On a brisk October night in a loft in LoDo, luminaries of the Denver Film Society and its premier event, the Starz Denver Film Festival, were gathered amid an impressive collection of contemporary Chinese art.
They had come to celebrate a $250,000 gift from the Anna and John Sie Foundation to endow a new award strictly for Italian filmmakers.
Festival director Britta Erickson spoke. So did new film society executive director Bo Smith, in town for a round of meet-and- greets before returning to Boston to close shop at the Museum of Fine Arts, where he headed the film program for two decades. He’ll return permanently soon.
You’d have to be a contrarian film critic to argue that what takes place behind the scenes at the Starz Denver Film Festival is more important than what the fest shows.
Yet events like the LoDo gathering have everything to do with the artistic health of a powerful, well-regarded regional film festival such as this. The festival has worked long and hard to grow its programming. And the secret to its success is the relationships it has developed with people like the Sies.
The better the festival’s friends, the better the festival — and its wider reputation. The new award invites a whole new corner of the world to pay attention.
The 31st Starz Denver Film Festival opens Nov. 13 with Rian Johnson’s con-man tale “The Brothers Bloom,” starring Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel Weisz.
Tickets went on sale Friday for the event, which runs through Nov 23. The program was in Friday’s Denver Post and also available online at .
Over 11 days, more than 150 features and shorts (documentary and narrative, animated and live-action) will screen at the Starz FilmCenter, as well as the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, the Buell Theater and the King Center on the Auraria campus. In addition, filmmakers and talent will arrive for tributes, panels and Q&As about their work and the industry.
Frederico Bondi will be the first recipient of the new $10,000 Maria and Tommaso Maglione Italian Filmmaker Award. His debut narrative feature, “Mar Nero” (“Black Sea”), tells the story of a young Romanian woman who travels to Italy to earn money. There she finds work as the caretaker of recently widowed Gemma. When Angela decides to return to Romania, Gemma follows.
“Gemma is my grandmother, and Angela was her home help,” the director has said. Bondi will be in town for the screening of his film and awarding of the prize on Nov. 20.
“The journey Gemma undertakes with the young Romanian is something my grandmother didn’t do, but she could have. It was for that reason that I liked inventing this story.”
Like Bondi’s film, the Italian prize also has heartfelt origins. It may seem arbitrary for a Denver festival, but it has everything to do with the festival’s developing connections with its funders.
Anna Sie immigrated here in 1950 from the Italian village that provided the location for Giuseppe Tornatore’s Oscar- winning film, “Cinema Paradiso.” She has a soft spot for films from the country.
Named in honor of Sie’s parents, the gift is meant to get the charitable juices of others flowing. Expensive affairs, film festivals rely on philanthropy and corporate sponsorship.
“Our hope is that others will follow suit and provide endowment funds to the Denver Film Society so that they can grow their wonderful programs in a sustainable and incremental way,” said Sie’s daughter, Michelle Sie Whitten, who serves as the executive director of the family foundation.
Part of long-time aim
But the donation also helps achieve an aim of the film society, festival director Erickson and artistic director Brit Withey. Longtime DFS honchos, the two took the reins last year when society co-founder Ron Henderson stepped down as artistic director. He remains a senior programming consultant.
“We’ve been talking for a year about two things we wanted to happen,” said Erickson. “We wanted a focus on the emerging arena, and we wanted to grow our documentary program. Now we’ll see how the audience reacts.”
The Italian filmmaking prize sends a signal to Italy’s up-and-coming filmmakers (and the world) to consider Denver and its longstanding festival a destination, a grand opportunity to earn global recognition.
“We’re not just building relationships, but also helping young filmmaking talent around the world,” said Withey, who envisions “setting up similiar honors for a Korean filmmaker or a French director.”
The two sat in the lobby of the Starz FilmCenter on the Auraria campus. The multiplex is home to the film society and its year-round programming and will be the central hive of filmgoing buzz during the festival. But there will also be the red-carpet events at the Ellie Caulkins, the Buell and the King Center. And for the first time, the festival is using the Denver Art Museum’s Lewis I. Sharp auditorium when it awards visual artist and filmmaker Carolee Schneemann the Stan Brakhage Vision Award on Nov. 19.
The cinematic extravaganza kicks off Nov. 13 with Rian Johnson’s dramedy. Johnson’s father, Craig, lives in Denver and helped produce his son’s first film, the cracking-wise neo-noir “Brick.”
The closing night film also has links to Denver.
“Last Chance Harvey” was produced by Overture Films, a film production subsidiary of Liberty Media, which also owns the locally headquartered Starz LLC.
Writer-director Joel Hopkins’ romantic drama stars two acting greats who’ve been on a tear recently: Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson.
Overture has also begun awards-season campaigning for actor Richard Jenkins, critically lauded for his tender turn in “The Visitor” as a pent-up widower and professor whose life shifts in unexpected ways when he finds two immigrants living in a New York City apartment he owns but rarely visits.
Jenkins will receive an acting prize and participate in an onstage interview Friday, Nov. 14.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com; also on blogs.denverpostcom / madmoviegoer
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, it incorrectly spelled the name of the Lewis I. Sharp Auditorium at the Denver Art Museum.
