Episode 217: Changing Minds Through Movies | Suzan Beraza & Shae LaPlace | Mountainfilm
What happens when artists, athletes, journalists, and activists come together in a mountain town to change the world? You get Mountainfilm. In this episode, Kara sits down with Festival Director Suzan Beraza and Marketing Manager Shae LaPlace to explore how this Telluride-based documentary film festival sparks global conversations and lasting impact. Suzan and Shae share how they curate more than 100 films each year, why curiosity is the foundation of powerful storytelling, and what’s in store for this year’s lineup, from climate justice to AI. Plus: Kara reflects on what made her own trip to Mountainfilm so unforgettable.
“To use the power of film, art and ideas to inspire audiences to create a better world.”
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
00:00 – Meet Suzan and Shae
02:00 – What is Mountainfilm?
05:00 – Suzan’s path to filmmaking
08:00 – Documentary film as a tool for change
10:00 – Themes for this year: AI, climate, and culture
14:00 – What it takes to run a year-round festival
17:00 – How they choose which films get in
20:00 – Beyond screenings: talks, hikes, and community
24:00 – Curiosity as a core value
28:00 – Why you need to attend in person
31:00 – Favorite festival moments
36:00 – What power means to Suzan and Shae
45:00 – How to support and get involved
To be a good doc filmmaker. It's all about, to me, curiosity, even like the basic tenets of an interview with somebody, you come from a very open, no judgment, curious place. You're not putting your values or views on someone else. You're like really able to receive the way, what their truth is.
That's Suzan Barza and Shae LaPlace.
I'm Kara Duffy and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you guys today. I've known Shay since the beginning of Powerful Ladies essentially. And when I got to experience Mountain Film Festival last year, it was so impactful for me about the topics that were covered and who was there and just the vibe. So I'm really excited to be sponsoring this year and getting to come back.
Yay. Sorry,
briskets in the room. So there might be some jingle jingles in the background. Your
dog is brisket. That is so cute. Yes.
But before I get too far along, let's just tell everyone who you are, where you are, and what you're up to in the world. Sure. Suzan, you should probably go first.
I'm Suzan Barraza and I'm in Telluride, Colorado right now.
And currently I'm the festival director for Mountain Film Festival. Amazing.
I'm Shae LaPlace Plass. I am the marketing manager here at Mountain Film and a previous powerful ladies employee and lover of all things, Kara Duffy. We are in tie ride together I think a lot of people are already wondering what is this film festival they've heard of?
The Telluride Film Festival, but maybe not this one. So how are they different? What's the origin? What should people know about the festival itself?
Mountain film started in 1979, so not quite as old as TFF. We're about five years younger and we sort of book in the summer in Telluride. We're Memorial Day weekend, their Labor Day weekend.
So we've always had a lot of affinity between the two festivals. We're a purely documentary film festival. TF is obviously many things and another thing I think that's fun for people to know about mountain film is that in the very beginning it was purely a sports climbing, mountaineering type festival.
And then over the years it broadened into topics like environment and world cultures. And I'd say in the last probably 15, 20 years it's gone beyond that to issues like social justice and human rights issues and that kind of thing. So for me, that is a really exciting place. I don't know if I could work at Mountain Film if it was.
Still a purely sports oriented adventure type festival, but the kind of broadening that's happened over the years has been really exciting for me.
Yeah, it seems like a very natural progression from adventure sports into this more cultural, environmental activism space because it's all connected.
And I think it's always nice to bring it back to the mission, which. Mountain Film's mission is to inspire audiences through film, art, and ideas to go out and create a better world. And I think that you can really feel that when you experience it here. When you watch the films that we choose and the speaker series programming, the doc talks, the coffee talks, it really is about starting those conversations and everyone being a part of those conversations.
That's what I think I loved about it so much was that so many areas of industries and worlds and conversations that I really enjoy, were all happy at the same place. I also really got delighted by the fact that. Friends of mine from past lives were directors and showing films there, and I had no idea before I got there, so that was crazy as well.
When we think about documentary films and film festivals, there's a lot of ideas of what the celebrity side of it is like, and I didn't experience any of that bougie nonsense at this festival at all.
Yeah. Luckily, most documentary filmmakers are pretty down to earth and they're not.
It's not like docu, you get into documentary films to make money. It's like you're doing it because you're passionate about something and you really give a shit and you're you're covering this issue or topic, or covering this person's life story. So I think you're exactly right. There isn't this this bougie celebrity thing going on at Mountain Film.
I'd say the biggest celebrity we have. Coming this year is probably Jimmy Chin. And he's someone who's taken the documentary film and just blown up with it. So he's become a bit of a celebrity, but in general, we're just like four starving artists, just trying to as Shea mentioned, trying to make the world a better place.
And you speak from experience as a filmmaker yourself, which I think is important to touch on. Yeah. I surely haven't I surely haven't made a living from being a filmmaker.
How does your filmmaking career start?
How did it start? It started wow, a long time ago. In 1999. I started out as a, as an editor, and I made a short film and I'd been in the theater world before as a director and performer, so I, I loved the arts and visual arts in particular.
And I kept having my ideas in film more than in theater, so I thought, huh, maybe I should try to make a film. So I got some friends actually who worked for Tart Film Festival. I have worked for type film festival as well for many years, and we just got together and made this short film and I had to learn how to edit in order to finish the film.
So after that, I had a career in editing for about 20 years and directed little projects here and there on the side. And then in 2008 I started my first feature documentary and I'm, I've, and I've made three.
And what have they been about?
The first one is called Bagot. That was about the overuse of plastic, single use plastics and its impact on the environment and ultimately on human health.
And that film had a pretty good life. It was on Netflix, and it played over 3000 times around the world was my most commercial success. And then after that, I've just gotten, gotten more and more vague. My second film was called Uranium Drive-in. That was funded by Sundance Institute that was about a uranium mining town near where we are now that had gone bust and their hope to bring mining and milling back, like there was a promise of a mill coming back and how that just made people.
Really excited and what happened after that. And then my third film, which my most recent film was called Massacre River, takes place in the Dominican Republic in Haiti about the Dominican, changing their citizenship laws to say, to do away with birthright, citizenship and make it that you had to have at least one parent who was Dominican.
So over 200,000 people of Haitian descent who were born in Dominican, lost or citizenship with. So following a family in that story.
All super interesting topics.
Yeah. The fastest nutshell possible.
No, but I wanna go back and make sure I'm watching all of those, because those all sound fascinating.
I think that's what impressed me the most about Mountain Film was every film that was available. I was, Matt, if I couldn't see it. Yeah, and like trying to be like, no, I'm not gonna eat lunch today. I need to see more films. Like where can I grab a smoothie and just keep going? And they were also thought provoking.
We think often that documentaries about social justice or environmental causes can be like really heavy and dense. And what I thought was also really beautiful about last year's selection was. There were really big conversations happening in the films and in the conversations that you guys set up after them, but they were always in a space of, yeah, there's a lot of things going wrong.
Here's what it is, here's how we can fix it. But there was so much hope running through all of the films from last year. What do you think are things people can expect from the films this year? Are there any themes that you see rising?
We definitely, and you can touch on this as well, we definitely have a theme with our speakers and with a couple of our future films about the future of technology, artificial intelligence, robots chat, GPT gaming the future of finance, and how much of it has turned online and also how a lot of it we don't really completely understand.
And it's just growing without complete Yeah. Knowledge.
And it feels like we're really trying to open up a conversation that couldn't be more relevant. And while it is we've gotten some reaction that it's a little outside the typical box that people try to put mountain film into to talk about technology.
AI and these things, but it actually, it's totally relevant. It's relevant to all of us. It's relevant to our lives. It's relevant to our future. It's all connected. I think there's also definitely an environmental theme this year, our guest director is Bill McKibbon, so that put a real environmental focus on the festival.
And so there's some amazing conversations happening around climate change and conservation, and we have some really great films in that regard as well. Definitely some conversations about the western water crisis as well. Being where we are very kitty corner to the center of the epicenter of that crisis.
And so there's some really important conversations there as well. But it's always hard to say a theme because in the past, the festival did have a theme every year. We no longer like force that we it seems like it, we let it happen. Yeah. And I would say there's also a lot of, there's always a lot of really interesting films that sort of bridge the gap between culture and what's happening to people in the world and the environment and how it all is very connected to one another.
Yeah. Because we have, I think about the grab and I think about patrol. And then last year you loved the Territory. That film was so great. Yes.
Yeah.
Go ahead. I know I've just told so many people about it. I'm like, and I think I've mentioned it maybe 50 times on this podcast. I love because a lot we'll bring up like, 'cause it was just such an amazing experience for me overall.
And to see into that world and to see more people that I wanna be spending time with and associating with, like it, it just felt really great. Like I fit into that environment and I think that's what's been getting me excited about talking about the films and to go again this year of. You know that this podcast was almost called the Awesome and the Up to something.
And when I think about who's coming to that festival and showing and presenting and all the people involved, they really are focusing their lives on being up to something that matters to them and doing something about it. And to the point you mentioned earlier, not necessarily doing it for fame or glory or the money side of it, they're doing it because it's the right thing to do.
And part of why I loved the territory so much was like the so many layers were in it. And what I thought was the most fascinating part was even I wasn't expecting a conversation about indigenous people in the Amazon to also go into allowing people to have their own space for their voice.
And that whole conversation of, a bunch of white guys from the US wanting to do this film and then having to give it over at levels beyond their expectations for the storytelling. It was, that was a whole, everything had so many layers to it, which I thought was really fascinating and intellectually stimulating also.
Yay. I'd love to hear that. Yeah, and there's definitely some films in that vein this year that would, that definitely having a similar conversation. I think there's some films you're gonna really love. Yeah, I think your mind blown. Yeah. Yay. There's one World premier that, I mean we can talk about this 'cause it's already been announced and also we're announcing the whole lineup on Wednesday.
So I'm sure by the time this is out, this will all be common knowledge. But trees, other Entanglements is a world premier that we have. That is really layered and I think the way that you see the world, Kara, as an individual, you
are gonna love that film. Yeah, we're really excited to have that film premiering.
It's an HBO film, so we're getting to premier it at Mountain Film right before it goes onto HBO. And she, it's a fabulous woman director Irene Taylor, and she had done all kinds of films for HBO. She's a super talented badass woman. I
love that, when we think there's so many parts to running a film festival, give people a rundown of just a list of all the different people and things that you need to be thinking about to make a festival come to life.
Haha. It's, we work year round, which people are just like, honey, you work year round. You only, it's only a five day festival. And I mean for sure when the festival's over, we do have a little breathing space and we all go on vacation and we take that time, but pretty much quickly we get rolling again.
Part of it is that we have a grants program. So we have a mountain film commitment grant, we have an emerging filmmaker fellowship. So we start working on that, late summer, getting in new talent, new filmmakers that we may not know trying to support. Those filmmakers, that's a big part of Mountain Film's Mission is.
Is filmmaker support with that. Without filmmakers, we don't have a festival, so we wanna love, honor, and support as best we can. So we start with the brands program. We start planning our speaker series really early 'cause that's something we can do ahead of time. We're just like, okay, what can we do?
Let's we bring in like between 10 and 15 different speakers. Shay mentioned that we have Bill McKibbon for this year. He is like a huge activist, author, so we're thrilled to have him. And he's so we will start looking for our guest director. We'll start looking for our guest speakers and then film submissions open up.
We're watching between us, our screening committee and our programmers, we're watching over 700 films to get it down to, a little over a hundred. So that's that's quite an extensive process. Yeah, it feels like that feels like a lot of
the year of that piece, because it's so much time for one.
But then it's also like making sure that we're taking into account different perspectives on each film, because not everyone reacts the same. Which has been one of the most interesting things about this job to me, seeing how different people react to different films and we all, a lot of us come from different backgrounds, so I didn't have a background in film coming into this, but definitely has sparked my interest in film further and has made me, wonder if I made a documentary someday, what would I make it about and how long would it be?
Because the thing that I've taken away most is. Shorter is always better. Seems like it almost always. Yeah, because people just, it's so your heart project, so it's so hard to cut it down. But we're watching 700 films. Susan and Lucy especially watching so many films and it's if it can't hold your attention in the first three minutes.
You're like, oh God, I have so many more films, sweat kind of thing. It seems like
that's a, seems harsh, it's, I mean it's hard. Yeah. You can say pretty quickly if the film has what it takes and, what's happened more and more often that I've seen over the past I've been in this job now six years, is films have become very pretty.
Like the cinematography. People spend so much time on, on the cinematography, but they forget the most fundamental thing, which is story. It's all about the story. In fact, the cinematography doesn't have to be amazing, but you have to have that strong foundation of something. That really pulls people in.
So whenever I'm doing like workshops for university students or just talking to different people, I'm just like, don't, sure. Cinematography is great. But that you really have to focus on stories. So that's where we end up. We end up with like a hundred, a little over a hundred films that are just really strong stories.
And from there, it just goes on to the really boring, nitty gritty stuff. Oh, just and the, yeah, and the stipends. It just goes on and on the marketing, it's just, yeah, there's year
round communication, right? So my job is definitely like. I can't really step away because we have to be communicating at all times.
It's a year-round thing because the second that we leave people's minds. We start, leaving the sphere of influence, right? The communication happens year round. And because we're a nonprofit, there's fundraising year round.
Yep.
So there's a lot of that. That is definitely a huge piece of the year round aspect of mountain film.
But there's. There's a person whose role is to take care of lodging and travel and accommodation for the filmmakers that we bring here and for the speakers that we bring here. And then there's a lot of the tech stuff that like I'm super unfamiliar with, but I. We bring on how many employees for the two weeks, three weeks of the festival.
Starting in week, we have like over a hundred additional technical employees coming in that are doing, theater management and projectionists projection, rigging manager. Yeah, all kinds of stuff. So it really, we go from this teeny tiny staff after the festival. I think there's eight of us after the festival if that, maybe six to, by the time the festival, we have over a hundred staff members and this time of year right now, the office starts to feel really full, which is crowded into my
office because it's like chaos out there. Yeah. I would say that it's definitely
a lot of different roles and the film choice piece is definitely a huge part that takes everybody, and then in like programming coordinator and you and Lucy all sit down.
And it's okay, now we have to make it all fit into these shorts programs, into these features with maybe a short playing before and into this matrix of a schedule. Yeah. And we have X amount of theaters and X amount of time slots. And that to me is like I. Oh my God. So that's, I can't believe how you guys go through that
process.
And as you know from having been here, it's not a lot of film festivals will do only screenings at night and like three venues, but we're going like nine, 8:00 AM 8:00 AM to 11:00 PM seven, eight venues all over the place and just constantly doing programs. So it is a lot.
It's fun. And it's beyond just films, right?
There is, there are the speaker series, the doc talks, the coffee talks. And in addition, we do have the like parties and stuff, and then we also have free range programs. The North base as our presenting sponsor comes in and does, a whole, slew of programming of their own, which is amazing and definitely offers a lot of value to the core of the festival's.
Mission to get people outside and have conversations with the people that. You look up to, especially in that adventure space and taking the people from your adventure space and having broader conversations, which
Is always really exciting and is super, to me, a core part of the festival.
And yeah, we can talk about some of the specifics of this year as we move forward, but there's some really exciting stuff this year.
It's such a rich program. There's like I said, you really can't have breaks for bathrooms or eating the entire time if you wanna see everything. But again it's not just rich in the programming and the conversation and the films, but the variety of people are there.
It's something I'm still so amazed by to have to sit in a conversation with, New York Times. Writers and other journalists. And then to have another conversation with environmental activists and people doing camping expositions from kids from urban environments. There are so many different people there who probably would never be in the same space at the same time for any other reason except this festival.
And what is amazing to me is how part of why I wanted to have you guys on the podcast and why I want to be a sponsor of the film festival is that. Everyone should know about this, ah, for the work, but really for the work that you guys are doing and what you're creating from an experience and a conversation level, like all the things that you're doing that you.
I want it to be a situation where you guys just have like money showing up from everywhere and people showing up to volunteer for things because we need more of this dialogue and more of these films and more of these conversations happening. And when I hear people like living in Southern California right now, so many people send their kids or have lived in Colorado or Boulder, right?
Like I feel like. Orange County in particular is like a Boulder extension program, and it's like, why does everyone here not know about this when there's so many people here with connections to film and media and just money, frankly, it's no, guys, like everyone needs to know about this, so how can I be a missionary for you?
It sounds like you are right now. Yeah. You're doing great. Yeah.
I think it's funny. Connecting the Powerful Ladies and Mountain film. It's this moment of fruition for me because. Being a part of Powerful Ladies, when you started the Powerful Conversation series that was this moment of all the things that I think matter most in the world and seeing how that can come together with whatever it is that you do.
And for Suzan, the powerful conversation series was when the Kara started. I think it was particularly during Black Lives Matter was our first one Yeah. Where we sat down with a panel of really amazing women of color and had a really open conversation about what racism really does look like and how it, what that experience is and what people can be doing as allies and advocates and using your privilege for the better.
And those conversations are, were so powerful and it was such a part of, of it became such a part of you and your brand and everything that you're doing, and it felt like this perfect moment. And then I come to my job at Mountain Film and I was like. This is like a larger scale, bigger version of that with hundreds of voices.
And I, I just love that connection and I think we're a match made in heaven. So I love to hear that enjoyed the festival so much and are so excited to be joining us again.
I just believe so much in the power of having the hard conversations and they don't have to be labeled as hard.
That's what I think I'm using that term for general public idea of what things we're talking about.
But there's, I really believe that if the right people are at the table, we can fix anything. And so often we're just not getting people in the same space or we're not being brave enough to talk about something.
'cause we're worried about what will happen. And it's it's a conversation like. Most people when you ha are talking around a table are very civilized.
So show up like you're saying.
Yeah and people want exposure to the real experience and the actual information versus it being filtered so many times over and through, I think documentary films and through real in person, literally round tables, you're getting the firsthand experience from people and being able to engage and ask questions because.
With the how, where social media in particular has taken us, we're getting much more bubbled conversations versus of the variety of them. So we almost have to force getting exposed to people who aren't like us and who haven't had our experience and who have different ideas because it's so easy to get siloed now into just talking to a bunch of people who also like rock climbing.
And you're like okay. Echo chamber. Yeah, the echo chamber. Finding organizations like you guys who. Are wanting to tell the variety of stories and talk about things that can make people uncomfortable. Like even AI as a topic, people have a lot of opinions. Most people don't have any idea what's happening with it.
No one really knows like what's real and what's not. And is it doomsday? Is it helpful? Like how afraid should we be? Should we not be? Like there's, most people are in a space of a million questions,
right?
So who actually has answers and can we talk to them because. Otherwise, we're just asking each other the same questions over and over again in philosophizing, which is fine, but it's not actually giving us information to make better choices from Right.
It doesn't encourage the growth, which is the whole point. Yeah. Yeah. And what something I've been talking to a lot of clients about lately is being, I get surprised when people aren't curious.
So how does curiosity play into your lives individually, but also a value of the film festival as well?
I always, I, that's something as well that I talk to young filmmakers about is to be a good doc filmmaker. It's all about, to me, curiosity. Because even like the basic tenets of a co, of a, of an interview with somebody who come from a very open, no judgment, curious place, you're not putting your values or views on someone else.
You're like really able to receive the way, what their truth is. Because obviously many times it's so different than what you believe in your truth.
But
if you are in an empathetic, open place and your heart is there for them. So that's where like curiosity to me is the most amazing thing in the world.
It, it sparks creativity, so it's, to me it's I'm so happy you said the word, because I'm always like, there's
the foundation for the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. Having that desire or that drive to know more. Is, in a way, a very much a foundation of what makes the festival happen and what makes mountain film exist, right?
If we didn't have curiosity, there wouldn't be a connection. We wouldn't be drawing that connection between the outdoor sports world and climate change, and we wouldn't be drawing that connection between climate change and culture and human rights issues and how those, all of these things. Are connected.
And it's, it goes back to the circle of life in Lion King when you're a kid, you're learning about everything is connected and that stays true. And I talk a lot with my friends and Karen and I talked about this a lot. Where we are in the world today is the most intersectional it could possibly be.
Yeah. Everything affects everything. And so when we realized that. You have to start digging deeper and you have to stay curious. You have to start asking more questions because you can't, somewhere along the line, the dots don't connect if you're not asking the question.
I would say too if you're a mountain film guest coming and you don't have a curious mind, you're probably not gonna the festival, right?
You're gonna be, you're gonna be frustrated by it because there're gonna be issues or opinions. That come forth in discussions that you're not gonna agree with and you're just gonna be pissed. And we get that kind of person that comes to Mountain film that is very set in their ways, extremely closed.
And they're the ones that usually reach out to us and said, I can't believe you did that, talk about whatever. But the perfect Mountain Film guest is one that approaches the festival. With openness and curiosity because then you're gonna, you're gonna just hear things or learn about things that completely shatter your world in a good way, like it's something that's needed to go away.
You've had some kind of deep belief that just doesn't serve you anymore, and the way that you can have that confrontation to that belief. Whatever it might be. We'll be at a place like Mountain Film when there are so many guests showing different perspectives and ideas and philosophies. So I would say for anyone out there on your podcast who's thinking of coming to the festival, just really give yourself that challenge of coming with an open heart.
Yeah. And a curious mind. And a curious
mind. It's such a nourishing weekend, and I think that's the word that comes up for me a lot is that. When people talk about mountain film, they talk about feeling refreshed. They talk about feeling hopeful. They talk about feeling galvanized. And these are words that we want people to feel.
Yeah, and I think for me personally, the world doesn't feel like as hopeful of a place. If I'm not shattering some of my beliefs and starting again and moving in, I start to feel stagnant. If I'm not doing that, if we're not shifting the tectonic plates of how we think, then we're not. We're not growing in the same way.
Yeah. And for me, that's like the worst concept in the world is to not be constantly growing and learning and nourishing myself and the people around me. 'cause when you come to Mountain Film, you will leave and you will nourish other people in your lives with the things that you learn. And I've been talking a lot about, with clients also about getting out of our regular space.
I think in how much digital marketing impacts every business today, and people are like, oh, like this is happening on TikTok, or Interim slowing down, or My emails aren't working. I'm like, okay. I'm like, when's the last time that you went and talked to people who you shouldn't be in that circle?
Normally, when have you left your house? When have you invited someone you don't know for a coffee? I think we forget that how everything in the world works is through interaction with each other and ideally in conversation and in real life. And we get stuck there. So even to me going to something like Mountain Film is also about who can you meet and what can inspire you.
And like I left with so many ideas and Ooh, I wanna follow up with this company, this brand, and how can I hang out with them more? We think so often that everything has to be so sales oriented, but it's just who do you want to have in your circle? Because if you're with these people.
You don't know what it is yet, but amazing things are going to come next. And at a minimum, you have some cool friends that you didn't have before. So just being able to insert yourself into an environment like that where you guys are doing the heavy lifting of who's all the cool people that are coming and we just have to show up.
Honestly, like it's really rare that it's that easy to be like, just show up. You're gonna meet people, you're gonna talk.
And you hit something on the head there, Kara. I think that a lot of it too is like authentic and can come to that word of authentic integration and meeting of people as opposed to, a lot of times you go to events and the sales and marketing is hitting you over the head and it just feels super forced and it's not, doesn't feel great.
But I feel like the mountain film space, that's something we really strive for to be an authentic meeting space.
Networking beyond for the sake of networking and net networking from a place of passion and from the gut. And from the heart. And just shared values. Yeah, for the common good.
Yeah, totally. What are some of your favorite moments from mountain films of the past? My God, there are so many. Yeah. I have my two favorites written down from last year because though I worked for Mountain Film last year was my first festival that I had got to attend. There was a moment where Milk, who is a singer songwriter, who attends our festival and this year has a film in the festival.
She was speaking about the state of the world and she said that hope is a discipline. I wrote, I think I started crying when she said that because we're in, we were at that time still really on the sort of precipice of whether or not we were gonna leave this pandemic way of life behind.
And what was gonna come of it, how we were gonna grow. The uncertainty of what's next was really. Consuming. And she said that in reference to the grander team. And it just hit me really hard over the head. And I just think that's so important to remember that in order to stay hopeful, you do have to be disciplined because if you lose sight of that, you, it's very easy to fall into the negativity and the sort of.
Deep darkness and fear of how big everything feels right now and how intense everything feels and how unsolvable things can feel. And that was at the very beginning of the festival. So for that to be the catalyst from which my weekend started was really amazing. And then my other favorite moment, I've had a lot, but these were the ones that I wrote down because they were quotes that I keep in my phone and I turn back to, the other one was in a, in the long of, long and short of IT program last year, there was a film called Stranger at the Gate. And that film was about a, I think he's an Afghanistan veteran and how hateful he was towards the people of the Middle East because of his time in the service and his, essentially his healing journey coming totally all the way back from it.
And he spoke after his screening. He was talking about the state of our country and the divisiveness of our country. And that's something that I really struggle with. Seeing it in my own family, within my friendships, things like that. And he said a room full of people formed this nation. There's no reason that a room full of people can't change it.
And that, that feeling is so powerful to know that like maybe we're not in politics and maybe we're not on the floor. In Congress, but there is still power in being a room full of people who believe that we can do something. When you resign your hope or belief that you can make a change, then you really have given up and you resign any chances of making anything happen, and you accept that things are gonna stay the way they are.
And you, those are my two, two of my favorite moments from last year.
And with that quote, you give up your power.
Like you surrender it and your agent breaks my heart more. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm sure you have a lot of
them.
It's almost like I was just thinking about it. I have been involved as a filmmaker or a volunteer doing different things with staff for so long, for like over 25 years.
It's, it still seems crazy, but it's almost hard for me to synthesize like all that time. Come up with one favorite with so many, because there's just so many. I'm like, oh, I could talk about him. I could talk about him. Like Paul Watson with Sea Shepherd coming and Cynthia Sylvia Earl with who a Ocean conservationist.
And Paul Huck, who wrote the book Draw Down. He was an amazing speaker. And so it's almost it's been such a. I'll say this Mountain film, going to Mountain Film in particular is what started me on the path to becoming a filmmaker. So that's been my big inspiration moment. Like I, I saw these films and I heard these speakers and I was I felt so empowered that I just thought why couldn't I do this? Why wouldn't I be able to make a film and hopefully make a difference or have voice, try to give people voice? And so I guess that's been the main impact that Mount Film has had on my life is it just changed the complete trajectory of my career and who I am.
We talked very briefly about power and what that means. So I'd love to hear from you guys. What do the words powerful in ladies mean to you? And do their definitions change when they're put next to each other?
I wasn't expecting this one. I think to me. Especially in the scope of maleness power often has a pretty negative, can have a pretty negative connotation because it, a lot of very powerful people are also just not very ethical or honest people and it feels like it's tainted the word.
Something that my mother used to say to me as I was growing up. I was never an aggressive person at all. I was pretty, I was a very much a people pleaser, peacemaker kind of person in our family, but she was like, you can be assertive and not be aggressive. So to me, power is that it's being assertive and holding your place and your voice, but not being aggressive and not doing it.
Expensive others. Yeah. And with ladies. When you put that, or, I dunno, if you said ladies or women we're, I guess we're both.
Yeah.
But I think that women have to, I have to work harder at it than my male contemporaries. I have so many male filmmaker friends that are like, Suzan, you just need to push more.
Like you need to be more of a, of a just. Just go out there and just, 'cause I'm always like, underplaying how much I wanna get paid or underplaying. I'm like, why the hell do you do that? So this I'm, this is a, something I'm continue to work on is how to not feel like being powerful is bad, or wanting to be paid an equitable wage, or that's not greedy, or that's not necessarily a horrible thing.
It's just like finding your value and believing in your value. I think as women, we just don't believe in our value.
Often.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think I answered this question at some point on my last episode with you. Yeah. But I think my definition has changed a little bit because I, my awareness of how other people see me has changed.
I definitely still feel like being a powerful lady does mean being unapologetic because I think it is really challenging for women to be unapologetic. It is a lesson that I think I do better at. In certain times, in certain places in my life than others. But I still think that's really important.
And I think for me recently, power has returned a little bit more to finding my softness and embracing some of my sensitivities. I definitely am realizing in my late twenties that I am a very sensitive person. That my perceptiveness, my gut, my intuition, those things affect me a lot. And realizing that people do perceive me as aggressive in certain scenarios has really changed the narrative inside of me.
And one of our coworkers prints out an amazing quote for me about how. I'm not aggressive, I'm assertive, and if my assertiveness makes you uncomfortable, that is not my problem basically. And I love that because I am learning to find balance between, like sometimes I, I do come off too strong and it's okay to learn from that moment and be like, wow, maybe the way I perceived that moment wasn't, that way or how the other person perceived it.
And understanding perception has been a huge part of my understanding of power recently. And definitely understanding the power and vulnerability. I think I was definitely raised to believe that being strong and out, like physically strong and outwardly tough and not letting cracks show was a way to become powerful and for people to perceive your power.
And that makes very masculine sense.
But that's changing a lot for me. And I think when you put powerful ladies next to each other, it's all about that ebb and flow and that sliding scale of like women can be both powerful and also soft. And sometimes softness is powerful and sometimes sensitivity is powerful.
And I think about the connection between the word sensitivity and intuition. Because intuition is so much more active. It gives you so much more agency. Versus sensitivity feels really passive, but they're very similar words. I'm very sensitive to how other people are speaking and behaving and it's triggering my intuition.
It's triggering something that I'm feeling, I think all of that sort of comes together in women and I love that sort of witchy female intuition too.
Yeah. So I
follow that. I think there's magic in power in women, especially when the two are combined. I agree with everything Susan said too, as a woman, the expectation is totally different.
We've talked to brother a lot. My brother is amazing, so smart, so successful. But his whole thing, he's lie Shea, you wanna get that job? Lie, get it, go get the job. You'll figure it out once you're there and I'm like, oh, I can't live like that, or whatever that this male sense of who cares?
Just you're not gonna get caught. Just do it. That's something that women don't live with. Much for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But I think in this stage of my life, I'm trying to learn a little bit more, a little bit more of that sort of blind confidence that women aren't Yeah. Necessarily instilled with.
I think it's a really interesting journey to be looking at the, using power to understand when you should.
Use the feminine skillset versus the masculine skillset and the fact that I feel privileged that women are allowed to have both sides today more than they have been and more than other genders are allowed to right now culturally. So how can we know what kind of dial to use to. Get done what we need to or speak up for who we need to, or to move things in the way that we want to be a contribution.
I, I just, it's really interesting. So I really feel the, how are you using both sides and what is, when do you need to lean into one more than the other? We ask everyone on the podcast where they put themselves in the powerful lady scale. So if zero is average everyday human, and 10 is the most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you put yourself today and on an average day?
Goodness gracious. I'd say I feel like wait, what was the average? Zero. Zero. Okay. I'd say I feel like a good six, seven most days. Yeah. Yeah. I feel pretty confident in my abilities, and I also have this kind of underlying belief that you just. Not the fake it till you make it, but you just have to go for it.
Find what you really want and just don't let people tell you no. I tell you when I have an idea or something that I wanna do and someone says no to me, it almost makes me like a bulldog where I'm just like, I'll just show you just to wait. You can't do that. That just makes me like, oh no.
Whoa, whoa. I'll show you. I really think that kind of tenacity is how I was able to make films because I didn't know shit from Chanel. I, how to make a film, how to fund, how to make the, get the funding, how to, get it on Netflix, none of that stuff because you just have to really push forward.
That was a long answer to say.
Today? How do you first today? Lately? Yeah. I'd say around there. Okay. Yeah.
I think this is always a tough question for me because I think on an average day sometimes I probably lie closer to a four. I always feel like there's so much for me to learn. And when I say that I don't mean it in like a helpless way or in a lack of.
Power in more of the sense that like I'm just not at my full capacity. I'm not young
too. You've done so much for your age. Like I'm old. Like I, when I was Shay's age, I was like probably two. So honey, you got some good brain sense and time. Thank you.
Yeah, I think I live at about a four where I'm like, I just know there's so much more.
Like I am, I do feel powerful and I do feel like I'm capable and I definitely have days where I'm like, all I do is disappoint people and I fall short, and that's a ter. That's a terrible day. And so the balance of that lands me somewhere around four I think today. And I think I, I said this last time too, today having this conversation, this puts me at more like 6, 7, 8.
Yeah, baby. Because it to talk about what we're doing. You're wicked smart. Thank you. I think you're amazing. You're so smart. Look at Wicked three together. It's pretty cool. This is a fun, amazing, to me like meeting of the mind. So this feels really special and this is the kind of stuff that matters most to me.
So today, definitely closer to a seven or eight because the power just feels off the charts when we come together and have a conversation. And knowing that I get to be a part of what mountain film is and what festival goers experience
that is so important to me. And just allowing it, I think and having the support.
Because I think we can start to feel like our energy and our power sort of drains. And just I, I love it when women support and encourage and nourish other women this whole thing where some, it's like a really ugly type of woman that just wants to push other women down so they can feel better about themselves.
Fuck that. I think we are, should all be about mentoring, loving, and supporting each other. It's the
most powerful we can be as a collective and also as individuals. We've talked about this at length, that because women aren't instilled with that individualistic nature the same way we do have an ability to innately get together and make shit happen and and say, let me lift you up. It's not gonna put me down to lift you up. Because I know I'm gonna need your hand too. And I think that's really beautiful. And at Mountain John, we do have almost an entirely female year round staff and. I think that's really special. As much as it's important to have diversity and have men and women, people of all backgrounds I, I love having all female staff and Kara as a fellow all girls school human.
You know how, I never realized how powerful that was. Being in a room of all women is so important and has so much power. Yeah. For everyone who is excited to attend Mountain Film, submit films for the future, figure out how they can sport, sponsor all the things, where can they go to find, follow, get tickets, all that.
So on Instagram, we are at Mountain Film, all one word, all lowercase. And Mountain Film org is our website. If you're interested in. Becoming a sponsor or donating to organizations connected with films there's a get involved tab at the top and there's lots of places to put your money there. That's sponsoring, that's donating, and that's also our take action initiative as well as where you'll find the commitment grants and emerging filmmaker information.
Those applications don't open again until the fall. And same thing with submitting a film that'll be under the festival tab to submit a film. Really so that deadline, I think, or that submissions will open again in the fall as well. I think typically late October, early November. The festival this year is from May 25th to the 29th here in Telluride, Colorado.
Passes are available on our website. The schedule will be going live next week, so you'll be able to see all of the films and everything that's happening. I did wanna take a moment to mention that this year's festival is dedicated to Hillary Nelson, who was a very much a pillar of our community and of the mountain film family who lost her life.
In the fall on Montelo and then Himalaya. And we're gonna have a big party celebration in her honor and an amazing tribute to her with a film that's never been seen before. So lots of amazing things going around and she is truly such a powerful lady that we all have so much to learn from still.
Yeah. I think that's the long and short of it to say the least passes are available, please by them and come. And there's still accommodation available in town as well. Yeah. And we've been also asking everyone as our last question of the day, what do you need? How can we help you? This is a very powerful community.
Our audience has, lots of access and resources as well. So what are you trying to manifest? What do you want? What do you need?
I believe that the number one thing is for people to come and experience the festival instead of just saying, oh, donate or support, I feel like. You really have to experience it.
To understand and to feel completely engaged and involved and like you want to, and I almost don't even want people to support the festival if they've never been. 'cause yeah, that sounds stupid but it's, it like, it's like a, it's like a magic soup. You just come drink the Kool-Aid, you understand like what's happening.
Yeah. So I would, I guess my thing would be. To please come to the festival and experience it. It's, obviously it's hard to get to Telluride and people have very busy lives, but once you take, allow yourself to have the space and know that maybe you need it. It's almost going to a yoga retreat or somewhere for you to take care of you and fill your cup.
So that's really what mountain film is. You're, you'll go on beautiful hikes, you'll see amazing films, you'll hear incredible speakers, and you'll get recharged and ready to face another year. And sometimes the news isn't so great. There's so many things happening in our world and things that are anti female, anti-woman that this can be a place for you to become. Recharged and reenergized. Yeah. I will say Cheryl Stray comes every year. She's a very well known author, did Wild, tiny. She has a Hulu series. Beautiful things. Wrote the book, tiny Beautiful Things, which I highly recommend. That's exactly what she says to me when she comes.
She says, this is my opportunity to prepare and. Be filled again so that I can face the world. So that's the kind of energy that we're hoping that we can provide for people.
Yeah. I would say the same. We love donations. Of course. That's great. More money in the pot gives us, more opportunity to share and to do more things.
I think that's great. But I think that passes is the most important thing. Bypass, come to the festival, experience it. You're someone who has, time and money and wants to go big. Do a donation pass, do an amad de bomb, do a patron pass, and come and experience it in. Its in complete most luxurious entirety.
And interact with the filmmakers in intimate settings and put yourself in the room. I think the thing about mountain film is you're putting yourself at the table and you're putting yourself in the room with the people who you wanna be in the room with when it comes to changing the world. That would be the biggest thing.
Buyer passes, come and see us. If you have questions, people can hit me up on my personal Instagram task questions as well. I'm more than happy to talk to people on the phone about accommodation and where, all those things. I'm more than happy to have those conversations with people who are interested in coming because.
It's life changing.
Thank you guys so much for taking time today to share about yourselves and mountain film. I'm so excited to see you, Shae, and to meet you in a few weeks. I'm just really excited to be there and I'm gonna keep recruiting people yay. And up until I get into the car perfect.
I'll see you guys soon. Thank you so much. And. Just thank you for being people in the world who are doing things you love and living into your passion. We need more people doing that. So thank you for leading the charge and thank you. Thank you for having
us. We really appreciate it.
Thank you for
sharing Constant for attitude.
Yeah. We can't wait to.
All the links to connect with Mountain Film, Suzan and Shea are in our show notes@thepowerfulladies.com. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, and leave us a rating and review. Come join us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies, and if you're looking to connect directly with me. Visit Kara duffy.com or Kara Duffy on Instagram.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I be taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
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Instagram: @Mountainfilm
Website: mountainfilm.org
Email: suzan@mountainfilm.org
Email: shae@mountainfilm.org
Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
