Aspen (c91) News

‘SEE THE STORY, AND KNOW IT’

Aspen Filmfest Returns for 28th Year

By David Frey, 9-28-06

We begin soaring over the Arafura Swamp, a vast wetlands in Australia’s Northern Territory. Soon we hover just inches over the water, as if we are in one of the canoes of the Yolngu people depicted in this unusual film, “Ten Canoes.”

“Once upon a time in a land far away …” begins narrator David Gulpilil, Then he laughs. “No, not like that. But I am going to tell you a story.”

Directed by Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr, the film presents an Aboriginal tale mixing Western film techniques and Aboriginal storytelling techniques, hopping back and forth between black-and-white real time and technicolor Dreamtime. “Then you can see the story, and know it,” Gulpilil says, as we wind through a labyrinth of trees that rise above the swamp.

So begins the 28th Annual Aspen Filmfest, a much-anticipated celebration of film that returns to Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley each year. If it lacks the star-power of Sundance or the Telluride Film Festival, it never lacks for quality. Offering a mix of commercial films, documentaries and often offbeat foreign flicks, Filmfest has a tradition of turning the silver screen to gold.

It usually packs a little star power, too. This year, screen icon Harrison Ford wins the Independent By Nature Award Saturday at the Wheeler Opera House. He appears in conversation with talk show pioneer Dick Cavett.

But the real winners are the audiences who armchair travel, popcorn in hand, from western Colorado’s Roan Plateau to Sudan to Afghanistan. They get “Driving Lessons” with “Harry Potter” star Rupert Grint, take in “Jesus Camp” and walk in the color of Aboriginal Dreamtime.

“It is a good story,” Gulpilil tells us. “Not like your story. But a story just the same.”

They’re good words to keep in mind for most Filmfest fare. Not like most movies, maybe, but good stories just the same.

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