David Holbrooke has political pedigree — his father was the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who worked with presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama as a foreign policy expert in places like Bosnia, Vietnam, the Balkans and Afghanistan.
But the younger Holbrooke, who just turned 60, prefers to be known for his other claim to fame: “cultural entrepreneur, which is a funny thing to put on a business card,” he said.
His chosen identity certainly has depth, as he has immersed himself in a dozen different cultures to create an eclectic list of documentaries over the years.
Before that, in the late ‘90s, he was producer of longform story segments for the “Today” show, CBS News and CNN. Even though he loved what he did, he ached watching his colleagues branch into their own movie-making. Fast forward a few reels of celluloid and he started making his own documentaries in 2002, with “The Trials of Henry Kissinger” on HBO. A half dozen or so films followed, including “The Diplomat,” in 2015, about his dad in three acts: Vietnam, Bosnia and Afghanistan, “and also a father-son relationship and five decades of American policy,” Holbrooke said.
Holbrooke is in the film, interviewing dignitaries like Hilary Clinton, Madeline Albright, Al Gore, Kofi Annan and John Kerry to piece together a portrait of a father in absentia at times because he was so busy brokering world peace deals.
But Holbrooke treats his dad with respect: As Brendan Vaughn, in GQ magazine said, “You don’t have to be Richard Holbrooke, or even close, to hope that your children will be as understanding as David Holbrooke is about all the things you missed when you were still at the office.”
The viewer also gets some perspective on David, who pours his version of Richard’s drive and determination into his “cultural entrepreneurship.”
But a cultural entrepreneur doesn’t just make movies, does he?
In Holbrooke’s case, no, which is why he why he founded a full-service marketing company, Giraffe Partners, in 2001; why he was festival director at Mountainfilm in Telluride from 2008 to 2017; and why in 2018 he cooked up the Original Thinkers festival, which this year he’s bringing to the Telluride Public Library, the Patagonia store, a theater, a gallery and the Pinhead Institute World Headquarters, a nonprofit that promotes science education in southwestern Colorado, Oct. 2-5.
Think of Original Thinkers as the alternative to gargantuan film festivals like Mountainfilm or Sundance, where people can feel overwhelmed and exhausted “because they spend, you know, 12 hours a day going from line to line,” Holbrooke said.
This year’s festival, he said, is also built on the idea “that it’s a lot to take in, the headlines, the barrage of bad news, the wave of shocking, unspeakable actions again and again by an out-of-control government,” and understanding “how this barrage of bad news creates real physical and psychological manifestations in our whole body, our whole being, and how to address that and grapple with it.”
Holbrooke won’t be guiding you to psychic-emotional-psychological bliss, however. He’s leaving that up to people like Jade Rose, who’ll lead a workshop called “Tea and Tarot,” and Molina Speaks, a producer, poet and performance artist whose exhibitions explore Black and Indigenous histories in Colorado at the intersections of freedom and enslavement.
Grace Reins founder Erin Cain will give you IRL equine therapy to slow the cortisol coursing through your veins and climate activist Auden Schendler will lead a discussion based on his new book “Terrible Beauty,” about reckoning with climate complicity and “rediscovering our soul,” as the subtitle reads.
And, of course, there are movies. They include “Sabbath Queen” about an Israeli drag queen; “Entropy,” about a choir in Ojai, California; and Holbrooke’s newest work-in-progress documentary, about former San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters, a ski bum turned cop turned “pretty hardcore drug warrior gaining awards from the DEA and all of that, to recognizing, realizing, seeing that the drug war was ineffective at best and dangerous and harmful at worst,” Holbrooke said.
All of that leads to the headliner, actor Matthew Modine, who’s screening his 1999 crime caper “If…Dog…Rabbit,” followed by a talk about his motivations for making the film.
But don’t get all tied up in knots worrying you’re not an “original thinker.”
“Everyone can be one if they put their mind to it,” said Holbrooke.