Oscar buzz to run high as the proudly low-key Telluride Film Festival gets underway

There will be no red carpets. No paparazzi. At 8,750 feet above sea level, even oxygen will be in relatively short supply.

But when the 44th Telluride Film Festival kicks off Friday, scores of filmmakers, stars and movie executives will make their way to the isolated town in the mountains of Colorado, where miners once dug for silver and gold, to hunt for another precious commodity: Oscar buzz.

An increasingly important early stop on the awards season calendar _ albeit a more intimate and casual affair than the bigger, flashier festivals in Venice, Toronto and New York with which it jockeys _ Telluride has played host to seven of the last eight best picture winners, including "12 Years a Slave," "Argo," "Birdman" and "Moonlight."

As this year's lineup _ which includes such highly anticipated features as