Telluride Film Festival

Telluride Film Festival, film festival held annually in Telluride, Colo., during Labor Day weekend. Although no movie awards are given, the festival honours various filmmakers and others in the industry.

(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)

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The Telluride Film Festival was first held in 1974, at the Sheridan Opera House. Eventually other venues, including outdoor locations, were added. The festival is known for showcasing a wide variety of new feature films, student films, shorts, and forgotten classic and silent films. (Unlike most film festivals, Telluride does not announce its full schedule until the event has begun.) It typically screens about 20 feature-length movies and has an average attendance of about 5,000 people, including filmmakers, critics, and members of the public. The festival has developed a reputation for spotting emerging talent—directors Jim Jarmusch and Michael Moore debuted their first films at Telluride—and for picking future Academy Award winners. For example, the British film Slumdog Millionaire was shown at Telluride in 2008 and went on to win the Oscar for best picture.

The festival honours three actors, actresses, or directors from film each year—often past luminaries or people whose fame is rising—and presents them with the Silver Medallion award. The first festival offered tributes to actress Gloria Swanson and directors Francis Ford Coppola and Leni Riefenstahl. Later festivals honoured an eclectic pantheon of filmmakers and artists, including animation director Chuck Jones (1976), director Robert Wise (1979), and actresses Meryl Streep (1998) and Jean Simmons (2008). Telluride also offers special medallions to other people involved in the film industry, such as film critics, preservationists, historians, and technicians.