edith will not show films in a digital format that were made on film,” said Telluride Film Festival co-director Gary Meyer with clear admiration, and maybe a bit of pride.
After all, festival co-director Tom Luddy and Meyer (who stepped this year into retired co-founder Bill Pence’s co-director role) tapped the retired head of the esteemed
Pacific Film Archives at the University of California at Berkeley to serve as this year’s guest director.
When the festival starts today (it ends Monday), Kramer’s program will stand out even as it becomes just one more example among many of what makes Telluride peculiar and invigorating.
Thursday’s unveiling of the program of 33 new features, 15 revivals and restoration programs, three tributes, 16 new shorts, three panel discussions and six conversations makes it easy to call the Labor Day weekend event a binge. Maybe that’s why the festival kicks off with “The Feed,” its spread of comestibles held on the mountain town’s main street.
One of the festival’s three tribute programs will honor actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Last seen onscreen in wife Rebecca Miller’s intimate, brooding “The Ballad of Jack and Rose,” Day-Lewis will next appear in “There Will Be Blood.” Based on Upton Sinclair’s scorching 1927 novel “Oil!” about a developer and his son, the film marks the return of director Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights”).
The London-born actor’s complex modesty about his uncanny gifts provides a telling complement for a festival that has its own mysterious methods of remaining so compelling.
And Day-Lewis certainly constitutes a big-ticket item. As does the screening of Sean Penn’s adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction stunner “Into the Wild.” Emile Hirsch should break through once and for all with his nuanced, painful and at times ecstatic portrayal of Christopher McCandless. Idealistic and angry, the 20-something headed to the Alaskan wilderness in hope of …
Well, let’s leave it at that: “in hope.”
Another sorely missed American indie director, Todd Haynes (“Far From Heaven”), returns with the formally inventive “I’m Not There,” in which Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale and a parade of others play iconic American troubador Bob Dylan.
Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh appear as sisters in “Margot at the Wedding,” Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to his celebrated and ouchy family comedy, “The Squid and the Whale.”
Penn the actor makes a vocal appearance in one of the festival films first celebrated at the Cannes Film Festival in May: “Persepolis.”
Directed by Vincent Parronaud and Marjane Satrapi, “Persepolis” is based on the latter’s graphic novel that deals with her Iranian upbringing.
If you wanted to craft a minifestival of works by women, you could. There’s “Jellyfish,” about three women living in Tel Aviv; director Sarah Gavron’s “Brick Lane,” based on Monica Ali’s Booker Prize-winning novel about a young woman’s journey from Bangladesh to post-9/11 London.
“We we’re thrilled that so many women directors wound up in films we saw and liked a lot,” Meyer said. “But obviously that wasn’t a conscious theme. It’s just something we saw and are really pleased with.”
First-time director Alison Eastwood – yes, of that monumental pedigree – screens “Rails and Ties.” Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden star. Not a bad way for the actress to make her move to directing.
All the female filmmakers will be in attendence, Meyer said, with the exception of Israeli filmmaker Shira Geffen, who co-directed “Jellyfish” with husband Etgar Keret. (They’ve just had a baby.) The couple’s tale won the Camera d’Or for best first film at Cannes.
At times, Telluride could be dubbed Mini-Cannes in the Mountains, but there’s something powerfully anti- red-carpet about the vibe. Call it purism if you must; you wouldn’t be wrong. Yet there’s little of the high- handedness of the gatekeepers on display during the festival.
Instead, there’s the heady enthusiasm of programmers and festivalgoers who can’t keep from sharing their discoveries.
That pleasure can be found in a film historian’s deep knowledge, for instance Kramer’s programming, which includes a collection of underground filmmaker George Kuchar’s work on 8mm preservation prints from the Anthology Film Archives.
It can be wondrous, much as the buzz about Julian Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” based on Jean-Dominique Bauby’s unforgettable memoir, promises.
At Telluride, the showing of two or more astonishing films back to back is a joy and a curse. But the excess guaranteed yet again often comes with a clarity – nearly as pristine as the mountain air – for what cinema has historically been and what it can be.
As in years past, the festival passes have been sold out for a spell, including the $3,500 patron passes. Fear not: If you can find a place to lay your head, you can attend TFF’s free events. Look for them at when the entire program goes live at 1 p.m. today.
For more information on this weekend’s festival, go to Diary of a Mad Moviegoer at .
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com,
