Original Thinkers Returns to Telluride

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Original thinking always exists within context. Visionaries are not created in a vacuum, but in conjunction with other creatives. Authenticity is by definition vested in it being recognized as authoritative and real within a larger culture.

It is through the communal approach to originality that the 7^th Annual Original Thinkers Festival returns to Telluride. A multimedia event begun by David Holbrooke in 2018, the festival is a celebration of ideas and idea makers, where unique and genuine stories are told through a variety of mediums (with a focus on film, speech and art).

Set amidst the transformational shift of Telluride’s color changing aspens, each fall the festival provides a varied and rich lens of the human experience. This year’s festival carries that humanity at the center of its mission, focusing heavily on documentary film-making.

In a year of dramatic news cycles and elections, inflammatory politics could easily become a focal point of the festival. Holbrooke, however, asserts that “one of the early and intentional decisions [he] made was to not do politics.” That’s not to say the films he and his team have curated aren’t without political and social gravity, but that they shy away from being sensational. Education is first and foremost.

Holbrooke highlight’s “Counted Out” on a recent interview on KOTO Telluride. A film by Vicki Abeles which brings into focus our world’s growing reliance on mathematics, the film centers the argument that knowledge is power. In an age of algorithms, math literacy impacts our awareness of how the world works with decidedly broad social ramifications.

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Equally cogent to the informational backbone of our thinking is literature. Two films at the festival highlight the importance of books in different yet equally relevant contexts. “To Be Destroyed” tackles book banning, the polarizing national trend that has consolidated the control of knowledge in states nationwide. The documentary “Stories and Pictures By” offers a complimentary experience, highlighting the impact books like Goodnight Moon and the Very Hungry Caterpillar have on children’s ideas of identity.

There is also “An Extraordinary Place,” a film about a small Maine radio station and the importance of curation and voice, where the power of taste is allowed to proliferate in a sea of algorithms and corporate interest.

“Join or Die” echoes Holbrooke’s ethos of “civic engagement,” being a film not about politics, but more about the necessity of political engagement itself. A call to arms for community, for neighborliness. And “The Cranes Call” takes a politically sensitive subject like Ukraine, and transforms the narrative into an enticing true crime thriller.

The speakers and other programming are equally diverse. Musician Pete Muller will perform AND lecture on mathematics, while speaker Besty Gaines Quammen will explore the cult of the American West, deconstructing much of the religious mythologizing that permeates many people’s understanding of this area of the country.

And this is hardly exhaustive, with essays on artistic freedom, prison reform, and the statistics of being human on the schedule. The ideas are varied, but the vision is unified. The experience is meant to broaden the minds and hearts of the attendees, engendering positive change across the spectrum. As the vision of the festival asserts, “society is ready for change, it just takes Original Thinkers.”

Original Thinkers is from October 3rd-6th in Telluride, Colorado.

www.originalthinkers.com