The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Local, shorts, outdoor adventures and social commentary
By Katherine Nettles
As the aspen leaves across the Gunnison Valley begin to change from green to gold, another early marker of fall that brings locals and visitors out with enthusiasm is the annual Crested Butte Film Festival. The 14th annual film fest will take place next Wednesday, September 18 through Sunday, September 22 and as usual, it will include a diverse range of films, long and short, from several different genres.
“We have some really exciting films,” says film fest director Michael Brody. “There are some gems we found to bring forward and showcase, and most have not been shown before in Colorado.”
The first of those is a leading-edge documentary film, Eno, about musician Brian Eno. Eno is a solo singer/writer who went on to play with U2, Coldplay, David Byrne and many other big names. In telling a story about Eno and his music, filmmakers explore some new technology to ensure no two viewings of their production will ever be the same.
“What they did with this film was develop a generative software, and basically, they let the software choose what the film is going to be. So night to night is vastly different,” explains Brody. “It really changes our idea of what a film is. This is cutting edge technology.” He says that while filmmakers use some parameters to program the software and make it a cohesive storyline, it is still far out of the bounds in which editing normally takes place. “Normally a filmmaker has to decide what to do with all this footage; they cut about 135 hours of film down to one or two hours,” says Brody. When the film is shown at the CB Center for the Arts on Saturday afternoon, Brody says the screening will be different than the version they are showing that same night in Northern Ireland, or have shown anywhere else up until that point. In fact, no two screenings will ever be the same. “It’s something that has never happened before with this film festival. It’s definitely one of a kind,” he says.
Eno is showing on Saturday, September 21 at 3:30 p.m. at the Center. Producer Orion Williams, who is now on the CB Film Fest board, will introduce the film and then do a Q & A after the showing to speak about the process of having made it.
Another Colorado premiere at the festival is Champions of the Golden Valley, a ski film by Ben Sturgulewski, who has shot a number of ski films and worked with Matchstick Productions. He went to Afghanistan and met some skiers in a small town. “This is skiing the way it used to be,” describes Brody. “Super chill, do it yourself, and not $150 lift tickets. They are these rural, rural people who are farmers. And once winter comes, their attention turns to skiing.”
In the absence of chairlifts or snowmobiles, Brody describes the skiers as skiing both uphill and down in a raucous race, not unlike the local Al Johnson telemark event held here on the mountain each spring. “Everyone has hand-me-downs, and skis designed themselves. These are not the standard, privileged white skiers. What they share in common is the same joy of sliding down a hill, slightly out of control,” he says.
Champions of the Golden Valley also touches on the positive initial social changes that had happened in Afghanistan in the late 20th century and the subsequent shock of the Taliban rule. “Then there are these different ethnic groups, who in a way are against each other—but their passion for skiing unifies them. It’s about the beauty and the thrill of skiing and how it unifies us when other things want to keep us separate,” says Brody. “It’s a wonderful film.”
Brody says that Katie Stjernholm, the other filmmaker involved, has deep roots in CB as well. “They really wanted to do their Colorado premiere in CB.”
Champions of the Golden Valley will be shown twice, first on opening night (September 18) with the filmmakers at 7 p.m. at the Center, and again on Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Majestic Theater.
“Then we have a film that I am so excited by,” says Brody of another Colorado premiere at the festival, Grand Theft Hamlet. “It’s one of the most thrilling films I’ve seen.” The film production started a few years ago, when a couple guys whom Brody describes as being “hunkered down during COVID” combined video games with their love of theatre—specifically Shakespeare. “So, anyone in the world can join the proceedings and basically ruin things. They get obliterated inside the game and have to start over,” explains Brody. “It’s an allegory for the difficulty of doing mountain Shakespeare, and then doing so when all the theaters were closed for a pandemic. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.“ Grand Theft Hamlet is showing on Sunday at 10:15 a.m. at the Majestic.
Other highlights of the film festival are the outdoor adventure program, which is always very popular, several shorts and a local’s film showcase.
Social commentary
Brody describes that among the filmmaking trends he has noticed within the industry of late is “a sort of reckoning with colonization,” and he has woven this thread into the CB festival as well having chosen three films from Canada, Ireland and Australia that represent that global reckoning.
First is Sugarcane, which follows the filmmaker and his father returning to investigate the unmarked graves of Native Americans along the borders of a school his father attended. There were 548 such schools in Canada and the U.S., says Brody—including four in Colorado.
“It’s about decimating native habitants, their thousands of years of language and customs and trying to recreate what they want to make you. It’s about the impact of that and the whitewashing and denial. It’s coming up a lot, and it’s important in Crested Butte. CB has also to some extent been made for white people, without understanding that there were native and indigenous people here before, and Hispanic people as well. But it was cleared and made ‘safe’ for us. It seems to be going on in a lot of films, people trying to deal with that and stay in touch with their traditional roots if they can, or go back to them.”
Sugarcane will screen on both Thursday (7 p.m.) and Saturday (7:15 p.m.) at the Majestic. Another, The New Boy, is an Australian film that examines the impact of the Catholic Church through fictional representation featuring Cate Blanchett and an aboriginal boy who is captured and taken to a monastery. “This film uses a lot of Christian symbolism and seeing those symbols differently through the eyes of someone else,” says Brody. The New Boy shows twice at the Majestic, on Thursday at 1 p.m. and Sunday at 10 a.m.
The third film in this genre, Kneecap, is based in Ireland and depicts a group of rowdy hip-hop artists eschewing colonialist conventions and making music in their native tongue. They become unexpected figureheads about how to resist being overtaken by another country and culture. Kneecap plays twice at the Majestic during the festival, on Friday and Sunday evenings at 7 p.m.
Brody reflects that in the CB Film Fest’s 14th year, he takes pleasure in bringing more of the world to viewers in Crested Butte. “You can be anywhere and expose yourself to films online,” he acknowledges. “But it’s highly curated. We want to show things that people may not see and films that we hold so highly but may not pass across your screen selections at home.”
Brody says another special aspect of watching films in a live audience is the element of being able to speak and ask questions with filmmakers afterward. “We want to create an audience for our films and expand people’s understanding of films. An example is a short film that people can really struggle with. Sometimes contact with something disturbing or emotional can be disruptive, and we give people a chance to talk through metaphors, allegories, or providing perspective afterward through our talk backs that offer content through which people can see the film a little differently.”
Brody notes that several filmmakers will be in attendance next week, and when a filmmaker is in attendance, there is always an opportunity to talk about the film afterwards and process more about it.
“We have chosen some great short films, outdoor adventure based, thought-provoking and comedic films and in general just another great collection of films,” he concludes.
More information and tickets can be found at cbff2024.eventive.org.
