"I like film so much because [it] enables us to travel to new lands, inhabit new personalities, discover new cultures, escape, learn," Pence said. "It is a medium of communication and learning that is available to everyone across all cultural and socioeconomic lines."
Thanks to Pence, Dartmouth students and faculty will be able to preview films from Telluride beginning this Friday, months before their general release.
Telluride is known for its particularly low-key atmosphere. The festival displays high-caliber programming, yet unlike many of its "big-city" festival competitors, it retains a relaxed, communal energy, former intern Andrew Fox '09 said.
"Telluride has a tone closer to a sort of grown-up summer camp for movie lovers, which just happens to be attended by some of the world's greatest actors and directors," he said.
In 1983, Pence came to Dartmouth as the Hop's film director. Two years later, he began offering students and young alumni the chance to intern with him during the festival each summer.
Tien-Tien Jong '10, who has interned with Pence for three years, helped screen and solicit films from festivals and national film boards.
Katie Kilkenny '14, who experienced her first Telluride internship this past summer, added that she and Jong were required to screen and review up to 40 films a week during the spring. Along with Pence, they collectively narrowed the pool down to 60 from a total of 1000 films. Telluride eventually selected 25 of these for public screening.
"Telluride was exceptional in that it placed filmmakers, actors, cinephiles and staff [in] the most intimate and unpretentious atmosphere possible," Kilkenny said. "I stood five feet from Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender without any paparazzi in sight, got directions from Ken Burns and sat right behind Alexander Payne."
Pence has brought several Telluride selections to Dartmouth every year since 1985, allowing those on campus to access half a dozen feature films before their international releases. In 2010, the Oscar-winning "The King's Speech" was shown before it was offered in theaters.
"Professors in film and media studies attend Telluride at Dartmouth to see the best of current international cinema, and we encourage our students to attend as well," film professor Jeffrey Ruoff said. "Naturally some of the topics and techniques of the films also filter into our classes."
Fox called this year's selections a "nice mix of Hollywood Oscar-bait and some slightly more esoteric stuff that's still definitely worthwhile."
This fall's roster includes "12 Years A Slave," a true-life story of a 19th century freeman kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. With a cast that includes stars like Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender and Paul Giamatti, this film is already attracting Oscar buzz.
Also being previewed next week is "Nebraska," directed by Alexander Payne and starring Bruce Dern, who won the best actor award this year at the Cannes Film Festival, as a bitter recovering alcoholic who embarks on a cross-country journey convinced he has won a mail-order prize.
Indian film "The Lunchbox," starring Irrfan Khan, tells the story of a young wife's unlikely correspondence with a widowed man via an office lunch delivery service.
"The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden," which includes Cate Blanchett and Diane Kruger, reenacts the unsolved murder saga that plagued a tiny, wealthy German community in the Galapagos in 1929.
Another film, "Before the Winter Chill," tells the story of a French couple whose marriage is compromised when the man falls in love with a mysterious and dangerous woman.
Last in the lineup, "The Invisible Woman," starred and directed by Ralph Fiennes, recounts the story of a young actress' tryst with then-married Charles Dickens.
"If the audience is happy not that they necessarily like all of the films, but they feel that they have been challenged, entertained, moved then we are happy," Pence said.
Telluride at Dartmouth will be held at the Hop from Sept. 20 to 26.
