Tucked into the gorgeous mountain village of Telluride, Colorado, the Telluride Horror Show (telluridehorrorshow.com) captures an intimately local, if eerily secluded feeling. I had to fly to Denver, make a connecting flight to tiny Montrose Regional Airport, and then take an hour-and-a-half shuttle to finally reach the destination. The three-day event, this year’s seventh edition running from October 14-16, is held during the resort town’s tourist off-season. As a younger, smaller film fest, it has not yet receiving the deserved publicity that will inevitably and imminently turn it into another overwhelmingly crowded affair of the festival scene. Being able to actually talk with programmers and special guests (I actually rode the shuttle into Telluride with a guest speaker) is not something that can be said for, say, Sundance. Of course, watching something you realize you adore, before any studio has even picked it up for distribution, something that would not otherwise be consumed in its proper theatrical form, is always a pure and joyous feeling in itself.
The fest screens primarily independent horror but also includes all manner of genre film (sci-fi, thriller, etc.). The programming, which annually offers over twenty features and fifty shorts, has proven itself a force. Though it doesn’t show tons of world premiers like its big brothers, it gets to choose many acclaimed works that have garnered buzz around the genre circuit. Films come in with reputations, as you will see in my Raw review, the sort of thrilling and perverse reputations that can only accompany horror. The secret screenings that the festival holds on the final day bank on this anticipation, with many informed attendees hoping and guessing a film they’ve been hearing about will be included. Telluride is also an old west town straight out of the movies, full of historic buildings including the bank at which Butch Cassidy pulled his first heist. So you can imagine that walking back to my hotel alone after a late-night horror screening in such an atmosphere touched an unsettling nerve—a harmless burst of adrenaline that only added to the total experience.
Author Biography
Zach Villemez is a senior English Literature major at Hendrix College in Conway, AR. His undergraduate thesis is being written on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and he cries without fail upon every re-watch of Rocky.
Mentor Biography
Kristi McKim is an Associate Professor of English and Chair of Film Studies at Hendrix College, where she was awarded the Charles S. and Lucile Esmon Shivley Odyssey Professorship, honored as the 2014-15 United Methodist Exemplary Professor, and nominated for the CASE U.S. Professors of the Year Award. Her publications include the books Love in the Time of Cinema (2011) and Cinema as Weather: Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change (2013), in addition to pieces in Camera Obscura, Studies in French Cinema, Senses of Cinema, Film International, The Cine-Files, and Film-Philosophy.
Department Overview
Hendrix College offers a major in English with an emphasis in Film Studies and a minor in Film Studies. This growing program within an intimate and rigorous liberal arts college environment includes a variety of courses in the history and theory of film and media, alongside co-curricular experiences (such as this trip to the New York Film Festival) generously made possible through the Hendrix-Odyssey Program. Extracurricular film-related groups include Hendrix Film Society and Hendrix Filmmakers.
