Telluride and the College have a special relationship: Hopkins Center Film Director Bill Pence and his wife Sheila are two of the co-founders of the festival. Early in his tenure at Dartmouth, Pence asked then-director of the Hopkins Center Sheldon Stanfill if he would be interested in showing some Telluride films at Dartmouth.
"I suggested, What if we brought a few films from Telluride here?'" Pence said. "Basically we tested it out, and people seemed to like it."
The lineup for Telluride at Dartmouth is mainly determined by availability and what Pence determines to be a balanced selection of what the festival has to offer. Once the list of available films is finalized, Pence works to carefully select films that complement one another.
"I try to create a balance of international films as much as I can, spreading it out over the entire world," he said. "I try to also balance the sensibility of serious films and not-so-serious films. On those rare occasions where you can find a good comic film, I love to do that."
The distributors permit the screening of the films with the provision that they are only for the local community.
"It's not meant to bring people in from Boston or New York," Pence said. "This is meant to be something just for the Dartmouth community."
Since its inception, Telluride at Dartmouth has been a wildly popular program for the Hopkins Center, particularly for its showing of films that "are not likely to be picked up for distribution in the U.S.," according to Hopkins Center Film Manager Sydney Stowe.
"I think it's great because people can come and see these movies that haven't played anywhere else," Stowe said. "You can't download them, and you can't go see them in Boston. They're pretty much brand new."
Kicking off this year's lineup on Friday is "Hyde Park on Hudson" (2012), the story of King George VI's visit to the vacation home of President Franklin Roosevelt, played by Bill Murray. The film also stars Laura Linney and Olivia Williams as Roosevelt's cousin and Eleanor Roosevelt, respectively.
Following on Saturday is controversial director Deepa Mehta's adaptation of the perhaps even more controversial author Salman Rushdie's novel "Midnight's Children" (2012). The film features a group of Indian children who receive magical powers on the day that India gains independence from the United Kingdom.
Sunday brings "A Royal Affair" (2012), starring Mads Mikkelsen, one of three people to receive a tribute at this year's festival. The film focuses on an affair in 18th-century Denmark between the royal physician, played by Mikkelsen, and the queen of Denmark, played by Alicia Vikander, during the reign of the mentally ill King Christian VII, played by Mikkel Folsgaard.
"Rust and Bone" (2012) which will play on Tuesday and stars Marion Cotillard, another honoree at the festival is French director Jacques Audiard's follow-up to his critical darling, "A Prophet" (2009). The film follows a killer whale trainer, Cotillard, who loses her legs in an accident involving her beloved animals. In her despair, she befriends a single father, Matthias Schoenaerts, who moonlights as a street fighter. The film has received significant Oscar buzz, especially for the performances of its lead actors.
The final honoree, Roger Corman, is the subject of a documentary, "Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel" (2012). The film follows Corman's work as an independent movie producer creating films with cheesy special effects and terrible plots. His cheap style of filmmaking, however, allowed many now well-known people to learn valuable experiences in the art of movie-making.
"Corman's World' finally gives credit to one of the most influential producer-filmmakers in American film history," Pence said. "I mean, we can trace the beginnings of the careers of Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson. [The list] goes on and on and on and on."
Rounding out the Telluride at Dartmouth slate is "No" (2012), another historical film revolving around the 1988 plebiscite held in Chile to determine whether or not to keep President Augusto Pinochet in power. The film focuses on an advertisement executive, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, who runs the "No" campaign. In an unusual stylistic choice, the film is shot on videotape and strangely color corrected to look blurry, resembling something actually shot in the 1980s.
"The fact that it was shot in that '80's style video what a huge risk to do a whole film in that style," Tien-Tien Jong '10, student director of the Dartmouth Film Society, said. "I don't think I've ever seen another contemporary film that looks that way."
