On Saturday, Oct. 26, the sixth annual Mancos Valley River Film Festival will take place downtown at the Mancos Opera House.
That evening, doors will open at 5:30 p.m., and the first film will screen an hour later.
But attendees are welcome – and encouraged – to come early.
They’ll be serving tamales and a variety of beverages, thanks to local vendors. The menu includes wine from Hand in Hand, cider from Fenceline, beer from the Mancos Brewing Co., a nonalcoholic beer from Elite Liquor Distribution and Skagua – nonalcoholic sparking water – from Durango’s Ska Brewing.
Plus, local vendors donated goods for a silent auction, which starts when doors open.
There’s everything from a beer of the month club card from the brewery to a gift pack from Fenceline to local jewelry and pottery, said Sarah Tingey, a co-owner of Alpacka Rafts, which puts on the festival with Ren Yates, the owner of the Hand in Hand Shop.
Last year, Fahrenheit Coffee Roasters put out a gift basket – they are this year, too – and people were bidding on it “like sharks,” Tingey said with a laugh.
“My favorite part of the festival is getting to work with all the local supporters we have,” said Tingey. “We get so much local support.”
Tingey and Yates have organized the festival together for a few years now.
“Divide and conquer seemed doable, and it’s a fun thing to do with your friend,” said Tingey. “Every year, we’re able to build in more efficiencies and take slightly better notes about what we did the year before that didn’t work, or volumes of food and wine that we go through.”
As far as films go, there will be seven of them, and screening starts at 6:30 p.m.
The first round of films concerns Indigenous relationships with water.
Three of the films are contributions from the Tribal Water Media Fellowship, which was created to introduce Indigenous perspectives on water to non-Natives and fellows, who are most all Fort Lewis College students, said Colten Ashley.
Ashley said the stories are “hard-hitting journalism” and change the voices and narratives surrounding water issues.
It’s the first time the film festival in Mancos has partnered with the Tribal Water Media Fellowship and they’re really excited about it, Tingey said.
One of the films, School of Fish, debuted at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival and won the best short film at that festival last year. It focuses the salmon in Bristol Bay in Alaska and the controversial Pebble Mine threatening it.
A 30- to 40-minute intermission comes next, giving viewers the chance to stretch their legs, mingle and refill their drinks.
The second half of the evening will begin with a short, four-minute film about a family of climbers with an autistic daughter named Freya. It focuses on her, and how she uses the sport to inform the rest of her life and social situations.
The festival will close with “The Forgotten Coast,” the film featured on the festival’s poster.
It features Steve Fassbinder, a local who’s a head guide and co-owner at Four Corners Guides. It’s all about Iceland’s glacial river systems, and offers beautiful cinematography of the area.
“It’s a visually stunning piece,” Tingey said.
Tingey coordinates the film part of the festival, largely by reaching out to connections she’s met over the years at Alpacka and elsewhere. She said nobody has ever turned down her request to show a film.
“I think part of that is because of the local, small, quirky nature of the film festival. Even if a film is on tour with a larger, well-known festival, generally it’s OK if we show it here because we’re off the radar,” Tingey said.
Tickets are available online beforehand on the Mancos Valley Resources website. There will also be tickets at the opera house on Saturday, but sometimes it sells out beforehand, Tingey said.
Adult tickets are $25, tickets for kids under 18 are $15, and infants are free, said Dana Sprayberry-Thompson, an administrator at Mancos Valley Resources.
All proceeds from ticket sales, the silent auction, beverages and tamales benefits Mancos Valley Resources, “an incubator for grassroots projects in the Mancos Valley” for more than 25 years, according to its website.
It supports things like The Giving Tree, Mancos FoodShare, the Mancos Valley Farmers Market, Mancos Trails Group and more.
“All those projects roll up under MVR; it’s fun to see how much support and enthusiasm there is around all the local businesses and individuals,” said Tingey. “Everyone is so excited about supporting MVR and the projects they administratively support.”
