With as many as 50 film festivals a year, Colorado doesn’t exactly have a season for them. Still, were we to peg the beginning of a period in which avid filmgoers can easily spend hours, days, and more in the dark watching the world unfurl — real, imagined or beautifully in-between — September would be it.
Case in point: The Telluride Film Festival owned Labor Day weekend. Today, the smaller but tenacious Estes Park Film Festival begins. So does Boulder’s 12th Moondance International Film Festival, with its workshops, shorts and features, and a Sunday of kid and teen programming. Each runs through Sunday.
Estes opens with the Colorado premiere of Norwegian director Anne Sewitsky’s dramedy “Happy, Happy.” Eternal optimist Kaja finds her rose-colored glasses smudged when a “perfect couple” moves next door to her and her not-so-loving husband. Sewitsky’s debut won this year’s jury prize for world cinema at the Sundance Film Festival. 8:30 p.m. today
Also: A celebration of Texas-bred film and TV mainstay Barry Corbin, who appeared in “Lonesome Dove,” “Northern Exposure” and “No Country for Old Men.” 7:15 p.m. Saturday. “Photos of Angie” — local director Alan Dominguez’s doc about the 2008 murder of transgender teen Angie Zapata. 5:30 p.m. Sunday. All are at the Historic Park Theatre, 130 Moraine Ave. estesparkfilmfestival or 970-231-2580
Among Moondance’s tempting features: New Zealand director Rosemary Riddell’s “The Insatiable Moon,” about a life-embracing man on a messianic mission and the people who begin to believe in him.
