Breaking Baz at Telluride: ‘Moonlight’ Oscar Winner Barry Jenkins Celebrates 50 Years Of The Festival & How He Started Out As A Telluride Dog!
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: The Telluride Film Festival, held in an old mining town high up in a picturesque alpine valley in the Rockies, marks its 50th anniversary this week, and Oscar-winning Moonlight filmmaker Barry Jenkins undoubtedly is one of its favorite sons.
He’ll be making the trek to the mountains as he did for the first time in 2002 as a student from Florida State film school. The festival has a student symposium where novice filmmakers can meet and engage with professionals over the Labor Day weekend. “There is no red carpet, there are no frills,” the director told me. “If you see a filmmaker in line for a cup of coffee, speak to them.
They actually want to be engaged. That’s why filmmakers come over and over again, year after year.” Jenkins obviously wasn’t around Telluride in the ’70s, but he acknowledges that he has heard that “socioeconomically, it was a bit different than it is now.
It was still probably a very difficult place to get to, but there was a democratization of life once you got there.” That vibe continues, he said.
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