The 2011 Slamdance Film Festival was a

film festival A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upon ...

held in

Park City, Utah Park City is a city in Utah, United States. The vast majority is in Summit County, and it extends into Wasatch County. It is considered to be part of the Wasatch Back. The city is southeast of downtown Salt Lake City and from Salt Lake City' ...

from January 20 to January 27, 2011. It was the 17th iteration of the

Slamdance Film Festival The Slamdance Film Festival is an annual film festival focused on emerging artists. The annual week-long festival takes place in Park City, Utah, in late January and is the main event organized by the year-round Slamdance organization, which als ...

, an alternative to the more mainstream

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

Festival

This year, Slamdance received over 5,000 submissions and programmed 83 films. It concluded with an Awards Ceremony at Treasure Mountain Inn. The theme of the festival was "All is not lost." For 2011, the festival donated 10% of its ticket proceeds in Park City back to the filmmakers. The film ''Pete Smalls is Dead'' opened the festival. Michael Dunaway of Paste wrote "Rather than bring his new film to the senior festival, former Sundance winner

Alexandre Rockwell Charles Alexandre Rockwell is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and professor. Life and career Alexandre Rockwell is best known for his independent films made in NYC with a small group of actors he met on the lower east side in ...

chose to accept an invitation to open Slamdance this year because he says Slamdance is more fun." Dunaway wrote "most experienced Sundancers get a twinkle in their eye when they tell you about the exquisite little film they discovered either at Slamdance ( Sundance's boisterous, irreverent stepsister) or in one of the more experimental categories of Sundance itself." At Slamdance, '' Paste'' was looking forward to the films ''Pete Smalls Is Dead''; ''Drama''; ''Last Fast Ride – The Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess''; and ''Superheroes''. The festival had its second annual Filmmaker Summit, with an exclusive

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...

distribution agreement with Microsoft. Speakers included John Anderson of ''Variety'', Scilla Andreen of IndieFlix, Orlando Bagwell of the Ford Foundation, Brian Newman of subgenre media, filmmaker and comic book writer

Greg Pak Greg Pak is an American comic book writer and film director. Pak is best known for his work on books published by Marvel Comics, including ''X-Men'' (most notably '' X-Treme X-Men''), several titles featuring the Hulk (including ''Planet Hulk'', w ...

, Amy Powell of ''Paranormal Activity'', Jenny Samppala of Banyan Beach,

Tiffany Shlain Tiffany Shlain (born April 8, 1970) is an American filmmaker and author. Described by the public radio program ''On Being'' as "an internet pioneer", Shlain is the co-founder of the Webby Awards and the founder of the International Academy of Dig ...

(director of ''Connected'' and ''Yelp''), and

Lance Weiler Lance Weiler is an American filmmaker and writer from Pennsylvania. He first was known for ''The Last Broadcast (film), The Last Broadcast'' (1997), a Found footage (film technique), found footage horror film which he co-wrote, co-produced, co-d ...

of ''Pandemic 1.0''. For the entire duration of the festival, select feature films in competition were made available via

Zune Marketplace Zune is a discontinued media management software for Microsoft Windows that functions as a full media player application with a library, an interface to the Zune Marketplace, and as a media streaming server. The software is used to sync with all ...

. The films included ''Modern Imbecile's Planet World'', ''

Snow on tha Bluff ''Snow on tha Bluff'' is a 2012 American found footage-style drama film directed by Damon Russell. It stars Curtis Snow, a real-life Atlanta "robbery boy" and drug dealer, playing a fictionalized version of himself, as he gets into various dan ...

'', ''The Beast Pageant'', the documentaries ''Road Dogs'' and ''Scrapper'', and also films from previous festivals. This year, 17 films were available on video on demand through

Xbox Live The Xbox network, formerly and still sometimes branded as Xbox Live, is an Internet, online multiplayer video game, multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft. It was first made available to the Xbox ...

and

Zune Zune is a discontinued line of digital media products and services marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until its discontinuation in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, digital media player software for Windows Per ...

, in standard definition or high definition. Revenue was split 50/50 with filmmakers. 12 films from past festivals will be available throughout 2011 including the documentaries ''Off the Grid'', ''Orwell Rolls in His Grave'', ''Zombie Girl''; and the narrative features ''Omaha: The Movie'' and ''We Go Way Back''. People attending the opening night festivities included

Tim Roth Timothy Simon Roth (born 14 May 1961) is an English actor and producer. He began acting on films and television series in the 1980s. He was among a group of prominent British actors of the era, the "Brit Pack (actors), Brit Pack". He made hi ...

Peter Dinklage Peter Hayden Dinklage (; born June 11, 1969) is an American film, television and stage actor. He received international recognition for portraying Tyrion Lannister on the HBO television series ''Game of Thrones'' (2011–2019), for which he wo ...

Lee Tergesen Lee Allen Tergesen (; born July 8, 1965) is an American actor. He is known for his roles in '' Weird Science'', as Tobias Beecher in HBO's prison drama '' Oz'', and as Evan Wright in ''Generation Kill,'' as well as guest starring in many other ...

, Simon Arthur,

Tommy Davidson Thomas Davidson (born November 10, 1963) is an American comedian and actor. He was an original cast member on the sketch comedy TV show ''In Living Color'', Mitchell on ''Between Brothers'' (1997-1999), Dexter on ''Malcolm & Eddie'' (1999-2000) ...

Fred Stoller Fred Stoller (born March 19, 1958) is an American actor, stand-up comedian and author. He is best known for portraying Gerard on ''Everybody Loves Raymond''. He is also the voice of Stanley in the ''Open Season'' series, Fred the Squirrel in ' ...

Angelo Tsarouchas Angelo Tsarouchas () is a Canadian comedian, actor, and writer living in Los Angeles. He is known for incorporating Greek culture into his stand-up comedy routines, and has been called the "King of Greek Ethnic Comedy." He organized World Dafni D ...

, Steve Skrovan, Max Carlson,

Tom Lenk Thomas Loren Lenk (born June 16, 1976) is an American film and television actor, best known for portraying the character of Andrew Wells in the television series ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer''. Early life Lenk was born in Camarillo, California, t ...

, Lilly Ayers, Danielle Santos, Eva von Slut, '' INSAINTS'' members Daniel Deleon, Gregory Langston and Josh Levine, Michael Barnett, Kevin M. Brennan, Doug Manley, and Jeff Grace, and others. David Burger of ''

The Salt Lake Tribune ''The Salt Lake Tribune'' is a newspaper published in the city of Salt Lake City, Utah. The ''Tribune'' is owned by The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc., a non-profit corporation. The newspaper's motto is "Utah's Independent Voice Since 1871." History ...

'' wrote that the Slamdance Film Festival "claims it's the more indie-spirited festival — and when it comes to films about music, that boast might be true." He spoke to the filmmakers behind ''Last Fast Ride — The Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess'', a documentary directed by Lilly Scourtis Ayers about Marian Anderson of INSAINTS; ''Pleasant People'' directed by Dave Bonawits; and ''Road Dogs'', a documentary directed by Shane Aquino that follows the bands HTTH (Heavenly Trip to Hell) and Kettle Cadaver on cross country tours. In an interview with ''The Park Record'', festival president and co-founder Peter Baxter said attendance had been "excellent" and most of the screenings had sold out.

Awards

There were three competitive divisions at this year's festival: Grand Jury, Audience Awards and Special Sponsored Awards provided by Kodak, Panasonic, Dos Equis and Good Health. New this year, the festival added a theatrical distribution award for best feature, best short film, and selections from Grand Jury and Audience Award films. The films will be screened domestically throughout 2011, including at IFC Center in New York and 14 Pews in Houston. ''Strongman'', a previous Slamdance Grand Jury Documentary winner opened in late January at the IFC Center in New York. Awards were sponsored by Adobe, Dos Equis, Kodak, Panasonic, Good Health and Pierce Law Group.

Grand Jury Awards

*Grand Jury Sparky Award for Best Narrative Film - ''Stranger Things'', written and directed by Eleanor Burke and Ron Eyal *Special Jury Mention - Joslyn Jensen's performance in ''Without'', written and directed by Mark Jackson *Grand Jury Sparky Award for Best Documentary Film - ''Bhopali'', directed by Van Maximillian Carlson *Special Jury Mention - ''Fordson'', directed by Rashid Ghazi *Grand Jury Sparky Award for Best Animated Short - ''Bottle'', written and directed by Kirsten Lepore *Grand Jury Sparky Award for Best Narrative Short - ''Bird'', written and directed by Petr Stupin *Special Jury Mention - ''Son Of None'', written and directed by Todd Looby *Grand Jury Sparky Award for Best Documentary Short - ''Oaks'', directed by Charles Wittenmeier

Audience Awards

*Audience Sparky Award for Best Narrative Film - ''Silver Tongues'', written and directed by Simon Arthur *Audience Sparky Award for Best Documentary Film - ''Bhopali'', directed by Van Maximilian Carlson *Spirit of Slamdance Sparky Award, sponsored by Good Health - ''Shunka'', directed by CJ Gardella

Films

The Feature competitions at Slamdance are limited to first-time filmmakers working with production budgets of $1 million or less.

Competition

10 narrative films and 8 documentaries were selected to screen in competition. 14 of them are world premieres.

Narrative competition

Documentary competition

References

{{Reflist

External links

Official site
Slamdance Film Festival

Slamdance 2011 in American cinema