Guests of the Fest
We honor globally-recognized artists who are changing the world and the art of filmmaking.
Paul Raci - Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award
Paul Raci is an Academy Award®-nominated actor with decades of experience in theater, music, and film. In 2021, Raci's performance in the acclaimed film Sound of Metal earned him dozens of awards including Best Supporting Actor from the National Society of Film Critics and the Independent Spirit Awards. Raci was also nominated for an Oscar® in the role. Other recent film and television credits include HBO's Perry Mason, The Mother (starring Jennifer Lopez), Butcher's Crossing (starring Nicolas Cage), and The Secret Art of Human Flight (OIFF 2023, Colorado premiere).
As a CODA (child of deaf adults), Paul Raci both sings and performs in American Sign Language in the metal band Hands of Doom. As a theater artist, Raci has also performed for both deaf and hearing audiences for decades from Chicago to Los Angeles. Given Raci's longstanding commitment to accessibility and excellence in film, theater, and music, we are thrilled to honor Paul Raci with the Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award at OIFF 2023.
Raci’s latest film The Secret Art of Human Flight will be making its Colorado premiere on the opening night of OIFF 2023. The film also stars Grant Rosenmeyer (The Royal Tenenbaums, Come As You Are) who will be in conversation with Raci about his career in the arts just before we screen Sound of Metal at the Saturday night gala.
Hannah Peterson - Director’s Spotlight Award
This year’s Directors Spotlight recipient is director and writer Hannah Peterson. Filmmaker Magazine named her one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Her work has screened at Sundance Film Festival, MoMA, REDCAT, Tribeca Film Festival, and Slamdance Film Festival where she was awarded the AGBO fellowship for her short film, “East of the River.” She holds an MFA in Film Directing from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and a BA in Screen Studies from the New School. Prior to her work as a director, Hannah mentored under filmmakers Sean Baker and Chloé Zhao. In 2022, Peterson screened her short film “Champ” at OIFF. This year, we will screen Peterson’s debut feature, The Graduates along with her 2019 award-winning short “East of the River.” Peterson will talk about the journey from her short to feature as part of the Director’s Spotlight Ceremony.
Jeffrey Palmer - Film in Action Award
Jeffrey Palmer, a member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, is an award-winning filmmaker and media artist. He describes his work as a multimedia exploration of Indigenous people’s lives in twenty-first century America. He recently completed his first feature film, N. Scott Momaday: Words from a Bear, examining the life and mind of the first and only Native American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature. The film premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and aired nationally on the PBS series, American Masters. In 2020, the film was nominated for an Emmy in support of American Masters’ 33rd season, for Outstanding Documentary or Non-Fiction Series. The film also won the 2019 Ted Turner Award for the film that most encourages environmental stewardship. Words from a Bear will screen in Ouray as part of the of the Film in Action Award ceremony honoring Palmer’s body of work.
Palmer’s numerous short films, “Isabelle’s Garden,” was a winner of the Bill and Melinda Gates Short Film Challenge at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. His films screened at venues such as Hot Docs, The Seattle International Film Festival, The Berlinale European Market, The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, and many others around the world. He received numerous awards, grants, and recognition from the Sundance Institute, ITVS, Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and the Firelight Media Documentary Lab. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America, International Documentary Association, Television Academy, and is an Assistant Professor of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. He is currently working on his second feature film “Ghosts”.
Maria Pankova - Excellence in International Filmmaking
Maria Pankova is a Ukrainian filmmaker joining us from her home country with the film Breathing. Documenting the earliest moments of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the film was co-directed by Viktor Petrenko. Their film is both lyrical and challenging, offering a crucial first-person experience of the Ukrainian people in our time. We are pleased to honor Maria and her filmmaking partners with a medallion in recognition of Excellence in International Filmmaking.
Colleen Thurston - Scholar-in-Residence
Colleen Thurston is a documentary storyteller and film programmer from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her films explore the relationships between humans and the natural world and focus on Indigenous stories and perspectives. She holds an MFA from Montana State University’s Science and Natural History Filmmaking program, where she also earned a graduate certificate in American Indian Studies. Her BA in Media Arts and Anthropology is from the University of Arizona. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma where she teaches documentary studies and film production.
Colleen has produced work for the Smithsonian Channel, Vox, illumiNATIVE and museums, public television stations, and federal and tribal organizations. She serves as the project coordinator for Native Lens, a collaboration media project that provides a platform, training and support for Indigenous filmmakers and storytellers. Colleen is currently in production on her first feature documentary, Drowned Land, which is supported by ITVS, Vision Maker Media, Firelight Media, Nia Tero Foundation, the Redford Center and the Sundance Institute. She is writer, producer and host on the Audible Original documentary podcast Lighthorse, also in production, and is a programmer for the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.
Colleen is a 2019-2021 Firelight Media doc lab fellow, a Sundance Institute Indigenous Film Fund Fellow, and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
Gregg Deal - Artist-in-Residence
GREGG DEAL — Gregg Deal, (Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe) is a multi-disciplinary artist, activist, and "disruptor." His work is informed by his Native identity and includes exhaustive critiques of American society, politics, popular culture and history. Through paintings, murals, performance work, filmmaking, spoken word, and more, Deal invites the viewer to confront these issues both in the present and the past tense.
In a 2018 TED Talk, Deal described his work as “honoring Indigenous experiences, challenging stereotypes, and pushing for accurate representations of Indigenous people in art.” It is in these "disruptions" of stereotypes and ahistorical representations which Deal uses the term to describe his work. Gregg Deal has exhibited his work at notable institutions both locally, nationally, and internationally including the Denver Art Museum, RedLine Gallery, and The Smithsonian Institution. The artist currently lives with his wife and five children along the Front Range of Colorado.
Deal designed the poster for the 2023 film festival in Ouray.
Bob Edwards of Skywalker Sound - Special Guest, Sound Workshop Leader
Bob Edwards is a Sound Designer, Editor and Re-Recording Mixer at Skywalker Sound in Marin County, California. In his thirty-four years at Skywalker, Bob has contributed to narrative feature films, documentaries, television, cable and internet projects, and film scores. He is currently completing a 2-part documentary on the life and career of Steve Martin for Apple TV+. Recent projects include HALLELUJAH: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song (2022), and MISSION: JOY, an exploration of the remarkable friendship between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama (2021). Bob was awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Sound for his work on the Netflix documentary FIRE IN PARADISE (2019). Festival guests will have the opportunity to experience Bob exploring the design process live with material from his past work.