OT 2024 Festival
October 3-6
the films
Counted out
So much of our world these days is controlled by algorithms, making our relationship with math more important than ever. Counted Out delves into this phenomenon by weaving several compelling personal narratives with a cogent explanation of how numbers impact our everyday lives in a myriad of ways we see and don’t see. Director Vicki Abeles has stitched together an eye-opening and unexpectedly human story that shows us how we need to make sure our math literacy is strong enough to navigate a rapidly changing world.
TO BE DESTROYED
Book banning has become prevalent across the country in politically conservative areas, evoking totalitarian societies who fear the ideas offered in books. This smart short documentary focused on Rapid City, South Dakota and its school district where five novels were taken off library shelves and put in boxes, labeled “to be destroyed". One of those books is The Circle by acclaimed novelist Dave Eggers who decides to go to Rapid City to talk with librarians who are now in the cross-hairs of angry parents as well as with the students who are just trying to get through high school.
STORIES AND PICTURES BY
Who doesn’t remember Goodnight Moon with fondness and familiarity? Or Hungry Caterpillar or any number of other wonderful and evocative picture books? This charming and entertaining feature documentary tells the fascinating story of these magical creations while profiling current authors in this unusual field who want to help children understand some of the mysteries of the world. What the film also accomplishes is a deeper understanding of how important this work is in helping young children see themselves and understand their own identity as they are emerging into a bigger world.
THE CRANES CALL
This gripping film is a true crime thriller that follows the indefatigable efforts of two incredibly brave women who work for the Clooney Foundation for Justice as they work to track down Ukrainian survivors who endured horrific acts of violence committed by Russian forces during their invasion. It is hard - almost impossible - work, yet the investigators are deeply determined to hold the men who raped, tortured and murdered so many innocent civilians to justice. By documenting these human rights abuses and war crimes now, the process begins of making sure the perpetrators pay for their heinous acts. Worth noting in this compelling story is the filmmaking itself, beautifully cinematic in a way that you cannot look away from what you are watching.
the people
Math is not an obvious subject for a documentary but filmmaker Vicky Abeles knew that it had potential to be a powerful story. As she shows in the film Counted Out numbers matter but not for the reasons we expect as she explains. "I uncovered a movement of scholars, activists, and educators who also see math as more than an academic subject. For them, math is a tool for understanding and harnessing the beauty, wonder, and possibility of the world we live in. And our lack of access to that tool is, in their view, the critical civil rights issue of our time.”
Inspired by Telluride’s Deep Creek Mine, artist Beverly Crilly’s painting Evoke is the stunning image in the poster for this year’s festival. After several visits to the decommissioned limestone mine that has morphed into a subterranean site for art, she created a show called Making Meaning Mine. As she writes so thoughtfully, "Often it feels I find my work in the world around me, the aged, chipped paint on a factory door, the lichen on a boulder, textured stones, shaped rocks, the play of shadows and light. That summer day, exiting the mine and seeing that treasure was an affirmation- that the beauty exists and it is ours to see. In this show, I am holding onto and sharing the beauty and meaning found as I emerged into the sun from the impossibly dark, vast, softness of the mine. Acknowledging the beauty and meaning that is always there when we can attune to feel it.”
China is a wildly complicated place to understand, which is why author Peter Hessler has been writing about it for nearly three decades. This is a time span when the country experienced incredibly dramatic changes economically, educationally and societally yet its political system has only become more absolute and restrictive. This curious paradox fascinated Hessler whose latest book Other Rivers, A Chinese Education explores how this could have happened but his approach is to find characters to write about who are ordinary Chinese far away from the levers of power.
Pete also writes for The New Yorker about rural Colorado as he lives in Ridgway with his wife Leslie T. Chang who has spoken at OT twice along with their diabolical twins Ariel and Natasha.
Math and music go hand in hand so that Pete Muller does both at such a high level is no surprise. He learned to play the piano well enough as a teenager to get regular gigs that continued at Princeton University where he excelled at the study of mathematics. Parlaying those crucial skills into the world of finance, he helped revolutionize quantitative trading, creating a whole new way of doing business on Wall Street. All that career success distanced him from what he loved most - making music. As he explains. “I have these two sides. One part of me is a very practical, analytical thinker, and the other is this creative artist who can’t help but express what’s going on in his soul. For a long time, I thought I had to choose between the two, but I’ve realized that I can love and nourish both sides of myself, that it’s AND, not OR.”
Pete will perform in our Saturday night Singers in the Round, speak about math and its essential part of our society. He also creates crossword puzzle for the New York Times and other publications so will lead a competition for one of his puzzles.
The making of the American West has a lot of layers and what fascinates historian and writer Betsy Gaines Quammen is how religious views shape our relationships to this sacred landscape. Her latest book is True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America, which looks at how these false narratives of how “the west was won” contribute to polarization in this country and a dangerous sense of false identity. To report this book, she traveled across the West, meeting an array of people whose belief systems were both deluded and deeply felt. As she wrote, “Americans need to know western history to understand our relationship with land, but we can’t use its history as a template for its future.”
Betsy lives in Bozeman with her husband David Quammen who has been a repeated guest at OT.
Born in Iran, King Raam is a multi-hyphenate artist who emigrated to the States when he was young. His family returned to their homeland where Raam started a successful alternative band called Hypernova that inspired other Iranian artists to express themselves. That all changed in 2018 when Raam’s father, a prominent environmental scientist and activist was sent to the notorious Evin Prison outside of Tehran where he died shortly after. That tragedy resulted in creation for him as he wrote a one-man storytelling performance about his father’s life and legacy called Departures, which he will perform at Original Thinkers 2024. King Raam's work was supported by the Artists Freedom Initiative, which is an org dedicated to helping refugees whose creative endeavors - films, songs, performances, painting and other creative pursuits - force them to leave their countries because regimes are threatened by them.
Glenn Rodriguez
Featured in the documentary Counted Out, Rodriguez was imprisoned in New York State, which used something called predictive algorithms in its parole decision. Advocating for himself and many, many others Rodriguez used math correctly to show how the State was using math incorrectly. in these algorithms. He graduated from Bard University’s Prison Initiative in 2016.
Documentaries require a certain commitment to see your film all the way through and filmmaker Joanna Rudnick certainly has that ability. Her sweet, smart film Stories and Pictures By is about children’s picture book authors and the film requires both wonder and wisdom to work and she navigates that so well. She has also made other films, including personal ones about her family, telling the story of her brother’s addiction.
Ashley Tucker
The Artistic Freedom Initiative is focused on supporting artists who lives and careers are threatened in their homeland through resettlement and other ways. Ashley Tucker is a human rights lawyer who leads this challenging and essential effort to save artist’s lives and their voices, including King Raam who will perform at Original Thinkers.
Warm Cookies of the Revolution is a remarkable org based out of Denver that calls itself the “World’s First Civic Health Club.” As founder Evan Weisman knows, civics is not a word that inspires passion or excitement and he is determined to change that perspective. His method is to create fun and unexpected gatherings where we engage with our government in an effort to as he says, “vote every day” by making real change at the most granular level. Arts and culture play a big role in Warm Cookies' efforts as do access and inclusion but the most important facet is always the same, making it fun.
Evan will speak about his work during the festival and then lead a picnic at the Telluride Cemetery, which is just one of the many wildly creative programs that Warm Cookies offers.
Math is not easy for so many people, which is why Dr. Talithia Williams relishes translating complicated numerical problems into understandable concepts for an audience. Knowing that statistics can help us see the world in a new way, she is making sure that this field is inclusive and no longer dominated by white men. She is also known for her popular TED Talk, "Own Your Body's Data” as well as being an expert in the documentary, Counted Out, which is screening at OT 2024.