Big Sky kicks off today and runs to Feb 21. I’m a big Montana fan and am really wishing I could be there! The line-up has a lot of festival favorites from the past year with a few newer titles.

Check out the program – Features, Shorts and Big Sky competitions, in addition to Minidocs (shorts), Asia and Special Presentations. Filmmaker Les Blank, a veteran doc maker and lon-time self-distributor is pictured right from the 2006 fest – this year he is showing his newest work, The Tea Film.

Also more than worth noting, Documentary Insider Sarah Jo Marks is on the jury, as is Sky Sitney, director of programming at Silverdocs, Phoebe Brush from Full Frame and the awesome Steve James, among several others. The jury line-up is here.

I met festival founder Doug Hawes-Davis at the IFP Market where he brought a new film he’s working on with partner Dru Carr – together, they are the awesome High Plains Films. Keep an eye out for Brave New West coming soon.