Michael's Telluride Film Blog : TFF #43 Has a Guest Director / Tupac / Denial Undenied

Good Friday. Hope everyone had a good week. I know I did. I've spent this week in Salt Lake City at the National Speech and Debate tournament both as a coach with kids competing and as a part of the tournament staff. It was a great time but ends today.

TFF #43 HAS A GUEST DIRECTOR

Many of you may have seen this yesterday. I certainly re-tweeted the news a couple of times. German film director Volker Sclondorff has been named as this year's guest director for TFF. Here's the press release that was sent out yesterday:

BERKELEY, CA – Telluride Film Festival, presented by National Film Preserve LTD., is proud to announce its 2016 Guest Director, Volker Schlöndorff. The globally acclaimed German filmmaker, producer, writer and actor is set to select a series of films to present at the 43rd Telluride Film Festival running over Labor Day Weekend, September 2-5, 2016.

Festival organizers annually select one of the world’s great film enthusiasts to join them in the creation of the Festival’s program lineup. The Guest Director serves as a key collaborator in the Festival’s programming decisions, bringing new ideas and overlooked films to Telluride. In keeping with Telluride Film Festival tradition, Schlöndorff’s film selections, along with the rest of the Telluride lineup, will be kept secret until Opening Day.

“Volker is the type of person Tom Luddy and I dream about when we begin the Guest Director selection process,” said Telluride Film Festival executive director Julie Huntsinger. “His love and knowledge of the cinema allows for limitless possibilities; films we could never imagine being shown on the big screen again. What a truly unique experience we will have at the 43^rd Telluride Film Festival with Volker in charge!”

One of the most significant and internationally celebrated German directors of our time, Volker Schlöndorff has a passion for bringing German and international literary classics to the screen and making them accessible to larger audiences. Volker began his filmmaking journey at the legendary film school IDHEC followed by his first debut feature, YOUNG TÖRLESS (1966). Decades later, having worked in Europe and America, his extensive body of work has garnered him an Academy Award, the Palme d’Or, and international accolades from Berlin to Venice to Telluride, where he received the Silver Medallion in 2014.

"Since 1981 Telluride has been part of my life, my favorite festival for the uniqueness of the location and the number of friends I met and made there,” said Schlöndorff. “It's not just about our love of movies, but of life and conviviality and good will for a lot of lost causes. Julie Huntsinger and Tom Luddy are in touch with me all around the year, exchanging funny links and gossip. Of all honours, it's one of the greatest to curate a program in the mountains."

Past Guest Directors include Rachel Kushner, Guy Maddin, Caetano Veloso, Michael Ondaatje, Alexander Payne, Salman Rushdie, Peter Bogdanovich, B. Ruby Rich, Phillip Lopate, Errol Morris, Bertrand Tavernier, John Boorman, John Simon, Buck Henry, Laurie Anderson, Stephen Sondheim, G. Cabrera Infante, Peter Sellars, Don DeLillo, J.P. Gorin, Edith Kramer and Slavoj Žižek.

http://variety.com/2016/film/news/volker-schlondorff-telluride-festival-guest-director-1201796933/

TUPAC

Open Road Films which had such great success last year at Telluride with Spotlight has three films that could possibly sneak into the Telluride lineup; Oliver Stone's Snowden, Ben Younger's boxing pic Bleed for This and Benny Boom's Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me. The latter dropped a teaser trailer yesterday. The trailer is here with coverage linked below: