Slamdance Film Festival

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"Slamdance" redirects here. For the type of dancing, see mosh.

The Slamdance Film Festival takes place each year in Utah at the same time as the Sundance Film Festival, competing with Sundance to provide what its supporters consider a truer representation of independent film-making. It champions beginning directors with no or limited budgets. The festival began in 1995. Other affiliated Slamdance film festivals have since been created internationally, in countries like China and Poland.

Known as a festival "by filmmakers for filmmakers," Slamdance was launched to showcase undistributed films by emerging filmmakers. Festival discoveries have included directors such as Christopher Nolan (Memento), Marc Forster (Monster's Ball) and Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite). The Slamdance Screenplay Competition has discovered a number of talented screenwriters, including Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace) and Nicole Kassell (The Woodsman). 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.

The Festival has recently leveraged its brand-name recognition to launch Slamdance Media Group, a distribution, talent-management and production company.

1 Official Selections and Winners
2 Slamdance Guerilla Games Competition
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Official Selections and Winners

2007 Slamdance Film Festival

[edit] Slamdance Guerilla Games Competition

The festival also hosts a computer and video game competition called "Slamdance Guerilla Games Competition."

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Peter Baxter with no outside pressure as initially reported.^[1] In response to this 6 other finalists have thus far withdrawn from the competition in protest, Jonathan Blow withdrew Braid,^[2] thatgamecompany withdrew flOw,^[2] walking games withdrew Once Upon a Time,^[3] the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")^[4], Queasy Games withdrew Everyday Shooter^[5], Nick Montfort withdrew Book and Volume^[6], and The Behemoth withdrew Castle Crashers^[7]. The University of Southern California has also withdrawn its sponsorship of Slamdance over this controversy^[8].

After initially announcing 14 finalists, the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival is (as of January 19) down to 8 finalists.

Finalist Jason Rohrer, author of Cultivation^[9], wrote an open letter to the other finalists, imploring them to stay, as withdrawal would only lead to a cancellation of the competition. Instead he proposed using the competition as a platform for discussion of the issues. ^[10]

On 2007-01-26, 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. ^[11] 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 just before the award ceremony, Baxter told Flemming that legal considerations prevented SCMRPG from receiving the award. ^[12]