The Telluride Mountainfilm festival began in 1979 as an opportunity for climbers and mountaineers to enjoy the rugged outdoors surrounding Telluride during the day and watch films about mountains and mountain cultures at night. It has evolved over the intervening decades to embrace a much wider and more diverse audience and our programming now stretches to the leading edges of contemporary social, cultural and environmental issues.

An orientation toward activism has increasingly defined the festival since the mid-90’s, a function of both a change in leadership as well as growing public appetite to better understand modern challenges and to help solve them.

Mountainfilm is a film festival, of course – bills themselves as America’s leading independent documentary film festival. But they’re much more.

In addition to screening leading independent documentary films from around the world, the festival includes a full-day symposium on a pressing contemporary issue such as energy (2007), water (2008), food (2009) and the extinction crisis (2010). In addition to films and speakers, the festival includes art exhibits, book signings, student workshops and a forum for other non-profit organizations aligned with Mountainfilm’s mission and programming.

THE 2012 SYMPOSIUM THEME IS POPULATION

Over and above these things, Mountainfilm is an assembly of people who have come together to see what the human spirit can achieve. The festival is a place for understanding how another human being’s struggle is also our own; a place for both asking impossible questions and explaining the previously unexplainable; a place to learn, be inspired and to celebrate indomitable spirit.