The Denver Film Festival no doubt activated some cinephiles’ Spidey sense when it scheduled a special screening of the biggest movie ever made.

It’s true. With more than 1,000 artists employed in various creative capacities, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” was the biggest artistic collaboration in Hollywood history, Producer Christina Steinberg said. And that number, Denver Film CEO Kevin Smith opined, “is absolutely mind-blowing to me.”

For 46 years, the Denver Film Festival has existed to amplify films that have yet to be released or streamed. But it turns out showing an animated blockbuster that grossed $690 million worldwide actually fits in quite comfortably with the festival’s mission because, at its core, “Spider-Verse” is a truly experimental, groundbreaking film that introduces lots of unprecedented technologies in sound and visuals.

This year, the festival created the 5280 Award specifically to honor one entire filmmaking team whose creative collaboration has contributed to the appreciation of a film across audiences. After a jam-packed screening of the film at the AMC9 on Tuesday, Smith and Denver Film Artistic Director Matt Campbell presented the first 5280 Award to five representative creatives.

“When we look at the Denver Film Festival, one of the things that sometimes gets overlooked is how important it is to look at the entire team that creates any one of these films,” said Smith. “It’s not just one person. And when you look at all the different elements that are throughout his film and how it all came together, you have a film that really, I think, speaks to almost any audience of any kind.”

For the four people who have not seen the second installment in the latest “Spider-Man” franchise, Miles Morales catapults across the multiverse, where he encounters a huge array of Spider-People who clash on how to handle a new existential threat.

“It’s beautiful when a film works in all its synergy, when they all listen to each other and they include multiple voices,” Campbell said. “Running a film festival takes a similar kind of collaborative effort. We cannot do this festival without a big team. We want to have diversity of thought. Bringing different people together is only going to make it stronger.”

Campbell said that, while it was not by design, it doesn’t hurt for a film festival to occasionally show a film that appeals to the masses.

“A film festival should be a celebration of all types of cinema,” Campbell said. “I don’t think there’s anything that’s ‘less than’ if it’s an animated studio film that plays in the multiplex and it’s for people of all ages. Whether it’s a film that you enjoy while you laugh and eat popcorn, or if it’s a hard-hitting art-house circuit film, they both have their place within a theater, and we want to celebrate all of that.”

SPIDEY-BITES

Tidbits from the post-show talkback: The character of Hobie (a.k.a. Spider-Punk) was nearly cut from the film until Daniel Kaluuya was cast to voice him. Instead, his part was re-written and expanded. Because Kaluuya is from Camden Town in London, the writers encouraged the actor to speak in his natural voice. But they didn’t know the local slang, so they hired Kaluuya’s hometown pal, Reggie Yates, to come in and just talk to his friend, with the writers picking up on their back-and-forth …

The entire production took four years to complete. Writer-producer Phil Lord said the creative process was not unlike developing a stage musical.

“I think it’s sometimes mysterious how an animation performance gets crafted,” he said. “It’s a collaboration between the voice performances and the animation team and how that gets interpreted on screen. But it’s not like these folks are coming in for a quick payday and knocking this out in a couple of sessions. These scenes are workshopped over years like we were headed for Broadway.”

For a major scene introducing Pavitr Prabhakar, a truly Indianized iteration of Peter Parker, the team did extensive research and consulted with Indian performers, acrobats and animators.

“It’s a lot of just studying as much as we can, making sure that we’re respecting and taking full responsibility for making all these different (ethnic) variations of Spider-Man,” said writer-producer Christopher Miller. And yet, it didn’t work. Lord and Miller essentially took turns telling this story:

“For the India sequence, this consortium of Indian animators sent us an email saying, ‘We don’t think this is good enough yet. It’s not specific enough. He’s not cool enough. Here are all the ways that we don’t think it feels authentic.’ One way to go with that is to say, ‘I’m sorry, we’re too deep into production at this point.’ But instead, we stopped. We got a team of Indian and Indian American writers together. We did a one-day session where everyone pitched what it’s like to be a teenager in Mumbai. We talked about code-switching and all this different stuff – and tons of amazing pitches came out of that. So we rewrote the entire sequence. There are lots of videos of people in India standing up and cheering for that stuff in the movie. And it only happened because we listened and we pushed until it was actually good.”

A NUCLEAR TOWN DIVIDED

I attended Tuesday’s screening of the thoughtful documentary “Richland” on what happened to be my childhood best friend’s birthday. When we were just 15, Mike Downing’s dad died of esophageal cancer after working for 17 years at the now closed Rocky Flats nuclear power plant. Jim Downing’s lungs were contaminated with nearly 400 times more plutonium than normal, his medical records showed.

“Richland” quietly tells the jaw-dropping and little-known story of another Los Alamos: A proud Washington-state community that sprang-up seemingly overnight around a nuclear factory that made the gas that was dropped on the people of Nagasaki. The documentary shows daily life now in a town deeply divided over its role in the creation of the atomic bomb. The town high school’s nickname is “The Bombers,” its mascot is a mushroom cloud, and its slogan is “Nuke ‘Em Till They Glow.” And there are huge swaths of land that won’t be habitable again for humans for at least a billion years.

It’s all a bit mind-boggling. But none of the anger that I felt in watching the film is evident in the work of the extraordinarily gentle filmmaker Irene Lusztig. She said she brought her film to Richland for a single community screening, and it was quickly booked for a full run at the local cineplex to accommodate demand.

“Had I made a really angry film, half the community in Richland would not have wanted to participate,” she said after the screening. “I think what I can offer is a really patient listening space and facilitation. And I thought it was really important to show the community in all its complexity and not come in with an angle. It was really important to people to hear that I’m not an investigative journalist. I’m not making a takedown.”

SCREENING OF THE DAY

One of the big themes of the 2023 festival is space, starting with “The Space Race,” a powerful documentary that profiles NASA’s pioneering Black pilots, scientists and engineers who served their country in space – even as that country failed to afford equality for them back on Earth.

World-renowned Denver sculptor Ed Dwight, the very first Black astronaut, will be in attendance for a screening and conversation at 7 p.m. tonight at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science’s Infinity Theatre, 2001 Colorado Blvd.

LET’S GET INTERACTIVE

Every year, the film festival offers creative interactive experiences, and this year that is “Casting,” which invites up to 12 participants at a time to find out whether they have that star power it takes to book the big gig.

“Casting,” while both absurd and poignant, combines theater, dance, and interactive sound and video design. Each group session lasts 20-30 minutes. The experience has been described as “a surrealistically satirical riff on the Hollywood casting process that feels like that dream you had –  you know the one. At least this time you’re not only in your underwear.” Performers Sam Alper and Koryn Wicks will lead 14 “Casting”  sessions starting at 4:45 p.m. Thursday and going through 7 p.m. Saturday at 580 Gilpin St.

Meanwhile, at the Colfax Tattered Cover, “40 Watts from Nowhere” puts you in the shoes of ’90s counterculture icon Sue Carpenter, whose illegal station KBLT captured the attention of misfit music lovers – and the authorities. 30 minutes. 1 p.m. Thursday through 7 p.m. Saturday at 2526 E. Colfax Ave.

SPOTLIGHT ON COLORADO

Producer Shane Boris, a Colorado Academy graduate whose “Navalny” won the 2023 Oscar for Best Documentary, is screening “King Coal,” about the power coal holds over the identity of people from Central Appalachia, at 7:15 p.m. at the AMC 9, 825 Albion St.

Also: Colorado-made short documentaries will screen at 3:30 p.m.; followed by local short narratives at 6:45 p.m. at the AMC9.

WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING?

Director Michael Selditch and associate producer Erica Guzman will dish on “Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field” after screenings at 7 p.m. tonight and 4 p.m. Friday at the AMC9. Field, best known for her work on “Sex and The City” and “Emily in Paris,” impacted fashion and pop culture for six decades …

Meanwhile, not a screening but a live panel: Oscar-nominated makeup artist Donald Mowat (“Dune,” “Blade Runner 2049”) will share industry insights on the magic of hair and makeup on the big screen. 10 a.m. today and Friday at The Jacquard Hotel, 222 Milwaukee St….

Catch Nicholas Cage’s latest film, “a wickedly entertaining horror comedy” called “Dream Scenario,” at 7 p.m. at the Denver Botanic Gardens. He plays a family man whose life gets turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams.

TITLE OF THE DAY

“Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World,” a Romanian dramatic comedy about a workplace accident. 7 p.m. tonight and 4 p.m. Friday at the Sie FilmCenter.

INFORMATION AND TICKETS

Go to denverfilm.org

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