Telluride Film Festival: A Moviegoer’s Lovefest

Alpenglow Over Telluride During Filmfest

We have one little movie theatre here in Telluride, a one-screen wonder called The Nugget.  It’s a rare gem housed in an historic building of the same name and it keeps Telluride moviegoers content year-round.  (The Nugget Building once boasted a bank, the very place where Butch Cassidy pulled off his first heist.)

For one long weekend of the year, however, we become Cinephile Central.  This has been occurring every Labor Day Weekend for the past thirty-five years.  This is when the Telluride Film Festival takes over our mountain town and transforms it into a center for the appreciation of the motion picture arts.  More than six hundred people—volunteers and paid staff—work before, during and after the festival to make Telluride the film capital of the world this first weekend of September.  Nine very different movie screening venues are created so that film lovers from Sweden to West Africa to Hollywood can come and watch movies for over three days in optimal conditions—that’s to say in spaces where the sound and picture are nothing less than fantastic.

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