WELCOME TO MOUNTAINFILM’S 45TH FESTIVAL

As North America’s oldest, continuously running, documentary film festival, we are thrilled to be celebrating 45 years of film, activism and inspiration. It’s been a long road for the festival as we have come of age and over the years, continue to discover and honor our larger purpose.

Mountainfilm was founded in 1979 by a group of scrappy climbers and mountaineers who adventured by day and watched films — often about themselves — by night. Through the decades, the festival has expanded and enriched its programming to showcase documentary films and presentations focusing on the environment, social justice, culture, politics and as always, pure adventure — tied together with the common thread of celebrating indomitable spirit.

This year we are dedicating the festival to beloved, long-time Telluride local, mother, activist, adventurer and Mountainfilm’s 2021 Guest Director, Hilaree Nelson. In addition to being an accomplished mountaineer with dozens of first ski-descents, she was also a hero, mentor and role model to adventurers around the world and a trailblazer for women. Hilaree was an inspiration to us all. Her kind soul and spirit will remain in our hearts forever.

Mountainfilm continues its mission of engaging audiences in important discussions about cutting-edge topics that encourage reflection and directly impact our lives. Throughout the festival, we’ll spotlight forward-thinking visionaries — in film, art, activism, science and technology — and explore a future that leans on creative, out-ofthe-box solutions for the big issues and demanding questions of our day.

We extend our deepest gratitude to the many people in the Telluride region who have nurtured Mountainfilm over the past 45 years and helped create the festival it has grown to be.

Here’s to another 45 years!

THE MOUNTAINFILM STAFF

Sponsors

PRESENTING SPONSOR

SUMMIT SPONSORS

NONPROFIT PARTNER

NATIONAL MEDIA SPONSOR

CAMP III SPONSORS

CAMP II SPONSORS VENTUREWEB

Camp I Sponsors

ELINOFF GALLERY • ALPINIST & THE GOAT

• ALPINE BANK

• CHUMS

BASE CAMP SPONSORS

LMNT • BASIN ELECTRIC POWER COOPERATIVE

• SAN MIGUEL POWER ASSOCIATION

• SAN MIGUEL COUNTY • THE NATURE CONSERVANCY TELLURIDE ACADEMY • WESTERN RISE

• JUST FOR KIDS FOUNDATION • COLORADO OFFICE OF FILM, TELEVISION AND MEDIA • LA COCINA DE LUZ MOUNTAIN LIMO • BROWN DOG PIZZA • SMART BY NATURE • ALPACKA RAFT • EDWARD JONES INVESTMENTS, JON MARTIN IN TELLURIDE

CARLSON CUSTOMS

• BOD BAR

• ALPINE START

DIRTY STURDY’S MOUNTAIN COMPOST

• MOUNTAIN TRIP

• TAILWIND NUTRITION • SEND BARS

• LIQUID DEATH • KINSHIP SUNSCREEN • KARA DUFFY / POWERFUL LADIES

SHĀR SNACKS • THE RIDE LOUNGE • LAST DOLLAR SALOON

Welcome to this year’s Mountainfilm Festival. What a privilege it is for us to gather amidst this beauty. It’s a privilege we can earn only with the kind of good work and storytelling that might open up hearts and minds to the crises we face, and lead to action in the time we have.

If I don’t speak with absolute confidence, it’s because we’re currently losing the climate fight. Around the world we see wild and unprecedented heatwaves, and rainfall and floods like we’ve never measured before; these are the predictable results of changing the temperature of the Earth. Physics sets the bar for the change we need to make, and physics doesn’t compromise, so it is our species that must bend — and must do it against a tight and unforgiving deadline.

If we’re to make changes like that, it will require not just understanding the crisis, but feeling the possibilities — the possibility for a new world that runs on sun and wind, but also the possibility for a new world that runs on justice and solidarity. These are no longer luxuries; they are the necessary preconditions for survival. This means that just as much as we need new engines and appliances, we need new metaphors and images, new stories that open up new possibilities.

Let us take our work together with a seriousness we’ve never felt before; the world demands nothing less of us. And in turn, it rewards us with natural beauty and human fellowship!

McKibben founded the first global grassroots climate campaign 350.org , which in recent years has focused on getting institutions of higher education to divest from fossil fuels. He is a contributing writer to The New Yorker and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. His most recent project is Th!rd Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice. In 2014 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament. He’s also won the Gandhi Peace Award, and has honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities.

McKibben currently lives in Vermont and has long been a Mountainfilm hero and inspiration.

On Sept. 26, Nelson and her life and climbing partner, Jim Morrison, summited Mt. Manaslu in the Himalaya, the world’s eighth-highest peak. During her ski descent, Nelson was swept off her feet by moving snow, resulting in a fatal fall down the south face of Manaslu.

Nelson was a hero, mentor and role model to adventurers around the world and a true trailblazer. Her career encompassed dozens of first descents through more than 40 expeditions to 16 different countries. She is regarded as the most prolific ski mountaineer of her generation. Her accomplishments were many, including team captain at The North Face; the first woman to link two 8,000-meter peaks, Everest and Lhotse, in one 24-hour push; and being named the 2018 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.

Nelson was an inspiration to the Mountainfilm community and was the embodiment of indomitable spirit. Over the years she participated in festival panel discussions and was the subject of films that documented her most challenging expeditions, including her first ski descent of the iconic Lhotse Couloir and a grueling and audacious trip to Myanmar’s little-known peak Hkakabo Razi. In 2021 she was Mountainfilm’s Guest Director, helping to guide programming and events.

As a Telluride resident for two decades, the San Juan Mountains were Nelson’s home playground. Around town she was known not just as an elite mountain athlete, but as a mom to two boys and a dedicated friend. Nelson was also an activist as a member of Protect Our Winters Riders Alliance, sharing her stories and experiences to advocate for wild places.

Nelson’s light will continue to be a shining beacon of optimism in the face of adversity, showing us what endless possibility looks like and guiding us through the vastness of the mountains.