Mountainfilm in Telluride Staff Report Back On Stellar Films From Sundance

There is nothing quite like Sundance Film Festival, which darkened its theaters Sunday after 10 days of movie madness. Two representatives from Mountainfilm in Telluride — programmers David Holbrooke and Emily Long — went to Park City in search of films for the festival Telluride in May.

Of course, there were many stellar films at Sundance, but the trick for Mountainfilm is to find ones that are right for our eclectic festival. Some work perfectly, such as Chasing Ice, which features longtime Mountainfilm guest James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey (the film won a cinematography award for director Jeff Orlowski) or Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry about the namesake brilliant and brave Chinese artist. A few other films we really liked, but they would be a stretch for Mountainfilm's programming: Detropia, Finding North, The Other Dream Team and Queen of Versailles.

Sundance coincides with the beginning Mountainfilm's programming push, so it starts to get exciting now as we see what films and guests we can bring to Telluride this spring. We have a strong number of submissions already (remember that the regular deadline for submissions is this Friday, February 3), so we're confident that we'll present yet another outstanding slate of films and guests for Mountainfilm 2012.

If you were at Sundance, though, and have any recommendations for us, please comment below or . We weren't able see all Sundance had to offer — including the Grand Prize American Documentary The House We Live In by the extremely talented filmmaker Eugene Jarecki — and we always appreciate suggestions.