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Since 1979, Aspen Film has organized a film festival in the fall, and each spring it hosts one of North America’s Oscar-qualifying short film festivals. Throughout the year, it offers educational programs in valley schools, among other activities. And in 2022, Aspen Film purchased the century-old Isis Theatre and continues to try and keep it open to the public.

Susan Wrubel, executive and artistic director at Aspen Film, sat down with reporter Regan Mertz to talk about last week’s ShortsFest, the future of the Isis Theatre, and the Sundance Film Festival coming to Colorado.

The conversation below has been edited for clarity and length.

Regan Mertz: It’s been said that a big change made to this year’s festival is to bring established members of the film industry to Aspen to interact with festival filmmakers.

So what brought on this change?

Susan Wrubel: We’ve always brought industry guests, because in addition to having your film showcased, we want to make this more of an interactive experience for filmmakers where they can get advice from industry executives, people working within the short film space, whether they’re distributors or agents or sales companies, who can help get their films out there. We look at the festival a little bit as a launch pad, and there are some filmmakers that we found that they are squarely happy in the realm of short film, but there are other filmmakers that use their shorts as a calling card, either to do a larger film, to do commercial work, to show how they work with actors.

Mertz: This year’s program offers a diversity of films about characters in all stages of life, particularly later stages of life.

So, how did this become a theme for this year’s festival, and why do you think it’s important for these characters to be shown in film and other art?

Wrubel: So I think when you have younger people telling stories, the stories tend to focus on younger people. I think that a lot of stories that come from around the world focus on children.

So you see a lot more young people in the stories. But we also, if you look at the sort of composition of Aspen and the Aspen audience, we have a lot of people who have been here for generations and generations.

So our programming team has realized that we want to show films and tell stories about people who are representative of that demographic. And it turns out that we ended up with several phenomenal stories about people who are in later stages of life, which really resonate and are just funny.

Mertz: Earlier this year, Aspen Film representatives went to the Aspen City Council and said that without significant fundraising and operational changes the Isis Theatre is at risk of closing.

Changes in the movie business post pandemic, months-long writer and actor strike in 2023, and then the rising streaming services have just changed the operations and maintenance of the Isis.

So, where does Aspen Film and the Isis Theatre stand?

Wrubel: We spoke to the city and realized that some changes needed to happen if the theater is going to remain in Aspen. And the city at the time, and mind you, this was a city council that is going to look very different after April 8, was very supportive of our ask to lift a deed restriction on the main floor of the building, meaning that the first floor could have retail space, which pays a lot more per square foot, which would allow us to maintain the three theaters downstairs.

Everybody on council, including the soon to be former mayor, seemed to be in sync with the fact that if that’s the only way to maintain a movie theater in Aspen that they were in favor, theoretically, of going in that direction. So once the new council comes into place, Aspen Film will go back to talk to council and lay out specific plans as to how we envision doing this and what this is going to look like.

Mertz: It was recently announced that the Sundance Film Festival is coming to Boulder.

So this comes as Colorado a is trying to attract film tourism to the state, which would then in turn support existing

film festivals.

So on a wider scope, what will Sundance in Colorado mean for the film scene in the state?

Wrubel: I think it’s great because it just really brings more attention to Colorado as a destination for very high quality film and groundbreaking filmmaking, and you know, a level of excellence.

So, you know, we welcome it, you know, it definitely puts another spotlight on Colorado. And I think if it does help with incentives and driving production here, I think it’s wonderful. And I think the fact that it’s a university town is phenomenal, and more students can go and Boulder does some great film programs. I think it’s kind of a win.

Mertz: Okay great thank you so much.

Wrubel: Thank you.

Support for this Nonprofit Spotlight series comes from the Aspen Community Foundation.

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