On Saturday, I saw Ed Harris strolling casually down the middle of Pacific Street; later, I watched a woman outside the Galaxy Theater flirt shamelessly with French actor Edgar Ramirez, star of the remarkable Carlos, the five-and-a-half hour epic about the infamous terrorist. No one seemed to notice Ramirez as he tried gracefully to escape the woman’s clutches. On Sunday, James Franco, costar of the recent Eat, Pray, Love, quietly chatted with a couple of industry types about his latest stint on General Hospital as he waited to join a panel discussion about the use of nature’s elements in cinema. Interestingly, none of these actors generated the buzz or excitement that fest-goers reserve for directors, who are the real stars of Telluride. Director sightings are a hot topic of chit-chat in restaurants, bars, and while waiting for the next movie to start, whether someone has seen them introducing their films, participating in panels, or just walking around town. One of my fellow cinephiles in my group literally stumbled over Werner Herzog–a fest favorite–during a screening of Errol Morris’s Tabloid. It was a story we all relished.

I am sure other film festivals venerate directors, but I have never attended a fest in which the audience members are such auteurists. That makes Telluride the perfect festival for me. Having grown up on the movies of the Film School Generation, I am a card-carrying advocate of the auteur theory, though the idea that the director should be the creative center of the film has fallen out of favor, both in academia and in the Hollywood industry. On Saturday, I spent the day listening to directors talk about their work, and it was  exciting, enlightening, and, at times, exhilarating.

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I’m staying up until 2am, waking up five hours later, making mad dashes between one place and another with no room for error, and taking along food and clothing to sustain me for what might be a full day away from home-base with temperatures that soar up into the 80′s in the afternoon and then plunge on down to the thirties very late at night. These are certainly not the hardships of Siberian trappers who hunt what they eat, build their own shelters and tools, all while carving out their existence in very isolated terrain where the weather sometimes drops down to fifty below, and which is also the subject of Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (the latest documentary presented by Werner Herzog using footage from Dmitry Vasyukov). No, this is, after all, the lap of luxury; Telluride, Colorado. Here, the magnificent views have ensured that one of the cheapest houses listed for sale, some 1,600 square feet of real estate, goes for about two million dollars. Such extravagances certainly help add to the view that the film festival is an elite affair but, to give credit where credit is due, the Telluride Film Festival, now in its 37th year, makes many of its movies available for free screenings, has created an affordable Cinephile pass (one that’s true to its name), and also invites students up every year as part of a symposium that provides them with a pass and a stipend of food and money to compliment an aggressive schedule of wonderful cinematic events to attend. READ MORE

It’s hard to keep a secret anymore, even among the seasoned hush-hushers at The Telluride Film Festival.  Constructing the line-up of special guests and honorees must be a logistical nightmare for festival planners, who have to gauge the temptation of releasing advance word of their celebrated guests against the possible last minute likelihood that said stars might not make it.  Tweeting festival-goers leaked out the good news ahead of the official announcement yesterday and the cat is out of the bag: among the recipients of the Silver Medallion Award (given to those who have made special contributions to the world of cinema) is the divine Claudia Cardinale.  In support of La Cadinale’s appearance, the festival will screen one of her rarer titles: Valerio Zurlini’s criminally neglected GIRL WITH A SUITCASE (1961). READ MORE

The 37^th Telluride Film Festival promises to be another memorable event for the lucky attendees at this four-day film mecca that occurs over the Labor Day weekend, Sept. 3-6. Classic movie fans, in particular, will be excited to know that Italian screen legend Claudia Cardinale will be one of the honorees with a screening of Valerio Zurlini’s GIRL WITH A SUITCASE (1961). In addition, there will be a retrospective showing of Robert Rossen’s THE HUSTLER (1961) with Paul Newman’s Eddie Felson squaring off against Jackie Gleason’s Minnesota Fats in the pool hall. And, festival-goers will get an early look at two episodes of the new seven part documentary, MOGULS AND MOVIE STARS: A HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD, which TCM will premiere on the network beginning Nov. 1^st, with each new episode appearing every Monday evening through Dec. 15^th.       READ MORE