telluride film festival retrospective

i have taken up (pen and paper) journalling recently, and, as such, have a series of short passages written at the 2025 telluride film festival that i have now chosen to transcribe. enjoy!

Shifty

A transitional Britain copes with the loss of industry. The absence of any omniscient narration and limited text make render any inclusions notable and raise questions about the politics of the director/narrator. Timely for American audiences, Shifty is a harsh reminder that a politics of austerity and mass privatization is invariably disastrous for the social fabric of a nation and the material wellbeing of a people. Colorful, funny, and devastating. I am once again asking myself: Is this the best thing ever or is the footage just old? I hope to see this start-to-end in the future (only caught ~2.5 hours); I hope I don't need to get fucking BritBox...

The Cycle of Love

Beautiful and happy and optimistic! Excited to be the first Letterboxd log. I was very skeptical for the first half, and this made me question why I felt that way. Perhaps I have become jaded and have lost touch with the better parts of human nature which is a shame because an intrinsic good is something I believe in deeply. It is nice to be reminded, as well, that most of the limitations I place on myself are, in fact, self-inflicted. Sartre was probably right that in some senses freedom is a condemnation, but is also euphoric–or it least it can be. Oh how I do adore being young and free and in love.

On Bad Faith

I am embarrassed to admit that Sartre and de Beauvoir have begun to consume my mind. Wherever I look, I find bad faith. I think there are many reasons that I was initially skeptical of The Cycle of Love and I think one of those reasons is that it offers a profound example of what refusing to operate in bad faith looks like. I think many (most? all?) contemporary political trends can be explained within the bad faith paradigm. I think bad faith is the impulse that underlies the global turn towards right wing authoritarianism. I also think that it is probably generally helpful to see things like The Cycle of Love that explore the real possibilities that can be available to those who turn from bad faith and choose to live authentically.

I feel compelled to talk to strangers and buy Greyhound bus tickets and dunk my body in the freezing snowmelt waters of a high mountain stream. I hope that my own tendencies don't led me to an inauthentic life directly or by means of self-destruction.

A Private Life

Not the strongest script, but I did really love the twist that she's just super bad at her job.

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

I can never be a mom. I am too fundamentally bad as a person, and I will be unable to control the damage I'd inflict upon my child and myself. Wonderful film, Rose Byrne should get a nod (Jessie Buckley win 5ever though).

On the Colorado Mountain Town

Culture in small mountain town Colorado feels manufactured in a way that I don't often sense so potently elsewhere. I think this is not because the culture here is, in fact, more consciously determined than other places but due to the people who live here. People move to Telluride to realize an ideal of what the rural mountain town means to them. Because these are such small communities, and because their draw is so powerful, a significant enough portion of the population are transplants who moved here motivated by this ideal that the community inevitably shapes itself in its image. Thus, the constructed nature of the culture is more visible.

Culture develops via the same mechanisms regardless of place, and there is value in the kinds of places whose very essence renders these forces apparent.