Missed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at the C0150 kickoff in May? The buddy-comedy classic will screen at least seven more times in venues ranging from Denver to Durango and Steamboat Springs. Courtesy: 20th Century Studios
If you haven’t heard, a new film festival is coming to town. No, not that film festival — that one’s not until January. This one is for the summer crowd, the ones who don’t think the 250th anniversary of the United States of America (the semiquincentennial) is local enough.
Lucky for them, 2026 also marks the Centennial State’s sesquicentennial, 150 years of statehood, and the Colorado 150 Film Festival wants you to celebrate in the theater.
“This once-in-a-lifetime celebration will inspire Coloradans to get off the couch, visit historic venues all over the state and celebrate together, the way movies are meant to be seen,” Switchboard CEO Rob DuRay says in a Denver Film press release.
Switchboard, a Denver-based marketing and communications company, in collaboration with Denver Film, presents CO150: a summer and fall retrospective encompassing more than 30 theaters across the state — including Boulder’s Boedecker Theater and Denver’s Sie FilmCenter — and 25ish movies either filmed in Colorado, set in Colorado or featuring filmmakers from Colorado.
In addition to the movies, CO150’s press release notes that each screening “will also showcase short films, music videos and presentations from filmmakers, artists, critics and other Colorado creative workers prior to each screening.”
CO150 kicked off May 23 at Center’s Frontier Drive-Inn with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. That 1969 Western starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford was voted the No. 1 Colorado-connected film according to Colorado film programmers, theater managers, industry professionals and the public, from a selection of 600-plus eligible movies.
Don’t worry if you missed your chance to visit Center’s combination drive-in and inn to see Butch and Sundance rob the train running along the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge tracks: The buddy-comedy will screen at least seven more times during CO150, in venues ranging from Denver to Durango and Steamboat Springs.
Butch and Sundance are not alone — many of the movies that made up CO150’s top 25 will screen at multiple venues over the next few months.
When one thinks of Ladybugs, the 1992 sports comedy where Rodney Dangerfield coaches a girls' soccer team in his never-ending quest for respect, one does not think: Colorado. Yet, there Ladybugs sits at No.99 on CO150. And with good reason — the movie isn’t just set here, it was filmed here, too.
With the exception of Westerns, Colorado does not make a typical backdrop for cinematic stories the way New York, California and Texas do. It makes sense, then, that 40ish of CO150’s entries hail from that expansive and magnificent 19th-century set genre.
With Butch Cassidy sitting pretty at No. 1, it only makes sense that 1969’s True Grit lands at No. 2. Scripted by Greeley native Marguerite Roberts and starring John Wayne, True Grit exhibits some of Colorado’s most scenic landscapes from the southwest side of the state: Canon City, Gunnison, Ridgeway, Ouray and more. The climactic scene where Wayne rides down his aggressors is iconic, and the backdrop of quaking aspens is about as picturesque as it gets.
Of the Westerns that made CO150’s list, six land in the top 25, including 1966’s Stagecoach (No. 15), a movie that has so totally slipped through the cracks of cinematic history that this writer didn’t even know of its existence until CO150. Is it possible that those who voted for 1966’s Stagecoach thought they were casting their vote for the 1939 classic of the same name? Probably.
The 1939 Stagecoach — filmed primarily in Arizona’s Monument Valley with at least one shot, according to IMDB, captured in Canon City — did make CO150’s list at No. 48, and will screen in at least three cities across the state. The 1966 version, apparently shot in Nederland, has no booking announced as of this publication. (It’s worth noting that CO150’s website claims, “John Ford remakes his 1939 Western...” Ford did no such thing. Gordon Douglas directed the 1966 Stagecoach. Ford directed his final feature in 1965.)
What then makes a Colorado movie? That’s difficult to pin down, as most movies are assembled from footage shot in multiple locations for varying reasons. Dr. Strangelove, No. 9 on CO150, is far from a Colorado movie, but some of the exterior shots are of the Rocky Mountains. The Shining, No.3, is considered a Colorado movie because novelist Stephen King stayed in Estes Park’s Stanley Hotel, used it as the basis for his 1977 horror novel — renamed the Overlook Hotel — and then filmmaker Stanley Kubrick turned the book into a movie in 1980.
Kubrick filmed his movie on sets in Southern England, and, famously, made no friend of King with his adaptation. King much preferred Mick Garris’ 1997 TV series treatment of The Shining, which was filmed in Estes Park. The TV series version of The Shining will not screen CO150, but the Sie FilmCenter will host Garris for an afternoon discussion on Aug. 23.
The Sie isn’t the only theater incorporating screenings outside CO150’s list. Boulder’s Boedecker Theater will feature six movies with local connections, including the Oscar-nominated documentary Porcelain War from Boulder native Paula DuPré Pesmen, who will introduce the Boe’s Sept. 14 screening.
Other theaters are bound to follow suit, and though CO150’s screenings are underway, this is just the beginning. CU Boulder’s International Film Series has yet to release its Fall 2026 line-up, but a Colorado-connected title or three is sure to crop up there, too.
Connections (or lack thereof) and fidelity to CO150’s top 25 be damned: Du Ray’s sentiment, to “visit historic venues all over the state and celebrate together,” might be the best excuse to check out some of these classics on the big screen in a local theater and celebrate 150 years of statehood. There are certainly worse ways to mark a historic anniversary.
The following venues have screenings scheduled at the time of publication.
Boulder: Boedecker Theater at Dairy Arts Center
Breckenridge: The Eclipse Theater, Riverwalk Center
Center: Frontier Drive-Inn
Colorado Springs: Ent Center for the Arts, Lulu’s Downtown, Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum
Cortez: Sunflower Theatre
Denver: Denver Botanic Gardens, MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre, Sie FilmCenter
Durango: Durango Arts Center, Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, Three Springs
Flagler: Flagler Theatre
Fort Collins: The Lyric
Fort Morgan: Cover 4 Theatre
Greeley: The Kress Cinema and Lounge
Lamar: The LaMar
Limon: Lincoln Theatre
Mancos: Mancos Opera House
Ouray: Wright Opera House
Pagosa Springs: Liberty Theatre
Pueblo: Blo Back Gallery, Impossible Playhouse, Lucero Library, Mesa Drive-in, Sangre De Cristo Arts and Conference Center
Silverton: The Powerhouse
Steamboat Springs: Wildhorse Cinema + Arts
For ease of screening times and venue location, we’re linking the titles to CO150’s website, but treat entry information with suspicion. Certain info is flat-out wrong — Elevation, No. 12 on CO150, was released in 2024, not the listed 2014 — and some Colorado connections are difficult to verify.
In addition to the footage shot along the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, the Lower Animas Canyon north of Durango is where the famous cliff jump was shot. At least part of it. The shots of Redford and Newman bickering on the ledge — “I can’t swim!” “You crazy? The fall will probably kill you!” — were shot in Colorado, but the whole sequence is a touch of movie magic. The pair in close-up appear to jump off the cliff (in reality, a rock outcropping) and then a wide shot of two stunt doubles jumping into a lake at the then-20th Century Fox Ranch, now Malibu Creek State Park, in California. If you look at the edges of the frame, what appear to be the canyon walls are simple, but effective, matte paintings.
True Grit (1969)
The Shining (1980)
BlackKklansman (2018)
The Hateful Eight (2015)
City Slickers (1991)
Dumb and Dumber (1994)
Badlands (1973)
Terrence Malick’s feature debut as writer-director was based on the real-life killing spree of Charles Starkweather and his accompanying girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, in Nebraska and Wyoming. Malick moved the narrative to South Dakota, but filmed mostly in southern Colorado: Rocky Ford, Las Animas, La Junta and Pueblo. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek play the lovers on the run, and Malick’s poetic meditation on psychopathy only grows more relevant as troubled young men permeate the culture.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
About Schmidt (2002)
Elevation (2024)
Honestly, how is this not No.1?
Stagecoach (1966)
Misery (1990)
127 Hours (2010)
A League of Their Own (1992)
In the Line of Fire (1993)
Quite a bit of the prologue with River Phoenix playing the young adventuring archeologist was shot in the Alamosa, Pagosa Springs area, with the train chase sequence filmed on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. Where would Colorado cinema be if not for railroads?
WarGames (1983)
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Downhill Racer (1969)
Robert Redford plays Chappellet, a downhill skier from Idaho Springs who looks and talks like a champion, but fails to contain any human depth beyond being a champion. The result is fascinating and distancing all at the same time. Watching the movie today, it’s easy to see why Redford would become synonymous with tough and acerbic narratives that would become the hallmark of the Sundance Film Festival, which will soon call Boulder home. That, by the way, is where they shot the training scene on the running track in Downhill Racer.
National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)
A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950)
And one more for good measure — Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Landing at No.27, and nestled between ABC’s Twin Peaks (1990-91) and Showtime’s Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), Fire Walk With Me returns to the idyllic Pacific Northwest town with terrifying secrets to hide, and tracks the last days of living dead girl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee, a former Boulder resident and Fairview High School graduate). Lee is magnificent in Fire Walk With Me and gives Laura the moments the character always deserved.
