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Slamdance Film Festival

Location	Park City, Utah, U.S.A.
Website	http://www.slamdance.com/

As a year-round organization, Slamdance serves as a showcase for the discovery of new and emerging talent and is dedicated to the nurturing and development of new independent artists and their vision. Slamdance lives by its mantra: "By Filmmakers, For Filmmakers." No other festival is fully programmed by filmmakers. Slamdance counts among its alumni many notable writers and directors who first gained notice at the festival, including Christopher Nolan, Marc Forster, Jared Hess and Oren Peli. The Slamdance Film Festival takes place each year in Utah at the same time as the Sundance Film Festival, competing to provide what its supporters consider a truer representation of independent filmmaking. Slamdance is especially unique because their feature competition is limited to films made with budgets under $1 million dollars and made by first time directors. New filmmakers and writers today realize Slamdance is a great place to launch their careers. 

History

Founding

The festival was founded in 1995 by Dan Mirvish, Jon Fitzgerald, Shane Kuhn and Peter Baxter and has since become a year-round organization championing emerging filmmaking talent and their new work.

Programmed by filmmakers for filmmakers, Slamdance adamantly supports self-governance amongst independents, and exists to deliver what filmmakers go to festivals for – a chance to show their work and a launching point for their careers. Slamdance has earned a solid reputation for premiering films by first-time writers and directors working within the creative confines of limited budgets. 

Festival Discoveries

Festival discoveries have included directors such as Christopher Nolan (“Memento”), Marc Forster (“Monster's Ball”) and Jared Hess (“Napoleon Dynamite”). Slamdance also attracts world renowned alumni including Larry Clark and Steven Soderbergh.

In the 2005 Festival, Slamdance screened the documentary “Mad Hot Ballroom”, which was immediately purchased by Paramount Pictures for the largest amount ever for a feature-length documentary. At the 2007 Festival Seth Gordon's premiere “The King Of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” became another sought after documentary and was acquired by New Line. 2009 festival highlights included premiers “Mississippi Damned” directed by Tina Mobry and “I Sell The Dead” produced by Larry Fessenden and directed by Glenn McQuaid that was acquired by Independent Film Channel and Anchor Bay. “A Quiet Little Marriage”, directed by Mo Perkins, won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Dramatic Feature and shortly afterward was picked for distribution by the Independent Film Channel.

In 2008, Oren Peli's “Paranormal Activity” played its Festival premiere at Slamdance and was acquired by Dreamworks who then passed domestic control of the film onto Paramount. During the weekend of October 11–12, 2009 “Paranormal Activity” broke the box-office record for a film playing at fewer than 200 theaters by selling $7.1 million worth of tickets in the US and Canada. As of October 25, “Paranormal Activity” had earned $66 million and reached number 1 at the Box Office. By November 29, the $10,000 budgeted picture had amassed $107 million at the Box Office.

2010’s festival event took place in Park City, Utah January from 21-28, 2010. It included the world premiere of Steven Soderbergh's “And Everything is Going Fine” (a documentary about the late actor and monologist Spalding Gray) and The Filmmaker Summit. The Summit continues to invite the global filmmaking community to collectively craft a new charter for storytelling and content distribution that can succeed by using new technology. The Jury prize for Best Narrative film was won by Snow and Ashes, directed by Charles-Olivier Michaud and Best Documentary was won by “American Jihadist”, directed by Mark Claywell. The Audience Award for Best Narrative was won by “The Wild Hunt”, directed by Alexandre Franchi and Best Documentary was won by “Larry Linkogle: The Mind Of The Demon”.

For the 2011 Festival, Slamdance received a record number of over 5,000 submissions. The Sparky for Best Narrative Film went to "Stranger Things” and Best Documentary went to “Bhopali,” which also won the Audience Award. The Audience Award for Best Narrative went to “Silver Tongues.” Following their premiers at Slamdance “Real Life Superheroes” sold to HBO and “Atrocious” was acquired by the same team at Paramount that developed the “Paranormal Activity” franchise. 

Screenwriting & Teleplay Competitions

In addition to the festival, Slamdance's Screenwriting and Teleplay Competitions have discovered a number of talented screenwriters, including Joshua Marston (“Maria Full of Grace”) and Nicole Kassell (“The Woodsman”). In 2006, Slamdance entered into a deal with Greg Segal's Angel Baby Entertainment to help produce one film per year from its Horror Screenplay Competition. The first winning selection from the Horror Screenplay Competition was “Slaughter”, written by British writers Nathan Brookes and Bobby Lee Darby. In 2008, Slamdance entered into an agreement with Upload Films to develop and produce “Drool”, the winner of Slamdance's Screenplay Competition. Written and directed by Nancy Kissam, “Drool” premiered at the 2009 Festival and thereafter was acquired by Strand Releasing.

Each year the winning Short screenplay is produced by Slamdance and premieres at the film festival as part of the $99 specials which are paired with a non-competition Special Screening. In 2011, "Dead in the Room", written by Marjory Kaptanoglu (winner of Slamdance's 2010 Short Screenplay Competition) was directed by Academy nominated filmmaker Adam Pertofsky.

As the film festival is to film, the Slamdance Screenwriting and Teleplay Competition is dedicated to discovering and supporting emerging writing talent. Screenplays in every genre, any budget, on any topic, from anywhere in the world are welcome to submit. One unique feature of the competition is providing constructive feedback for every entrant.    The competition consists of four categories. Awards are given to the top three scripts in each category and there is also one Grand Prize for the best piece of material submitted regardless of category. 

• Feature • Short/Webisode • Horror • Teleplay     

Slamdance Guerrilla Games Competition

The festival used to host a computer and video game competition called "Slamdance Guerrilla Games Competition." The games competition has been on hiatus since 2008.

In January 2007 the festival for the first time dropped a finalist. The game “Super Columbine Massacre RPG!” was announced as a finalist in late November 2006, but the controversial game was dropped by Slamdance founder Peter Baxter. Though Slamdance is no stranger to controversy, having shown “Waco Resurrection” the year before, Baxter made the decision to drop the game from the festival after being contacted by lawyers regarding the rights to the music and photographs used in the game. The game maker was unable to prove legal ownership and Slamdance does not publicly screen films or games that do not own the rights to every component of their creation. In response to this 6 other finalists withdrew from the competition in protest, Jonathan Blow withdrew Braid, thatgamecompany withdrew “flOw”, Waking Games withdrew “Once Upon a Time”, the developers for “Toblo” withdrew their game (however, on January 16 the college which they attend, the DigiPen Institute of Technology against their wishes "overwrote our decision and readmitted “Toblo” to the Slamdance Festival", because the developers did not consult the college prior to their withdrawal decision), Queasy Games withdrew “Everyday Shooter”, Nick Montfort withdrew “Book and Volume”, and “The Behemoth” withdrew Castle Crashers. The University of Southern California has also withdrawn its sponsorship of Slamdance over this controversy.

On 26 January 2007, the date the game awards were to be presented, a panel discussion with the remaining finalists resulted in the withdrawal of the "Official Jury Selection" for all finalists, and no awards were handed out. On the same day, director Brian Flemming convinced his fellow film jurors to nominate SCMRPG for a "Special Jury Prize" for Best Documentary, an unofficial award not endorsed by the competition itself. However, as none of the jurors had played the game they eventually withdrew their nomination.

Slamdance Studios

In January 2010, Slamdance and Microsoft announced its partnership of year-round Slamdance Film programming on Xbox and Zune.

Slamdance President and Co-Founder Peter Baxter said, “Slamdance has a true independent identity and proven track record of unearthing great films. It’s time now to be progressive and unleash our film programs outside of the festival and directly help filmmakers find popular, worldwide audiences. The standard of Slamdance films deserve this much and we believe the audience will respond.”

As of opening day at the 2011 festival, select Competition Feature Films were made available via Zune video Marketplace as part of this year’s Festival and VOD Showcase for the duration of the festival, January 20-27. Select films included narrative features “Modern Imbecile’s Planet World”, “Snow On Tha Bluff” and “The Beast Pageant”; documentary features “Road Dogs” and “Scrapper”, as well as films from previous years’ festivals. 

In addition to VOD development, the organization has established Slamdance On The Road, a traveling theatrical showcase supported by the film festival organization and its filmmakers. On the Road brings popular Slamdance films to audiences that otherwise would not have the chance to see them and provide theatrical venues with an alternative film program experience. On The Road events usually take place in the US but have also travelled to countries like China, Poland, France and Chile.

Growth of Festival


Slamdance continued to create new avenues for its filmmakers expanding beyond Park City during the festival by creating the annual Filmmaker Summit in 2010. 

In 2011, Slamdance presented the second annual Filmmaker Summit, along with the Ford Foundation, IndieFlix and Banyan Branch, bringing together some of the most innovative thinkers in the industry. Speakers included Scilla Andreen (IndieFlix), Tiffany Shlain (Director: 'Connected', 'Yelp'), Brian Newman (subgenre media), Jenny Samppala (Banyan Branch), Amy Powell ('Paranormal Activity'), Lance Weiler ('Pandemic 1.0'), John Anderson (Variety), Orlando Bagwell (Ford Foundation), and Greg Pak (comic book scribe and filmmaker).

Slamdance also collaborated with Kodak in order to bring Academy Award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond to the festival and host an intimate discussion about the future of film and digital cinematography. 

At the 2011 Festival Slamdance launched a Student Initiative program involving both students and their faculty to help them gain a greater understanding of the current realities and opportunities in independent film. 

External links

• Slamdance Film Festival Official Website
• [1] Slamdance Blog