Experience Unique Film Festivals and Series Along The Colorado Historic Opera Houses Circuit This Fall

The Colorado Historic Opera Houses Circuit, launched this year, offering visitors unique film festivals and series this fall. Planning a trip along the Circuit offers an experience of big-screen entertainment in five historic opera houses in mountain towns full of golden aspen and charm.

Tabor Opera House exterior signage. Photo by Craig Hensel.

The Circuit connects Aspen (Wheeler Opera House), Central City (Central City Opera House), Leadville (Tabor Opera House), Ouray (Wright Opera House), and Telluride (Sheridan Opera House). A new website, ColoradoOperaHouses.com, features fall opera house events and trip-planning tips.

Following the Aspen Film FILMFEST 2022 festival are two separate evenings of films at the Wheeler Opera House (Aspen):
ANYWHERE FROM HERE Ski Film | 7:00 p.m. Oct. 10
Magic Hour Ski and Snowboard Film | 7:30 p.m. Oct. 12

Shining Mountains Film Festival | Oct. 14-16 | Wheeler Opera House (Aspen)
Shining Mountains Film Festival, founded by the Aspen Indigenous Foundation in 2018, is an essential platform to give voice to American Indians. Featured films and documentaries reveal the unspoken history of our nation, the generational traumas and the struggles that Indigenous Peoples of America face daily. This annual festival showcases the rich culture, wisdom, traditional ways, beauty, and diversity of the first inhabitants of America.

Wright Opera House.

Telluride Horror Show | Oct. 13 – Oct. 16 | Sheridan Opera House (Telluride)
For three packed days, experience an eclectic mix of horror, suspense, thriller, dark fantasy, sci-fi and dark comedy in Telluride’s unique theaters, with many of the films showing for the first time in the U.S.
*Please note, this festival takes place at various theaters located throughout Telluride, including the Sheridan Opera House.

Following the festival is a special showing of The Dean’s List at 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Oct. 27, 2022.

The Sheridan Arts Foundation and Cedar Palmers Film present The Dean’s List at the historic Sheridan Opera House. Cedar Palmer Films spent the past season capturing the skiing, traveling, and lifestyle of a diverse group of Telluride local skiers- some are students and bartenders, others engineers or carpenters, but all of them would give up anything just to ski. The result of this work is The Dean’s List. Tickets on sale October 7, 2022.

Central City opera House Photography by www.amandatipton.com

Stories Worth Telling Festival | 5:00 p.m. Oct. 15, 2022 | Tabor Opera House (Leadville)
This inaugural festival will feature short outdoor and adventure films – all made by Colorado filmmakers and/or featuring Coloradan film subjects. The films are centered around the four main festival values of Compassion, Innovation, Adventure, and Community; and the showcase aims to connect community through the power of story.

Movies at the Wright | 7:00 p.m. Wednesdays, Oct.| Wright Opera House (Ouray)

Oct. 12 – Last Night in Soho
An aspiring fashion designer encounters a dazzling wannabe singer in the 1960s, but the glamor takes a dark turn.
Oct. 26 – Candyman
A sequel to the horror film Candyman (1992) that returns to the now-gentrified Chicago neighborhood where the legend began.
Oct. 28 – Huda’s Salon
A 2021 internationally co-produced thriller film written, directed, and produced by Hany Abu-Assad.
To learn more about the Colorado Historic Opera Houses Circuit, visit ColoradoOperaHouses.com.

The following organizations are Circuit partners: