Telluride Film Festival announces 35th lineup

Press release: The Telluride Film Festival, which takes place this Labor Day Weekend, in Telluride, Colorado, announced its lineup for its 35th Festival today. The Festival—co-directed from its Berkeley headquarters by one of its founders, Tom Luddy, and veteran Bay Area programmer Gary Meyer—is offering a program that includes 25 new feature films, Slavoj Zizek as guest director, a new section featuring animation as well as classics and restorations, shorts, student prints, seminars and conversations. The full program will be published on the Telluride Film Festival web site Friday, August 29, at 11 a.m.

Silver Medallion presentations: David Fincher, Jean Simmons and Jan Troell. (Tributees will be presented the Silver Medallion award preceded by a selection of film clips. Screenings of their works also play as part of the Festival program including a director’s cut of Fincher’s Zodiac, Simmons’s So Long at the Fair * and *Elmer Gantry, and Troell’s A Frozen Dream, Here is your Life, The Emigrants, The New Land and Maria Larsson’s Everlasting Moment.

New features: Adam Resurrected (Paul Schrader, Germany-Israel), American Violet (Tim Disney, U.S.), Everlasting Moments (Jan Troell, Sweden), Firaaq (Nandita Das, India); Flame & Citron (Ole Christian Madsen, Denmark), Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, Italy), Happy-Go-Luky (Mike Leigh, U.K.); Helen (Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, U.K.); Hunger (Steve McQueen, U.K.), I’ve Loved you so Long (Philippe Claudel, France), Kisses (Lance Daly, Ireland), Learning Gravity(Cathal Black, U.S.), O’Horten (Bent Hamer, Norway), Pirate for the Sea (Ron Colby, U.K.), Private Century (Jan Sikl, Czech Republic), Revanche (Gotz Spielman, Austria); The Good, the Bad and the Weird (Kim Ji-Woon, South Korea), The Rest Is Silence (Nae Caranfil, Romania), Tulpan (Sergei Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan), Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel), With a Little Help from Myself (Francois Duperon, France) and Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love (Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Senegal-France), with special post-screening performances by Senegalese musician and composer, Youssou N’Dour and his band, including a free showing and concert at the Abel Gance Outdoor Cinema.

Guest Director Slavoj Zizek (philosopher and theorist) presents: Nightmare Alley (Edmund Golding, U.S., 1947), On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, U.S., 1952), Seconds (John Frankenheimer, U.S., 1966), The Great Sacrifice (Veit Harlan, Germany, 1944), The Fall of Berlin (Mikhail Chiaureli, Soviet Union, 1949) and Innocence Unprotected (Dusan Makavejev, Yugoslavia, 1968).

Spotlight on: Romanian writer, director and composer, Nae Caranfil, who will be on hand to introduce his 2001 film, Philanthropy (Romania), as well as his new film, The Rest is Silence (Romania, 2007).

Classics: Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, France, 1955), Pirosmani (Giorgi Shengelaya, Georgia, 1972), The Last Command (Josef von Sternberg, U.S., 1928— featuring the world premiere of a new score written and performed by the Alloy Orchestra), The Italian Straw Hat (René Clair, France, 1928—with Maud Nelissen’s newly composed score), "Laughing ‘Til It Hurts", featuring four slapstick comedy shorts including The Cook (Roscoe Arbuckle, U.S., 1918), Should Men Walk Home? (Leo McCarey, U.S., 1927), There It Is (U.S., 1928) and Pass the Gravy (Fred L. Guiol, U.S., 1928).

Special Medallion Award: Richard Schickel, film critic, author and documentary filmmaker. The first part of Schickel’s five-hour You Must Remember This (U.S., 2008), his latest film, shows as part of the Medallion presentation.

Backlot (an intimate screening room introduced in 2007, shows seven programs providing back stories on films and filmmakers, including several featured in this year’s program) includes: The second and third segments from Richard Schickel’s You Must Remember This (U.S.), Dvortsevoy’s Nomadic Journeys (featuring four documentaries by Sergei Dvortsevoy, director of Tulpan), the full series of eight 52-minute films in Jan Sikl’s Private Century, A Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (Sophie Fiennes, U.K.) featuring Guest Director Slavoj Zizek, Mary Pickford (Nicholas Eliopoulos, U.S.), Prodigal Sons (Kimberly Reed, U.S.) and 12 Canoes (Rolf de Heer, Australia).

The Festival’s Adventures in Animation features Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood (Peggy Stern). Its Showcase for Shorts features nine short films chosen to precede selected feature films. Filmmakers of Tomorrow includes three shorts programs by 20 emerging filmmakers.

The Talking Heads section features six conversations between Festival guests and three outdoors seminars. These programs are free and open to the public.

Surprise "sneak previews" will also be shown throughout the four-day festival.

08.28.2008