Star of MountainFilm Documentary Holed Up in Jail

Mirroring the recent situation in Cannes, where the star of Italian drama Reality (Aniello Arena) was kept from attending the film festival because he is in prison, the world premiere tonight of documentary Bidder 70 at Telluride's MountainFilm event will similarly be without its leading man.

Activist Tim DeChristopher has attended MountainFilm several times in the past. But this weekend, it will be up to Bidder 370 co-directors Beth and George Gage to handle the Q&A chores. The film screens tonight at 6:45 p.m. Mountain time and again on Sunday at 4:15 p.m. From the festival's website:

In December 2008, university student Tim DeChristopher disrupted a federal auction [in Utah] of oil-and-gas leases on public lands by deliberately bidding up and winning leases with no means or intention to pay for them. DeChristopher considered the auction both illegal and immoral and felt it was his obligation in the face of global climate change, precipitated in large part by the burning of fossil fuels, to throw a wrench in the works.

Now serving time in a federal penitentiary for his crime, DeChristopher is seen by some as a hero in the mold of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and by others as just an irresponsible troublemaker.

It should be a memorable time tonight at the Michael D. Palm Theatre.