Beginning tomorrow, the Hopkins Center for the Arts will celebrate the 29th anniversary of its Telluride at Dartmouth program. Six films from the annual festival, now in its 41st year, will travel to Hanover for the event.
The College’s long-standing relationship with the Telluride Film Festival was made possible by Hop film director Bill Pence, who as a young entrepreneur owned theaters in popular skiing areas across the Rocky Mountains. During the 1970s, he took on the task of renewing an opera house in Telluride, Colorado, by converting it into a small theater.
At the time, Pence said, Telluride was “something of a ghost town, mainly miners seeking out a living,” far from the touristy, prosperous ski town that it is today. With the help of his wife Stella, he screened two films at the opera house following its restoration.
Pence co-directed Telluride for 33 years before retiring from the position in 2007. Years spent handling national distribution of classic films enabled Pence to “plant the seeds” for the festival to be taken seriously, he said.
Among the highest ranked festivals in the world, Telluride brings famous actors, critics and directors to the small, mountain-enclosed village to “[eat] the same popcorn,” Pence said, creating a refreshingly equalizing atmosphere. The town and the festival work together to “support each other” in a mutually beneficial relationship, Pence said.
“It is the way the mountains form a horseshoe to hold everything in,” Pence said.
Pence’s work at Telluride has allowed him to bring a fresh and current wave of films to the College.
“It gives Dartmouth the first crack at having films here and meeting artists involved,” Pence said.
The process of selecting which films come to Hanover is more simple than the selection process that decides which films will premiere at Telluride, Pence said. Rather than reviewing hundreds of films and submissions, he said they select from “the cream of the crop” — the 25 films already featured at the festival.
While choosing the six films to feature at the College, Pence aims to convey an accurate portrait of the festival.
“I try to find the right mix of films that work together to represent what the Telluride Film Festival is all about.”
Just as Telluride comes to Dartmouth, each year, multiple Dartmouth undergraduates work as interns for the festival and participate in the film selection process, helping to narrow the more than 1,200 short film submissions that the festival receives.
Mac Simonson ’16, one of this year’s interns, said that the number of submissions increases each year. He recalled watching 14 feature films in four days.
“I personally saw probably 600 shorts as well as advance viewings of everything that screened at the festival,” Simonson said. “There is no way to turn that down.”
The festival brings together “a mix of locals and industry people,” Simonson said.
“Two Days, One Night” (2014) and “Wild” (2014), two films scheduled for Dartmouth’s program, seemed to grab the most attention at the festival, Simonson said.
“Two Days, One Night,” which will screen on Tuesday, tackles the social constructs of the workplace and complex questions of right and wrong in the face of economic adversity. Marion Cotillard stars as a factory worker with one weekend to persuade her colleagues to give up their bonuses so that she can keep her job. Showing on Saturday, “Wild” tells the story of how Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) attempts to leave behind a divorce, the death of a parent and a history of drug use while on a solo trek from Mexico to Oregon. Her journey leads to unexpected encounters and soul-searching.
Varun Bhuchar ’15, senior intern at the Telluride Film Festival this summer, said that the most rewarding moment of the festival for him was screening “Wild,” the final show of the last day at his theater.
“Once the credits had rolled, and the lights came back up there was this spontaneous feeling of relief and fulfillment that we had successfully pulled off 20-plus screenings in five days without a hitch, and that in itself was just so wonderful,” Bhuchar said.
Bhuchar said the program benefits campus by making the festival more accessible to students.
“Telluride is not cheap or easy to get to, and while [Telluride at Dartmouth is] not quite the same, it does a good job of sort of replicating that experience of seeing a movie for the first time with little to no advance buzz or reviews to spoil it,” Bhuchar said.
Bhuchar said he is excited for Dartmouth to see “Two Days, One Night.” He called the film “incredibly devastating and powerful” and said that Cotillard “knocks it out of the park.”
The film to take Dartmouth by surprise, Pence said, will be “Wild Tales” (2014), a dark comedy by director Damian Szifron that chronicles characters’ quests for revenge. The film will screen on Thursday.
Hop film manager Sydney Stowe said that the festival’s popularity is growing among students and faculty, who can see the featured films months before they arrive in most theaters.
The six-film series begins tomorrow with “The Imitation Game” (2014), a thriller that looks at pioneer mathematician Alan Turing’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) mission to decode the Nazi regime’s encrypted military secrets. Keira Knightley co-stars.
“Mr. Turner” (2014), shown Sunday, weaves artistic cinematography with a plot that centers on the unorthodox mind of 19th-century painter J. M. W. Turner (Timothy Spall). The film will highlight the twisted psychology of the producers of the Victorian era’s most beautiful and complex art.
Each film is shown twice in Spaulding Auditorium.
Bhuchar is a former member of The Dartmouth staff.