TELLURIDE, November 28, 10:30 a.m. – Mountainfilm in Telluride has named New York City-based documentary filmmaker David Holbrooke festival director.

“We’re extremely excited and pleased that David has accepted this position. He brings tremendous energy, passion and innovation” to the job, said Mountainfilm Executive Director Peter Kenworthy. “It was a comprehensive search, and we had a lot of highly qualified applicants.

Holbrooke, an avid skier, hiker and mountain biker and filmmaker, replaces Festival Director Arlene Burns, who stepped down earlier this year.

As festival director, Holbrooke said, “I will look for art that provokes conversation. “I consider myself fortunate to have had truly dazzling and life-shaping experiences through Mountainfilm, both as a member of the audience and as a filmmaker,” said Holbrooke.

“I want to continue to give Mountainfilm audiences these compelling and powerful experiences by bringing together: the filmmakers and photographers, the artists and activists, the climbers, and the curmudgeons who are not afraid to look at the formidable challenges and essential issues facing us today and to take them on headfirst.”

Holbrooke, a resident of Brooklyn, N.Y., has participated in Mountainfilm since 1999, several times as a contributing filmmaker. His films have played at Sundance and other festivals across the U.S., including the Tribeca Film Festival, the Santa Cruz Film Festival and Mountainfilm in Telluride.

Holbrooke’s feature documentary Hard as Nails airs Monday, Dec. 17, on HBO.

“What I really love is that he understands how to bring something to fruition as a producer and director,” Kenworthy said of Holbrooke, and that “he can put together a lot of disparate pieces into a cohesive whole.

“That’s what the festival director should do, and his experiences line up for him. The nice thing is that this shows we, as an organization, are extremely committed to trying to produce the best possible kind of programming for the festival.”

Over the course of the six-month search to fill the position, Kenworthy said, “David came through as the one who was most passionate about it, and finally, that was the determining factor.”