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Boulder International Film Festival, or BIFF, returns to the county this weekend.
Screenings for BIFF are held across a variety of venues in Boulder this year. Boulder High School will host several outdoor screenings at night through the weekend, as well as inside the auditorium. Century 16 Boulder will host several documentaries Thursday through Saturday as well.
New to the festival are film screenings and a community fair hosted by the Colorado Chautauqua. The community fair and singer-songwriter showcase at Chautauqua is free to the public from noon until 6 p.m. on June 26.
“We’re going to screen at Chautauqua this year, which is unusual and really exciting,” said BIFF director Kathy Beeck. “We’ll have some outdoor parties as well on the green there, with musicians and a number of arts and cultural organizations there.”
Typically held in March, the 17th annual festival had to shift to June due to safety concerns surrounding vaccinations and the ongoing COVID pandemic. According to Beeck, scheduling was still up in the air as recently as six weeks before the festival was set to begin.
“We have a huge group of filmmakers, producers and even film subjects this year,” Beeck said. “We’re really lucky and we’re really happy with the lineup. It’s absolutely fantastic.”
This year’s lineup hosts several award-winning documentaries and films from around the world, including 2021 Academy Award nominated Palestinian film The Present and 2021 Academy Award winner The Letter Room.
Saturday morning at the Boulder High School auditorium, BIFF will screen a trio of documentaries highlighting stories from Denver and Boulder County. One of which, The Silence of Quarantine, tells the story of Boulder’s Second Baptist Church — a 115-year-old African American congregation — and the isolation experienced by its elders. Filmmaker Katrina Miller and Minister Glenda Strong Robinson of Second Baptist Church will present the film in-person.
Other highlights include a documentary on deceased musical legend Tom Petty and a retrospective on the life of culinary celebrity and travel enthusiast Anthony Bourdain, titled Roadrunner.
“We’re going to be honoring Morgan Neville, the filmmaker for Roadrunner,” Beeck said. “He’s quite an accomplished, Oscar-winning filmmaker, and we’re giving him our career achievement award for documentary filmmaking.”
Neville has produced and directed dozens of documentaries, including Academy Award winning 20 Feet From Stardom — about the lives and careers of backup singers — and the Mr. Rogers story Won’t You Be My Neighbor.
The full schedule for the film festival is available online, and tickets can be purchased online or by calling BIFF’s box office directly at (303) 746-7268. A majority of the films are also available to watch through the virtual theater this year as well, with the full catalogue online. The virtual screenings are extended through July 3.
BIFF will return again in March 2022 for their 18th year. Screenings also will return to Longmont Museum’s Stewart Auditorium.
"We would have come back (to Longmont) this year under normal circumstances, but it’s certainly been an abnormal year,” Beeck said. “We love showing in Longmont, and we’re excited to come back in March.”
