The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has awarded a $50,000 grant to underwrite the 2010 Telluride Film Festival’s Guest Director program, this year featuring novelist and screenwriter of “The English Patient,” Michael Ondaatje.

This is the third consecutive year that the Academy has funded the program. In 2008 the festival’s guest director was Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian political philosopher and cultural critic; in 2009, it was Alexander Payne, the director and Oscar®-winning screenwriter of “Sideways.”

For more than two decades, Telluride has welcomed numerous prominent filmmakers and personalities to help select and present each year’s films. Previous guest directors include Academy Award®-nominated writer-director Peter Bogdanovich, director Jean-Pierre Gorin, film curator and archivist Edith Kramer, Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris, author Salman Rushdie, Oscar-winning composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, and filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier.

The Academy Foundation – the Academy’s cultural and educational wing – annually distributes more than $1 million to film scholars, cultural organizations and film festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad. The Foundation also presents the Academy’s rich assortment of screenings and other public programs each year.