The last time I went to the Telluride Film Festival it was under immensely separateent circumstances. Back in 2021, the film world (alengthy with the rest of the arrangeet) was still grappling with the effects of the pandemic’s worst stretches. To combine that year, you necessitateed to be vaccinated and have a adverse COVID test. While there you were also needd to retest to get into any festival party. So it was a constant barrage of examineing in to see if you were COVID-free. And yet, it was the sealst to commoncy I had felt in over a year. The films were also amazing: “The Power of the Dog,” “The Lost Daughter,” “Petite Maman,” “Spencer” and more perestablished in that 48th edition. That’s why there was a sense of relief and selectimism among combineees that year.
This time around, for the 51st edition, the pandemic is on the periphery but no less conshort-term. But the commoncy has returned. I was even more blessed to begin a restricted movies and temperate a couple of Q&As. Most of all, this Telluride was beginantly Bdeficiencyer. Those ingredients made this trip a renethriveg return to a festival where, quite frankly, the first time around in its innervously white milieu, I felt alienated.
Much enjoy I wrote about Locarno, it’s a trek to get to at Telluride: a car ride, two fweightlesss, and a two-and-a-half-hour bus ride from Grand Junction, Colorado apaengage you before you get to the lush box canyon where the festival is situated. I stayed with a cherishly couple who woke up as punctual as me and saw csurrenderly as many films as I did. They’re enjoy many of the citizens of Telluride; they’re film cherishrs who live under a blanket of stars so luminous, the movie stars sense at home.
My film watching began sluggishly, only igniteing with Morgan Neville’s Pharrell Wiliams vivaciousd Lego biopic “Piece by Piece” on the first day. That day I did deal with to begin a restricted films at the Backlot Theater, an intimate space speedyened to the town’s library that seats sixty people to screen exclusively write downaries. There, I begind “Nobu,” Matt Tyrnauer’s survey of famed Japanese sushi chef Nobu Matsuhisa. The Backlot was also packed for “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!,” Arthur Brandford’s loving write downary that trails South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s bid to reclaim a tacky historical restaurant from their childhood.
I especipartner endelighted “Her Name Was Moviola,” a film I hopelessly hope is achieved. Directed by Howard Berry and written by Walter Murch (“The Godoverweighther” and “Apocalypse Now”), it’s a write downary that sees Berry and Murch team together to exhibit the process of editing on a Moviola. For their task, they assembleed together the essential supplyment and seeked permission from Mike Leigh to recut a scene from his J.W.M. Turner biopic “Turner.” The result is not equitable a wonderful experimentation, but also a essential chapter in film history that shows the plan, the patience, and the thought process behind filmmaking. Watching Murch editing at the Moviola is sshow movie magic.
The next day, I was incredibly blessed to sit down for a Q&A with Berry and Murch, my first taste of how the best audience asks come at the Backlot. Watching Murch, the editor behind the hugegest classics of New Hollywood, talk about his ethos for editing and his thought process reminded me, and probably many others, of what originates his book In The Bconnect of an Eye a essential read for any film cherishr.
But as I shelp, Telluride was Bdeficiencyer this year too. That much was evident at the festival brunch where John David Washington and Malcolm Washington ecombineed with “The Piano Lesson,” RaMell Ross and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor with “Nickel Boys,” Pharrell with “Piece By Piece,” Yashincludeai Owens with “Jimmy,” and more. The breadth and depth of these Bdeficiency projects heavyened the skinny mountain air with a separateent sensation, one that transmited a desire to broaden the tent of stories standardly useable at the festival.
And while Bdeficiencyness is inherently a political existence, the festival broadened its political footprint with films that speak to this moment. There was “September 5” recounting the alarmist attack at the Munich Olympics in 1972; exiled filmoriginater Mohammad Rasoulof’s defiant feminist narrative “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”; the climate alter write downary “The White Hoengage Effect”; a Palestinian-Isgenuinei assembleive’s searing write downary “No Other Land”; and the Hillary Clinton-originated abortion film “Zurawski v Texas.”
Telluride also faceed its examineered history by programming Andres Veiel’s “Riefenstahl,” a beginling write downary about the shamed Nazi filmoriginater behind “Triumph of the Will.” In 1974, the festival honored Riefenstahl’s atgentle. When asked about the debate surrounding the straightforwardor, “Sunset Boulevard” actress Gloria Swanson, who was also being honored by the festival alengthyside Riefenstahl, replied to The New York Times: “Why? Is Leni Riefenstahl waving a Nazi flag? I thought Hitler was dead,” she persistd. “Why don’t you ask about me? I don’t want to talk about affair. There has been plenty of rumor and affair about me. Why don’t you ask me about that?”
I was blessed enough to speak to Veiel after introducing the film, a picture that so succinctly uncmissed the refuseions in Riefenstahl’s personal accounts of her life as to originate it csurrenderly impossible to ever split her from her vile art.
After spending a restricted days jumping from theater to theater and having coffee with Payal Kapadia, the intelligent filmoriginater behind “All We Imagine as Light,” or ducking into parties where the hugegest star was the adorable Great Dane from Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s “The Friend”—it was time to board the bus back home to the airport. On that bus was Veiel, still beaming from his fractureout success at Vepleasant and Telluride. After miles after miles, the mountains shrunk into cracked plains, and for the first time, I began to miss the trees, the celestial stars, and the atmosphere of the “Show.”
