The Mountainfilm Prize: "Free the Slaves" (an organization associated with festival programming)

The Audience Award: "Red Gold"
Director: Ben Knight & Travis Rummel

The Charlie Fowler Award: "King Lines"
Director: Peter Mortimer

The Festival Director's Award: "Red Gold"
Director: Ben Knight & Travis Rummel

Aspiring Filmmaker's Award: "Throw Down Your Heart"
Director: Sascha Paladino

Kidz Kino Awards: "Best Nature Film: Once Upon a Tide"
Director: Gesine Kratzner and Drew Takahashi

Best Cartoon: "Cat Man Do"
Director: Simon Tofield

Funniest Film: "Sid"
Director: Jeff Scher

Best Cultural Film: "Shikashika"
Director: Stephen Hyde

Most Inspiring Film: "The King Of Telluride"
Director: Raphael Berrios, Isabel Marlens

AWARDS:

The Mountainfilm Prize - $5,000
This $5,000 cash prize goes to one of the nonprofits or real-life heroes featured in a film, presentation or gallery exhibit at this year’s festival. Because everyone deserves our appreciation and support, just being eligible for the Mountainfilm Prize entitles each of them to $300 cash.

If you’re moved by what you see in these Mountainfilm Prize nominees and want to increase the prize pool, grab your cellphone. Text to Give is a cutting-edge technology that allows you to contribute simply by texting 90999, keyword mtfilm. Each $5 contribution (feel free to text more than once) will go directly into the general prize pool and help bump the amount we can reward these worthy causes. If you don’t know how to text, ask a volunteer—preferably someone born after 1980.

Click here for a list of the amazing people and organizations who are eligible, and here for a list of the judges who will have the near-impossible job of deciding the winner.

The Audience Award - $1,000
Some distributors think the audience award is a much better harbinger of success for a film than a juried award. Please vote for the Audience Award (by secret ballot at the Closing Picnic and Awards Ceremony). Remember, voting helps ensure a productive and thriving democracy and, if nothing else, assists the filmmaker with a prize of $1,000.

The Charlie Fowler Award - $1,000
Charlie was a mainstay of Mountainfilm for many years, and while we miss him terribly, we find some comfort in knowing his presence is with us for this award. The judges will try their best to discern which mountaineering or climbing film Charlie would have liked most for this $1,000 prize.

Aspiring Filmmaker’s Award - $500
A panel of student filmmakers from Telluride and beyond decide this $500 prize, and Mountainfilm staff determines which films are eligible.

The Festival Director’s Award - $500
It’s unlikely any distributors care about this award. It’s totally arbitrary (and certainly not democratic), but at least it’s completely transparent. This $500 prize goes to a film that David Holbrooke has chosen from this year’s program.

Mountainfilm Prize Nominees

These eight nonprofit organizations—groups associated with programming in the festival this year—are nominated for the Mountainfilm Prize. Each organization will receive $300, and the grand prize winner collects $5,000.

Biodiesel America
(Fields of Fuel: film)

Eden Again
(Azzam Alwash: presentation)

Elephant Nature Park
(Losing the Elephants: film)

Free the Slaves
(Contemporary Slavery: presentation; Dreams Die Hard: film)

Glen Canyon Institute
(Drowning River: film & In Depth)

Grupo Cultural Baguncaco
(Alagados: film; gallery)

Tara Llanes Heart of a Champion Road to Recovery Fund
(Tara Llanes & Anne Keller: presentation; gallery)

Trout Unlimited
(Red Gold film)

2008 mountainfilm jury

The Mountainfilm Prize Jury
Adrian Belic

Adrian Belic began making films in elementary school with his brother Roko. The brothers’ first commercial documentary, Genghis Blues, was winner of the 1999 Sundance Audience Award, nominated for an Academy Award Nomination and, of course, a memorable hit at Mountainfilm. Adrian’s latest project—Beyond the Call, a feature documentary about three Americans who travel to the world’s war zones delivering lifesaving humanitarian aid—has won awards at festivals across the world, including Best of Festival at Mountainfilm 2006. We hope he brings his moustache to Mountainfilm this year.
Jeanmarie Condon

Jeanmarie Condon has made many award-winning documentaries for ABC News and is now a senior producer at Nightline. She believes documentary filmmakers "hold up a mirror to society, documenting its frustrations, exploring its faults, calling for justice, clarifying its present and preserving its sense of history." Of her work as a journalist, Jeanmarie says, “I do this work above all because I believe that it is our ability to empathize with one another that, even in our darkest hours, continues to save us." This is her first time attending Mountainfilm.
Susan Saint James

Susan Saint James has had a memorable film and television career (McMillan and Wife, Kate and Allie, Love at First Bite), but we know her here in Telluride more as a neighbor and good friend to Mountainfilm. We also know her as the mother of five great kids. Two of which, Charlie and Willie Ebersol, will show their second film—Don’t Look Down—at Mountainfilm this year.

The Charlie Fowler Award Jury
Brad Wieners

Brad Wieners is the editor of Men's Journal. He was formerly executive editor of National Geographic Adventure and senior editor at Outside. He is co-creator of two books: Burning Man and Reality Check: Here's the Real Future, a survey of technologies promised in popular culture. His travels have taken him to Alaska, Amsterdam, Arctic Norway, Argentina and a number of other regions that don't begin with the first letter of the alphabet. He lives with his family in Nyack, New York, and looks forward to rowing on the Hudson this summer.
Hilaree O'Neill

Hilaree O’Neill is a skiing and adventure globetrotter. As a ski mountaineer, she has climbed and skied in such places as India, Russia, China and Tibet, Mongolia, Alaska, Canada, the Isle of South Georgia, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. As a North Face athlete, she’s worked on adventure films with Warren Miller, NBC and the Outdoor Life Network. For the past seven years, when not traveling around the world, Hilaree has called Telluride home.
Majka Burhardt

Majka Burhardt is a writer, climber and guide who lives in Boulder, Colorado. Her latest book is Vertical Ethiopia: Climbing Toward Possibility in the Horn of Africa. Majka’s non-fiction writing has appeared in various magazines, including Men’s Health, Climbing, The Explorers Journal, Women’s Adventure and the Patagonia catalogue. She is currently finishing her first novel.

Best of Festival: “Edge of Eden: Living with Grizzlies”
Directed By: Jeff Turner

Mountain Culture Award: “Nine Winters Old”
Directed By: Bill Heath

Festival Director’s Pick: “Loop”
Directed By: Sjur Paulsen

Best Action Film: “Roam”
Directed By: The Collective

Best Climbing Film: “First Ascent”
Directed By: Peter Mortimer

Best Adventure Film: “Coast to Coast”
Directed By: Olivier Aubert

Spirit and Advocacy Award: “Our Life, Our Land”
Directed By: Beth & George Gage

Man and Nature Award: “Conflict Tiger”
Directed By: Sasha Snow

Spirit of Place Award: “Light at the Edge of the World: The Science of the Mind”

Cash Awards:

Manfrotto® Environmental Award: “Building the Future — Energy”
Directed By: Nicolas Brown

Finlandia® Natural Purity Award
Honoring the Best Film on River and Water Conservation:
“Exploring the Mother of Waters: Source to Sea on Mekong”
Directed By: Brian Eustis

The Charlie Fowler Climbing Film Award: “E11”
Directed By: Paul Diffley

Must-See Films:

Category: Indomitable Spirit:

“Row Hard No Excuses”
Directed By: Luke Wolbach

“Granny D Goes to Washington”
Directed By: Alidra Solday

“Crawl Walk Run”
Directed By: Tom Eldridge

“Conviction”
Directed By: Brenda Truelson Fox

Category: Wake-Up Call:

“Sharkwater”
Directed By: Rob Stewart

“Everything’s Cool”
Directed By: Daniel Gold, Judith Helfand, Chris Pilaro & Adam Wolfsohn

“A Crude Awakening”
Directed By: Basil Gelpke & Ray McCormack

Special Jury Award:

“God Grew Tired of Us”
Directed By: Christopher Quinn

& “Aerialist”
Directed By: Brad Lynch

Kidz Kino Awards:

Most Entertaining Nature Film:

“Ride of the Mergansers”
Directed By: Steve Furman

Best Animated Film:

“Badgered”
Directed By: Sharon Colman
Best Photography in a Nature Film:

“Safari”
Directed By: Catherine Chalmers

Kids choice award:

“Rita”
Directed By: Alison Blehert-Koehn

Student Rendezvous Program Award: “Hard As Nails”
Directed By: David Holbrooke

People’s Choice Award: “Our Life, Our Land”
Directed By: Beth & George Gage

(Tied for second were “Running Down the Man” and “Loop”)

Awards Artist

The award artist for Mountainfilm 2007 is Richard Arnold. He has created bas-releif in bronze of the Eiger summit with two climbers on top adapted from a photograph by festival gallery artist Thomas Ulrich. Richard lives in Telluride and is a climber, ski instructor, flyfisherman and sculptor. His work can be viewed at www.arnoldtelluridestudio.com

The Charlie Fowler Climbing Film Award

Based on an idea by Charlie’s sister Ginny and her husband Maurie, Mountainfilm in Telluride is honored to announce the establishment of an annual Charlie Fowler Climbing Film Award. The cash award of $1,000 will be initiated at the 2007 Festival and will be announced by Charlie’s sister at the Closing Picnic & Awards Ceremony at Telluride Town Park on May 28, 2007. The goal is to make the award self-sustaining for as long as Mountainfilm projectors roll, supported wholly through accrued donations. The film selected to receive the award would express a love for documenting remote exploration and climbing, exhibit an adventurous flair for filmmaking, and would include but not be limited to either first ascent attempts or a strong cultural thread throughout the piece. The hope is that the award will afford the winning filmmaker the opportunity to continue making climbing films, a cinematic genre that Charlie was very much a part of, either as the main talent or simply as part of the crew.