TELLURIDE – Mountainfilm in Telluride hosts its summer fundraiser Friday, July 6, at the Sheridan Opera House.

In keeping with the festival’s motto – “Celebrating Indomitable Spirit” – the evening features two films from this year’s Mountainfilm Festival that showcase exceptional determination and strength of character.

Coming from Hollywood director (and part-time Telluride resident) Frank Marshall is Right to Play, a 42-minute documentary chronicling the work of Norway’s Olympic speed-skating gold medalist Johann Olav Koss, who took the singular determination and focus that brought him to the top of his sport and applied it to improving the lives of some 700,000 of the world’s most vulnerable and victimized children in 23 countries. The film captures Voss’s guiding principle – that all children deserve the right to play.

Also being screened is The Freedom Chair, a 15-minute short about the determination of free-skier Josh Dueck, a passionate free-skier who, instead of succumbing to a sedentary life after severing his spinal cord in a ski accident, returned to his big-mountain sport as a sit-skier, going on to win silver and gold medals at the Olympics and X-Games. 

Tickets to the event cost $75 for adults and $25 for children; both a live and silent auction will take place, with doors opening at the Sheridan Opera House at 6:30 p.m. for viewing of auction items, and the films starting at 7:30 p.m. Auction items range from helicopter skiing to fly fishing with local “prevaricator” Jeff Price to a “Washington Insider” package (complete with breakfast with former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt) to Mountainfilm on Tour packages in New York City, Savannah and Watercolor, FL. to lunch or dinner with Festival Director David Holbrooke and a special festival guest and much more; check out the lineup at

http://www.mountainfilm.org/annual-july-fundraiser.

Special guests include Josh Dueck, from

TheFreedomChair, and Frank Marshall and U.S. Speed-Skating Olympic Gold Medalist Dan Jansen, from RighttoPlay.

Coffee Talks are scheduled with both special guests: Josh Dueck will be at Café M at the Hotel Madeline at 8:30 a.m. on Friday, July 6 and Dan Jansen will be at the Program Room at the Library at 9 a.m. on Saturday, July 7.