Jennifer Ammann blasts Telluride Film Festival on YouTube, Quits

Jennifer and The Telluride Gnome

Something snapped for Jennifer Ammann. After serving as production manager for the Berkeley-based Telluride Film Festival and its Galaxy Theater for 10 years, she not only abruptly quit, but made a frank YouTube video that added up to a kick in the Telluride's executive staff's pants as she went out of the door.

And all of this, just two weeks before The 2010 Telluride Film Festival's Labor Day Weekend launch.

This blogger has only heard good things about The Telluride Film Festival, and thinks positive thoughts about the people involved in it. Thus, something happened to Jennifer Ammann that, in listening to her impassioned speech on the video, may have been related to how well an organization adjusts to a poor economy, and how its staff reacts to those changes.

One thing's for sure: Jennifer Ammann was so into The Telluride Film Festival, her YouTube channel is called telluridegnome "The Gnome's Movie Outtakes," and contains 110 uploaded videos about The Telluride Gnome, which was reportedly stolen from the film festival.

While it's video number 110, uploaded August 14th 2010, that's causing all the buzz, it's interesting to go back through the video collection to learn, to a degree, what was on the mind of Jennifer Ammann. Why not? From the looks of things, video #110 was her last one on Telluride. Here's the first one she made on September 24th 2008. Called The night the Telluride Gnome was kidnapped! it looked like something a couple of drunks made after some film festival love-making:



The rest of the video concerns the "Kidnapped Telluride Gnome" and feature the voice of an unknown white guy with hairy, wrinkled hands. Jennifer Ammann appears in two of the three videos of this theme.

The video set continues and slowly we realize Mark and Jen have taken the Telluride Gnome on trips to various places, like Paris, Miami and Barcelona, and all in some quest to present their film ideas, or just act like fools:



In all of this, the theme seems to be Mark and Jen just fooling around. Take this video:



Digging around for more on The Telluride Gnome, a blog pops up in search called Mark and Jen's Telluride Gnome Productions, a photo of Jennifer Ammann with The Telluride Gnome, and two descriptions, one that reads "THE REAL BEHIND-THE-SCENES OF OUR BIG MOVIE! HERE YOU CAN FIND ALL THE OUTTAKES FROM THE MOVIE AND ALL THE DETAILS OF OUR FILM-MAKING PROCESS..." And another that says "I am the Telluride Gnome, stolen from the Telluride Film Festival by Mark Sgarzi and turned into an international star and beneficent helper to all the children of the world."

Right.

Whatever the case after two years of blogging, Mark and Jen stopped any kind of posting to the blog on February 1, 2010, and without reason.

Then the video everyone's talking about appeared:



One can see what Jennifer's talking about by one look at the Telluride Film Festival's organization. When one looks down the lists of names, a few hundred of them appear.

When you get to Jennifer's name, it's in a sea of 20 production managers. She looks like a fly in the soup, which is what she's turned out to be after the video.

The video itself is literally a cry out for a time she feels has been lost: one where the Telluride Film Festival wasn't the bureaucracy she describes it to be. "The bureaucratization of this festival has taken all the joy out of working for it," she says. "And I don't see it as a not-for-profit, independent, promoter of film art, any longer."

She goes on to say she's "a woman of principals and refuses to work for people who don't value their employees," then says the Telluride does not value its employees.

That's telling, because Jennifer then says that the production staff is the backbone of the Telluride Film Festival, but its not valued and people are "fired demoted, squeezed, or simply ignored due to cut backs and personal grudges. And now you're taking away breakfast."

Jennifer says that while Telluride execs cut out breakfast, "I'm sure you'll be flying business class."

Wow.

What I make of this, knowing a lot of people, players, and stuff, is that, first, Jennifer's film dreams were attached to the Festival. Second, Telluride Film Festival Co-Director Tom Luddy, who I personally know to be a good guy, made have caught Jennifer on a bad day. Third, whatever cut backs are being made, Jennifer Ammann may reflect an idea from some staffers that their needs have been forgotten, or just plain ignored.

If I were Tom, I'd at least make a phone call to Jennifer to make amends and try to get her back. It would turn a bad story into a good one, and give the feeling that the bureaucracy she complained about wasn't so large that directors lost touch with the staffers who make the film festival work.