50th Telluride Film Festival (31 Aug - 4 Sep 2023)

50th Telluride Film Festival poster. 2023 poster art by Luke Dorman of Meow Wolf. 

Telluride Film Festival banner on Colorado Avenue. Photo: Pamela Gentile / Telluride Film Festival.

Telluride Film Festival noon seminar. Photo: Vivien Best / Telluride Film Festival.

Telluride Film Festival, Labor Day Picnic, Monday 4 Sep 2023. Photo: Vivien Best / Telluride Film Festival.

A Tribute to Wim Wenders 
Wim Wenders: Anselm - Das Rauschen der Zeit 
Ethan Hawke: Wildcat 
Alexander Payne: The Holdovers 
Aki Kaurismäki: Kuolleet lehdet / Fallen Leaves 
Errol Morris: The Pigeon Tunnel 
George C. Wolfe: Rustin 
A Tribute to Yorgos Lanthimos 
Yorgos Lanthimos: Poor Things 
Pablo Larraín: El conde / The Count 
Film concert Chemi bebia / My Grandmother with Cleaning Women 
A Tribute to Alice Rohrwacher 
Alice Rohrwacher: La chimera / The Chimera.
Wim Wenders: Perfect Days
Jonathan Glazer: The Zone of Interest

...

PREVIOUS BLOG ENTRIES
Tom Luddy 1943-2023 

TFF 2023 FILMS ON WHICH I HAD BLOGGED BEFORE

Alain Tanner: Jonas qui aura 25 en l'an 2000 (CH 1976) 

Idrissa Ouédraogo: Yam daabo / The Choice (SN 1986) 
Bahram Beyzaie: Ragbar / Downpour (IR 1972) 
Agnès Varda: Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (FR 2000) 
Agnès Varda: Black Panthers (FR/US 1968)
Emilio Fernández: Víctimas del pecado / Victims of Sin (MX 1951)

TFF 2023 TITLES CAUGHT POST FESTUM 

Justine Triet: Anatomie d'une chûte  / Anatomy of a Fall (FR 2023)

Tràn Anh Hùng: La Passion de Dodin Bouffant (FR 2023) Telluride 2023 TBA slot title added later.

Andrew Haigh: All of Us Strangers (GB/US 2023).

Ilker Çatak: Das Lehrerzimmer / The Teachers' Lounge (DE 2023). I had scheduled it as the final film of the final evening but realized that the screening was at Chuck Jones's Cinema on the other side of the mountain in Mountain Village, and I had a 4 o'clock wake-up call next morning and a 8 hour drive to Denver International Airport.

...

All were great, but these were my
SPECIAL FAVOURITES:

Anselm and Perfect Days

The Holdovers

The Pigeon Tunnel

FAVOURITE PERFORMANCES:

Maya Hawke in Wildcat

Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers

Koji Yakusho in Perfect Days

THE FILM I MOST LOOK FORWARD TO REVISIT:
La chimera

THE MOST MOVING Q&A:

Koji Yakusho, Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog after Perfect Days (the 4 September 2023 screening).

...

BETWEEN THE COVERS

My favourite daily stop was the bookstore café Bruno / Between the Covers (last year's High Alpine Coffee with its backdoor mountain view having been replaced by the frontside Bruno, opening to Colorado Avenue). Excellent flat white. I established a "book of the day" habit including:

- Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005). Oppenheimer for me is the film of the year, but this book is even more formidable. My favourite reading matter in the long queues to screenings.

- Flannery O'Connor: The Complete Stories (1971). Inspired by Wildcat.

- Pekka Hämäläinen: Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power (2019).

- Merlin Sheldrake: Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures (2020).

PRESS REACTIONS
Los Angeles Times, Glenn Whipp, 8 Sep 2023 .
Los Angeles Times: "The eight best films we saw at Telluride", by Justin Chang, Joshua Rothkopf, Josh Rottenberg, Glenn Whipp, 5 Sep 2023
The New York Times, Lisa Kennedy: "The Critic's Notebook", 5 Sep 2023.
Deadline: Pete Hammond, Todd McCarthy, Telluride 2023: all movie reviews, 10 Sep 2023

Vanity Fair: 2023 fall film festival compendium, 11 Sep 2023, still being updated.
The Hollywood Reporter: Scott Feinberg, Rebecca Keegan, 5 Sep 2023

IndieWire on 2023 Telluride: Marcus Jones, Anne Thompson, David Ehrlich, Christian Blauvelt, Esther Zuckerman, Wilson Chapman, 31 Aug - 6 Sep 2023
Washington Post, Jada Yuan, 1 Sep 2023 
Variety coverage of Telluride, Jaden Thompson, Clayton Davis, Chris Willman, Brent Lang, Peter Debruge, Owen Gleiberman, 

Colorado Avenue, 1891. Photo sent to me by Claes Olsson, director of the motion picture Colorado Avenue (FI 2007), based on the novel by Lars Sund. The movie starts on the west coast of Finland in 1905. Hanna Näs has returned to Finland after her husband Ed Ness, a champion of miners' rights, has been killed in Telluride.