Kim Morgan and Guy Maddin to Bring Cool to Telluride as 2014 Guest Directors

Writer and artist Kim Morgan and filmmaker Guy Maddin will be a husband and wife programming team as Guest Directors for this year’s Telluride Film Fest.  Their tastes are jointly intriguing, thus their choices should be unpredictable and something to look forward to. Morgan writes brilliant film essays at Sunset Gun, and takes breathtaking photos and self-portraits that she posts on Flickr and occasionally Facebook.  Together with Maddin she is now collaborating on filmmaking, something she seemed kind of destined for (if you ask me). Her photos are so cinematic – she has her own film language already and not much farther to go to become a vital voice in film in her own right.  Maddin, too, is an artistic force to be reckoned with. All in all, this should be a Telluride to remember.

Press release after the jump.

41st TELLURIDE FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES

2014 GUEST DIRECTORS GUY MADDIN AND KIM MORGAN
June 18, 2014

BERKELEY, CA – Telluride Film Festival, presented by National Film Preserve LTD., is thrilled to announce its 2014 Guest Directors, Guy Maddin and Kim Morgan. The husband and wife team is set to select a series of films to present at the 41st Telluride Film Festival running over Labor Day Weekend, August 29 – September 1, 2014. The Guest Director program is sponsored by Audible.com.

Festival organizers annually select one of the world’s great film enthusiasts to join them in the creation of the Festival’s program lineup. The Guest Director serves as a key collaborator in the Festival’s programming decisions, bringing new ideas and overlooked films to Telluride. In keeping with Telluride Film Festival tradition, Maddin and Morgan’s film selections, along with the rest of the Telluride lineup will be kept secret and unveiled on Opening Day, August 29, 2014.

“Guy and Kim have long been a part of Telluride,” said Telluride Film Festival executive director Julie Huntsinger. “There was no question that they were the perfect choice for this year’s Festival. Their energy, knowledge and enthusiasm is a winning combination – our audience will benefit from that when their selections are unveiled at the Festival!”

Guy Maddin is an installation artist, writer and filmmaker, the director of ten feature-length movies, including My Winnipeg (2007), The Saddest Music in the World (2003), and innumerable shorts. He has also mounted around the world over seventy performances of his films featuring live elements – orchestra, sound effects, singing and narration.

Twice he has won America’s National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Experimental Film, with Archangel (1991) and The Heart of the World (2001). He has been bestowed many other awards, including the Telluride Silver Medallion in 1995, San Francisco International Film Festival’s Persistence of Vision Award in 2006, and an Emmy for his ballet film Dracula – Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002). Maddin is a print journalist and author of three books.

Kim Morgan is a film, music and culture writer who has written for Salon, GQ, LA Weekly, Criterion, MSN Movies, Huffington Post, IFC, Entertainment Weekly, The Dissolve, Playboy, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Garage Magazine.

Morgan has presented movies and moderated interviews for the Los Angeles Film Noir Festival and the Palm Springs Noir Festival. She has guest programmed for TCM and recently presented two films for Telluride Film Festival.

Morgan has worked with Maddin on several occasions appearing in his short films, or “Hauntings” with Udo Kier. They collaborated together on the short, “Bing & Bela” and their upcoming series “Seances” will move to MOMA in 2014.

“We are honored and thrilled to be guest directors at Telluride, by far the most concentrated, smartly curated, and enchanting of all the film festivals,” Guy Maddin and Kim Morgan commented jointly. “More than any other festival, Telluride is driven by the sheer love of cinema — discovering new talents, honoring titans and unearthing neglected masterworks and geniuses. The opportunity to share our favorite films with Telluride and its always-discerning audience is not only exciting but an absorbing, wonderful challenge. There are so many movies we love, and to program a selection of six… where to begin? We really wanted to show those masterpieces we felt hadn’t been revived enough, if ever, and to see them as they were meant to be seen — on the big screen. We can’t wait to watch!”

Past Guest Directors include Caetano Veloso, Michael Ondaatje, Alexander Payne, Salman Rushdie, Peter Bogdanovich, B. Ruby Rich, Phillip Lopate, Errol Morris, Bertrand Tavernier, John Boorman, John Simon, Buck Henry, Laurie Anderson, Stephen Sondheim, G. Cabrera Infante, Peter Sellars, Don DeLillo, J.P. Gorin, Edith Kramer and Slavoj Zizek.

41st Festival passes are now available at www.telluridefilmfestival.org.

About Telluride Film Festival

The prestigious Telluride Film Festival ranks among the world’s best film festivals and is an annual gathering for film industry insiders, cinema enthusiasts, filmmakers and critics. TFF is considered a major launching ground for the fall season’s most talked-about films. Founded in 1974, Telluride Film Festival, presented in the beautiful mountain town of Telluride, Colorado, is a four-day international educational event celebrating the art of film. Telluride Film Festival’s long-standing commitment is to join filmmakers and film connoisseurs together to experience great cinema. The exciting schedule, kept secret until Opening Day, consists of over two dozen filmmakers presenting their newest works, special Guest Director programs, three major Tributes to guest artists, special events and remarkable treasures from the past. Telluride Film Festival is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit educational program. Festival headquarters are in Berkeley, CA.