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Bollywood out of Telluride
9/11 is dominant theme at the 29th Telluride film festival
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Aseem Chhabra in Telluride
Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz were sighted in Telluride, Colorado recently, but it could be a mere rumour. Cruise has a house in Telluride, which he once shared with ex-wife Nicole Kidman. Oprah Winfrey also has a house somewhere in the outskirts of the town although no one talks about seeing her.
But Peter O'Toole will visit August 31 to attend a tribute to his 40 plus years in the movie business --- a perfect way to start the four-day long, 29th Telluride Film Festival.
It is a bright and sunny morning in Telluride, quite unlike the freak snowfall yesterday. About an inch of snow and rain fell in this ski town and temperatures dropped to the low 40s (Farenheit). And it is summertime.
The unexpected weather will go well with this year's film festival. The Telluride event promises to be full of unexpected surprises. This would explain the reason some people label the event as The Crying Game (after the 1992 hit British film with a surprise twist), of film festivals.
One word missing from this year's lineup is Bollywood. Earlier this summer, Cannes screened Devdas and next week's Toronto festival will show Deepa Mehta's Bollywood/ Hollywood and Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham.
But it appears Telluride may have overdosed on Bollywood and Indian cinema --- at least for a while.
Last year, Salman Rushdie was the festival's guest director and he brought with him Raj Kapoor's Shree 420 and a compilation of Mehboob Khan's film clips. And, although not representative of the Bollywood industry, the festival also included a screening of Satyajit Ray's Sonar Killa and Ismail Merchant's The Mystic Masseur.
In addition to O'Toole, whose new film Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell will be shown at the festival, Telluride will also honour screenplay writer and director Paul Schrader (screenplay writer of Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation Of Christ; director of American Gigolo, Cat People).
Schrader brings his new film, Auto Focus to Telluride. Starring Willem Dafoe and Greg Kinnear, the film focuses on the kinky underworld of sex, lies and videotape.
If a theme could emerge out of this year's festival, it is the violent and disturbed post 9/11 world we live in. Last year, the terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Centre and the Washington DC's Pentagon took place exactly a week after the conclusion of the 28th Telluride Film Festival.
Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore (Roger And Me) brings his trademark irreverent humour and anti-establishment politics to his new film Bowling For Columbine. Although Moore takes his cue from the 1999 killings in a high school in Littleton, Colorado the film goes beyond, looking at violence in the American society as well as the world at large. Bowling For Columbine was the first documentary film to be entered in the competitive section of the Cannes Film Festival.
In addition, several films at the festival look at conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe --- a region in transition. The films include The War, Russian Ark and Cuckoo (all from Russia), Old Believers (Czech Republic) and Antychrst (Poland).
The Brazilian entry City Of God looks at the horrors and violence of urban poverty. And American director Larry Clark's (Kids, Bully) Ken Park explores the violent lives of skateboarding teenagers in suburban California.
The French film Irreversible, the most controversial film of the 2002 Cannes festival, deals with rape and vengeance.
All is not bleak and disturbing at the 2002 Telluride festival. Festival pass holders will get to see a brand new remastered version of the classic American musical Singing In The Rain. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the film. Also scheduled, although only for one screening, is This Is (Almost) Cinerama, a celebration of the three-camera and three-projector film medium that died with the emergence of cinemascope and 70 mm films.
There are revivals of silent films --- The Wonderful Lies Of Nina Petrowna (Germany, 1928) and the American classic The Black Pirate (1926), starring Douglas Fairbanks.
There are many more new films to discover --- Philip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence (with Kenneth Branagh and Peter Gabriel's soundtrack), David Cronenberg's Spider (with Ralph Fiennes) and Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's latest exploration into the laws of desire, Talk To Her.
The films are here. So are the pass holders and the guests. Now if only the weather will hold.