'Pirate': Greenpeace is for pansies

Paul Watson, the focus of the new Telluride Film Festival documentary "Pirate for the Sea," is a lifelong environmentalist, having started rescuing beavers when he was 10 years old. But as Watson (far left) grew up with and in the environmental movement, he came to believe that organizations such as Greenpeace were more interested in raising money than saving animals.  So Watson steered his boat between the hunters and the hunted.

"Pirate for the Sea" director Ron Colby (right), having worked with Francis Ford Coppola for years and having credits on "The Outsiders" and "One From the Heart," tried to turn Watson's life story into a feature film. When he couldn't get the dramatic movie going, he decided to make a documentary, following Watson and the crew of his ship, the Farley Mowat, as they tried to protect seals from Canadian clubs and whales from Japanese harpoons.

Unlike the observe-and-legislate environmentalists he detests (he calls Greenpeace "the Avon ladies of the environmental movement), Watson believes in direct intervention, including scuttling fishing ships, fouling the propellers of whalers and hauling up other fishermen's nets. As the "Never Cry Wolf" nature writer Mowat says in the film, which is as much hagiography as biography, "This is a guy who never fully grew up."

But his cause played well in the Telluride, which despite the $20-million estates is relatively eco-friendly. Even if Watson and Colby don't leave the festival with an immediate domestic distribution deal, they are likely to attract from the festival's guests many new contributors.

--John Horn

(Photo courtesy Telluride Film Festival)

Telluride: The quiet Americans

The Telluride Film Festival doesn't have the word "international" in its title, but considering how few home-grown films are showing at this weekend's gathering, it wouldn't be a bad idea to add some sort of worldly adjective to the festival's official name.

Of the 18 new feature-length dramas showing in the festival's 35th annual installment, only two new films -- "Adam Resurrected" and "American Violet" -- are clearly American-made, but director Paul Schrader's "Adam" was partially financed by foreign producers and filmed in Germany, Romania and Israel. Between the two films added to the Telluride schedule as sneak previews, Marc Abrahams' "Flash of Genius" is a pure studio film, but while Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire" will be distributed by Fox Searchlight, it was financed by the English and the French and shot in India.

"Some years we have a lot of foreign films, and some years we don't," says festival co-director Tom Luddy, who says it's not an intentional slight this year.

But the near complete absence of American movies in this Colorado mountain hamlet may underscore a more worrisome trend: that some of the highest-quality movies are being made far from American soil. Among the best-received Telluride titles are "I've Loved You So Long," a French drama about estranged sisters starring Kristin Scott Thomas (top); and "Gomorrah," an Italian crime story set in the world of toxic waste disposal and garment manufacturing that stars Salvatore Cantalupo (left).

There are so many distinctive movies being made overseas, in fact, that Sony Pictures Classics, which is distributing "I've Loved You So Long" in late October, isn't sure its film will be France's official submission for the foreign-language Oscar next year. "They just have too many great films," Sony's Michael Barker says. It's something that can't currently be said of the United States.

--John Horn

Photos courtesy Telluride Film Festival

Telluride: Where tiny is big

Good film festivals are always going to feature movies so small and personal that they are unlikely to grab the attention of a prominent distributor. The makers of "Helen" are proud of their film's deliberate pacing and spare exposition, but know that the very elements that brought the British film to the attention of the Telluride Film Festival are also the same attributes that may scare off a buyer. "It's a real risk," says Joe Lawlor, who co-directed the film with his wife, Christine Molloy. "It's not going to work for half the people."

In fact, it didn't appear to work for everybody at the film's first showing in Telluride, with one festival guest wondering out loud as she left the theater if the projectionist had shown "Helen" at the wrong speed. But as the 2006 Sundance title "Old Joy" proved, patient filmmaking still has its admirers; that virtually narrative-free movie about two friends on a hike may not have sold many tickets, but it did generate some strong reviews.

"Helen," a story about an orphaned teen who is enlisted to appear in a police reenactment about another missing young girl, is populated almost entirely with non-professional actors. Anyone who shows up to be in their films, Lawlor and Molloy say, gets to act. "We've made a vow never to say no one to anyone," Lawlor says.

Working with a budget of less than $500,000 and only two weeks of shooting, the filmmakers say they were forced to use many long takes because multiple camera set-ups and edits are too expensive. "One of the challenges of a film like this is that it can be boring because we can't afford cuts," Lawlor says.

But as several dozen enthusiastic Telluride fans who stuck around to discuss "Helen" proved, one film's obstacles may lead to its distinction; "Helen" already has appeared at festivals in Sydney and Edinburgh. Maybe a small American distributor will decide that tiny isn't necessarily a negative.

--John Horn

Telluride: No swap meet; 'Adam Resurrected,' 'American Violet' to debut

The Telluride Film Festival prides itself on attracting far more movie lovers than Hollywood sales agents and acquisitions executives (not that the latter don't love movies, but in a different, less authentic way).

This year's Telluride lineup does not threaten to overturn that historical trend, and indeed many of the top sellers and buyers are nowhere in sight as the festival opens Friday night.

American distributors say the Telluride slate does not at first glance appear to carry any movies capable of meeting the ever-escalating box-office threshold for specialized films; buyers such as Miramax and Fox Searchlight aren't really interested in movies that might gross less than $10 million.

But representatives from smaller distributors are targeting several new films that will enjoy their first showings in Telluride.

Those include "Adam Resurrected," which stars Jeff Goldblum as a concentration camp survivor; "American Violet," a fact-based drama about a single mother swept up in a drug raid who says she's innocent; and "Pirate for the Sea," a documentary about environmental activist Paul Watson.

Those Telluride films here that already have distribution are largely being handled by smaller companies; Sony Pictures Classics and IFC Films combined previously bought more than half a dozen movies here.

-- John Horn

Previously:

Another "Juno" for Telluride Film Festival?

Telluride Film Festival 2008 (PHOTOS)

Film festival bombs & bargains (PHOTOS)

Photo: Looking down Telluride's Main Street. Credit: Woods Wheatcroft