With the return of the 26th Telluride at Dartmouth Film Festival, students can once again get an advance look at several Oscar-hopeful performances and top-tier film offerings from around the globe. The festival, which begins Friday, Sept. 23 in Spaulding Auditorium, also offers students the opportunity to directly contribute to the original festival's short film program.
"As far as I know, there is no other festival that has a major relationship with a university," William Pence, director of film at the Hopkins Center for the Arts and co-founder and former co-director of the Telluride Film Festival, said.
The partnership is now entering its 26th year, but the format has changed "hardly a whisper," according to Pence.
Each year, the Telluride at Dartmouth Film Festival shows six films, and looks to "achieve a program balance a certain number of English-speaking films, foreign-films, lighter films, more difficult ones and basically as many genres as possible," Pence explained.
This is only the second year that the Hopkins Center has screened the Telluride films during an academic term. Previously, Dartmouth had screened the films before the beginning of Fall term, just after the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, which typically occurs over Labor Day weekend. Dartmouth usually acquires the films before they are sent to larger festivals such as the New York Film Festival, and until last year it was difficult to coordinate screenings for after the break, Sydney Stowe, film manager at the Hopkins Center, said.
While the partnership allows for pre-release movie screenings, it also gives students the opportunity to contribute to the Colorado-based festival. Each year, Telluride sends its short film submissions to Dartmouth to be reviewed and narrowed down by Pence and selected students from the Dartmouth Film Society, he said.
"The upcoming and previous directors of the DFS are the students who review the films," Pence said. "It's called covering taking a look at them, reviewing them, then writing about them."
The students "cover" approximately 800 submissions and submit their reports to Pence, who works with them to narrow down the submissions to 60 recommended films, he said. Telluride's staff then selects approximately half of the recommendations to show at the festival, Pence said.
"These students are then rewarded with a trip to Telluride, where they are taken in by the staff," Pence said.
Students have much to look forward to in this year's Telluride at Dartmouth Festival.
"It has a balanced menu," Pence said of the diverse international choices. "[Telluride] has the reputation of showing only the cream of the crop."
The festival will begin with "A Dangerous Method" (2011), a story of two renowned intellectuals Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) who struggle to treat their patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) who has acute hysteria. Jung's passion for Spielrien interferes with consensus on treatment, and the relationship between the two men disintegrates as the romance between Jung and Spielrein advances. Directed by David Cronenberg, the film's strength lies in its superior acting, and in particular, Keira Knightley's performance, which has garnered Oscar buzz.
"Albert Nobbs" (2011), directed by Rodrigo Garcia, is another film hyped for its actors' compelling performances. Five-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close stars as Albert Nobbs, a cross-dressing hotel butler who must live as a man in order to maintain independence in 1890s Dublin. Close's humorous and tragic performance reveals the life of a woman who has lived a lie for so long that she must struggle to regain a sense of her true identity.
In "We Need to Talk About Kevin" (2011), an estranged couple (played by Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly) also struggles with the question of identity that of their sociopathic son. This difficult and upsetting adaption of Lionel Shriver's novel, directed by Lynne Ramsay, portrays the couple's emotional struggle to address their son's violent actions. Swinton's masterful realization of her role reportedly left Telluride audiences so distressed that some individuals at the festival had to leave in the middle of the film.
"In Darkness" (2011) offers another sort of emotional rollercoaster the story of a Catholic sanitation worker named Leopold Soha (Robert Wieckiewicz) and his wife as they hide Jews in the sewers of Lvov, Poland during World War II. Directed by Agnieszka Holland, this Polish film traces the transition of the anti-Semitic Soha's motivations from greed to genuine concern for the refugees.
Danger and difficulty also loom in the path of 11-year old Cyril (Thomas Doret), who is abandoned by his father in "The Kid with A Bike" (2011), directed by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. Cyril refuses to accept his placement in a children's home and runs away in search of his father and his bicycle. Along the way, he is taken in by a kind hair dresser, who helps him on his adventure though the path proves difficult and dangerous.
The final film of the festival, "Le Havre" (2011), also poses questions about family relationships. Directed by Aki Kaurismaki, it is a simultaneously grim and redeeming portrait of a retired writer, Marcel (Andre Wilms), whose pleasant existence in the port of Le Havre on the English Channel is tested by the illness of his wife Arletty (Kati Outinen) and his unexpected responsibility for a young, illegal African immigrant.
"Solid genealogy this year very, very solid," Pence said of this year's masterful directors and actors. "Take a chance and go to something you might not ordinarily go to. You won't be disappointed."
Pence, who co-founded the Telluride Film Festival in 1974, has been essential in the relationship between Dartmouth and Telluride. In the festival's 13th year, he approached then-director of the Hopkins Center, Shelton Stanfill, with the idea of showing some of the festival's films at Dartmouth.
"I went to [Stanfill] and said, Wouldn't it be wonderful to bring some of the films here, so that students could be exposed to movies before they are out?' He jumped at the idea," Pence said.
