On Friday evening, September 21, the jazz band Equal Time played on a short riser at the top of tiny little Chestnut Street in Portsmouth. Recently closed off to auto traffic for pedestrians only, and spiffied up nicely with colorful banners and parallel rows of verdant, oversized planters, the area overflowed with passholders onto and down Congress street in both directions. On The Music Halls old marquee, above the crowded, chatting bustle of the admission lines for the first show of the weekend, a flag reading simply “Telluride by the Sea” snapped about lazily in a warm late fall breeze. It may as well have just read “Welcome”. It was opening night.

As the floodgates opened, and the passholders filed in and up the stairs, the excitement was palpable. Friends greeted each other as they took their seats, hands were shaken and hugs were shared over spilling popcorn and drinks. Everybody was looking forward to a whole weekend together, eating, drinking, watching and talking film. Most of this community have come to know through the events eight  previous years that all the six films programmed would probably not click with everybody. From some of the best filmmakers at work in the world today, Telluride films tend toward the intellectually and emotionally challenging. Some are downright exasperating, in fact, but it would seem that that’s half the fun. These movies have barely been screened anywhere before on the planet – three of them premiered in Cannes only months prior, three others just celebrated their world premieres earlier in the month in Colorado. None have seen domestic distribution, so reviews are limited at best. With little to no prior information available and virtually free from the usual hype and ballyhoo of Hollywood’s marketing machines, the Telluride by the Sea audience is left to its own devices – to like or dislike on their own terms. This is a rare treat these days, like fresh fall apples hand picked from the tree, opportunities like this don’t come to the seacoast every day.

The event itself has evolved into a fairly well oiled machine. The projection is always immaculate. The shows start right on time (mostly). By this point, most of the audience has attended a few times, and know the difference between a pass and a ticket (passholders get in first – the Patron Pass really is the best way to go). They know which lines to stand in, and are well trained to immediately evacuate the theater between showings, even though many don’t see the sense of it. Regarding the organization and operation of the event, Chris Curtis, The Music Hall’s film manager and producer of Telluride by the Sea said simply, “I’m happy.”

As tradition would dictate, each film is introduced by a Music Hall spokesperson. Opening night featured event founder/programmer Bill Pence, sharing anecdotes from the Colorado Festival (related to him though his friends there – since his retirement from the Telluride Film Festival last year, he has not returned to Colorado), and admitting contritely that he, like the rest of the us, has not actually seen any of the movies he’s programmed this year. With a playful grin, he adds, “We’ll see if it makes a difference.”

Following shows put a line up of familiar Music Hall personalities before each film – Executive Director Patricia Lynch, former and current Board presidents Gail Carolyn Van Hoy and Mike Harvell, board member Dan Swartz, Marketing director Kathleen Soldati and, of course, event coordinator Chris Curtis.  Calling out a virtually identical list of sponsors and upcoming movie related Music Hall events each time, the rap wore noticeably thin enough through the course of the weekend (if talking and feet shuffling among the crowd can be any indication) that even the announcers looked noticeably weary of it all by the end.

Another interesting trend, all but Pence and Harvell seemed to make deliberate efforts to avoid actually speaking about the films they were introducing. Although this may be well within the Telluride non-spoiler spirit, some of the films could probably have used some contextualization going in. Saturday evening’s sprawling and surreal pseudo Bob-Dylan biopic, ironically (perhaps pretentiously) titled “I’m Not There ” (there was no character in the movie, as it happens, named Bob Dylan) was probably the most apparent casualty. Many folks, confounded by the films logical leap-frogging, walked out frustrated and confused. Many stuck it out, but most commented that they felt there was little reward for their stalwartitude.

“Im Not There,” aside, however, the audience seemed to respect everything else – even if they didn’t like it. Noah Baumbach’s “Margot at the Wedding ” left people a little blistered, but the acting was so good, and the characters so honed that most seemed ready to forgive that the story went mostly nowhere, and made them all hate everybody on screen. “Persepolis” was a stunning surprise for a low budget foreign animation – cartoony though it was, it unspooled as a touching and teaching memoir of one Middle Eastern girls’ journey to adulthood amid that area's considerable political upheaval of the 80’s and 90’s. Though most of the audience seemed familiar with the book “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” - or at least aware that it revolved around one mans struggle after a paralyzing stroke in his forties to dictate an account of his experience before he passed by blinking his one functional eye - could never have prepared them for the depths of humor, intelligence and heart of the film. Everyone agreed that Sean Penn proved his directorial chops, as if he hadn’t already, with his new feature “Into the Wild ,” a dramatic, tragic but ultimately inspirational depiction of the true story of Chris McCandless, a twenty-something intellectual and latter-day Thoreau in the early 90’s who threw a defiant finger up to his family, school, money and society in general, to travel our good continent on foot, eventually at his own peril. After the final, and arguably sweetest, film of the weekend “The Bands Visit” an audience member was overheard stating, “I just love a movie where nothing happens.” It could be assumed, that the humor of the proclamation aside, what they meant to say was “Isn’t it great that a movie can be so affecting without any big Hollywood stars, epic set pieces or bloated special effects.” Amen.

The audience seemed to feel the absence of the little surprises that often pop up – there are usually a few short films before the features, but not this year. Sometimes The Music Hall will drop a previously unannounced “secret seventh” title on Sunday afternoon, but that shoe never dropped either. That said, by all accounts, the parties – drinks and snacks at Radici on opening night, then again at the Portsmouth Brewery after the last film, and a Patron only Brunch on Sunday morning – were all well attended and gave rise to some rousing conversation.

Going in, we are generally meant to know that the films presented are not picked to describe any one specific theme. As cinematic fate would seem to have it, however, the commonly shared currents of world events and culture can often cause creative riptides among filmmakers that are otherwise completely unrelated. It may cause some degree of concern, then, that the visionaries presented at this Telluride by the Sea all seemed to focus so universally on personal and emotional isolation and the loss of youth and childhood (and often, apparently, actual children). The films were all populated by characters (from Sean Penn’s runaway, to “Diving Bell’s” hospitalized lock-in, to Baumbach’s self destructive literati, to the lost Band of “Visit”) who were struggling either to actively disengage from their respective societies or mourning their forced disconnection. Overall, though the subjects on hand were as heavy as any previous Telluride, there were plenty of laughs among the tears, and more of those than most years. So let’s all raise a glass to Bill Pence (turns out, watching the movies ahead of time might actually be a liability after all) and to The Music Hall and her audience for another extraordinary weekend celebration of cinema. Here’s looking forward to The Music Hall’s winter selections, and to next season’s Telluride by The Sea! Cheers!

Read the reviews here:

Margot at the Wedding

I'm Not There 

Into The Wild