on American or international film culture. Past recipients include Milos Stehlik (founder of Facets Multi-Media), HBO, the French film magazine Positif, Ted Turner, and Janus Films. Silver Medallion The Telluride Film Festival Silver Medallion is awarded to three honorees each year. The 1974 tributes honored Francis Ford Coppola, Gloria Swanson and Leni Riefenstahl. Other tributees have included Riz Ahmed, Pedro Almodóvar, Robert Altman, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, George Clooney, Toni Colette, Penélope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Daniel Day-Lewis, Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Peter Dinklage, Clint Eastwood, Jodie Foster, Peter Greenaway, Sterling Hayden, Werner Herzog, Harvey Keitel, Ang Lee, David Lynch, Jack Nicholson, Mads Mikkelsen, Peter O'Toole, Sara Polley, Mickey Rooney, John Schlesinger, Jean Simmons, Meryl Streep, Tilda Swinton, Andrei Tarkovsky and Peter Weir. Style As of 2015 the program was created by founder and artistic director Tom Luddy, executive director Julie Huntsinger and one of the Telluride Film Festival guest directors, who change each year. These have included Errol Morris, Peter Bogdanovich, Bertrand Tavernier, Salman Rushdie, Don DeLillo, Peter Sellars, Stephen Sondheim, Buck Henry, and Michael Ondaatje. Each year, an artist is selected to produce the poster art for the festival. Those who have accepted the commission include Chuck Jones, David Salle, Doug and Mike Starn, Dottie Attie, Jim Dine, Ed Ruscha, Francesco Clemente, Dave McKean, Gary Larson and Luke Dorman of Meow Wolf. The sole requirement for the poster is that the word SHOW be featured. This is a tribute to a large illuminated sign which says "Show" and sits outside of the Sheridan Opera House, the festival venue where the Silver Medallions are awarded. Reactions Susan Sontag, in her 1974 essay "Fascinating Fascism", lamented that, "The purification of Leni Riefenstahl's reputation of its Nazi dross has been gathering momentum for some time, but it has reached some kind of climax this year, with Riefenstahl the guest of honor at a new cinéphile-controlled film festival held in the summer in Colorado...." After serving as guest director in 2001, Salman Rushdie wrote that, "It is extraordinarily exciting, in this age of the triumph of capitalism, to discover an event dedicated not to commerce but to love". Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote in 2002 that "the hothouse filmocentric universe Telluride creates over a Labor Day weekend has always been more a religion than anything as ordinary as a festival, complete with messianic believers and agnostic scoffers." Jeffrey Ruoff, a