Category Archives: Venice International Film Festival

Oscar, Venice International Film Festival

7 FEATURES ADVANCE IN RACE FOR MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING OSCAR

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Posted by Larry Gleeson

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that seven films remain in competition in the Makeup and Hairstyling category for the 89th Academy Awards®.

Actual Oscar statuettes to be presented during the 79th Annual Academy Awards sit in a display case in Hollywood

The films are listed below in alphabetical order:

“Deadpool”

“The Dressmaker”

“Florence Foster Jenkins”

“Hail, Caesar!”

“A Man Called Ove”

“Star Trek Beyond”

“Suicide Squad”

On Saturday, January 7, 2017, all members of the Academy’s Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Branch will be invited to view 10-minute excerpts from each of the seven shortlisted films.  Following the screenings, members will vote to nominate three films for final Oscar consideration.

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Nominations for the 89th Oscars® will be announced on Tuesday, January 24, 2017.

The 89th Oscars will be held on Sunday, February 26, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre® at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live on the ABC Television Network at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT.  The Oscars also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.

 

(Source:www.oscars,org)

Venice International Film Festival

Note from Roger – Neruda

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This one is at the top of the list for my must-see, year-ending films for 2016!

Posted  by Larry Gleeson

Dear Cinephiles,

NERUDA is a fireworks display of a movie about poetry and politics – directed by brilliant Chilean director Pablo Larrain who also directed this year’s JACKIE.   Just like the latter film, NERUDA – about the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Pablo Neruda, this film is not your typical biography.   Do not miss one of the best foreign films you’re likely to see this year.

Below is an article about the film from the Los Angeles Times. NERUDA is currently playing at the Riviera Theatre.

See you at the movies!
Roger Durling

Click here for tickets

 

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Pablo Larraín’s ‘Neruda’ is a richly imagined biographical fantasia
By Justin Chang – Los Angeles Times

“Neruda,” an intoxicating puzzle of a movie directed by Pablo Larraín, chronicles a strange, harrowing episode from the late 1940s, when the Chilean government’s crackdown on communism drove the great poet and politician Pablo Neruda underground. Specifically, the film unravels the tricky game of cat-and-mouse between Neruda and an ambitious police inspector named Oscar Peluchonneau, who sought to track down the dissident artist whose writings had struck a dangerously resonant chord with the working class.

There was, in fact, no Oscar Peluchonneau — or at least, none who fits the description blithely concocted by Larraín and his screenwriter, Guillermo Calderon. The charm of “Neruda” lies in its insistence that there may well have been, and that it scarcely matters if there wasn’t. Drolly and persuasively, the movie demonstrates that when it comes to evoking the artist and the nature of his art, historical fidelity and literal-minded dramatization go only so far. Fiction, lovingly and imaginatively rendered, can bring us much closer to the truth.

“We must dream our way,” Neruda once wrote, and it is nothing short of enchanting to encounter a biographical drama that, rather than merely shoving that quote into its protagonist’s mouth, treats it as a guiding aesthetic and philosophical principle. Like (and yet completely unlike) “I’m Not There,” Todd Haynes’ fragmented 2007 cine-riff on Bob Dylan, “Neruda” is less a straightforward portrait of a great contemporary poet (and eventual Nobel laureate) than a rigorously sustained investigation of his inner world.

Although informed by the busy workings of history, politics and personal affairs, “Neruda” proceeds like a light-footed chase thriller filtered through an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” by the end of which the audience is lost in a crazily spiraling meta-narrative. Who exactly is the star and author of that narrative is one of the film’s more enticing mysteries.

Initially it seems both roles must be filled by Pablo Neruda, played with prickly, preening brilliance by Luis Gnecco (“Narcos”), who donned a wig and gained more than 50 pounds to achieve his remarkable physical resemblance to the real deal. The key to the performance is that, despite the shimmering inspiration of Neruda’s poetry, neither Gnecco nor Larraín seems to feel any obligation to make Neruda himself a particularly inspiring figure.

From the opening scene, a political gathering wittily set in an enormous public lavatory, Neruda, a senator and member of the Chilean Communist Party, is shown to be a proud and vociferous critic of his country’s leadership. But in the very next sequence, a lavish party crammed with half-naked revelers, the film presents the idea of Neruda as a Champagne socialist — a vain, hedonistic hypocrite who, like so many left-wing elites, loves “to soak up other people’s sweat and suffering.”

That damning bit of mockery is delivered by the aforementioned detective, Oscar Peluchonneau (played with mustachioed elan by Gael García Bernal), who slyly complicates the film’s notions of authorship and agency. When Chilean President Gabriel González Videla (Alfredo Castro) outlaws communism in 1948, responding to mounting Cold War anxieties, Peluchonneau eagerly leads the manhunt for Neruda, who has gone into hiding in the port city of Valparaíso with his second wife, the painter Delia del Carril (Mercedes Morán, excellent).

Many of the individual scenes in “Neruda” serve a fairly clear narrative purpose. We see the poet consorting with his allies, arguing with his wife, and disobeying his party-appointed bodyguard (Michael Silva) to slip out for a frolic at a nearby brothel or bohemian enclave. We rarely see him writing, though his poems are shown being secretly distributed and playing a huge role in keeping the communist movement alive underground. But even these relatively simple moments are transformed and complicated by the sheer audacity of Larraín’s stylistic conceits.

In the hands of the editor Hervé Schneid, an extended conversation between two people might span three or four different locations, transporting the viewer without warning from a private room to a perch overlooking the Chilean countryside. Elsewhere, Sergio Armstrong’s sensuous digital photography evokes the mood of the past even as it encourages us to view the film as a formalist construct, from the faded, purplish coloration of the images to the use of phony-looking rear projection in the driving scenes.

In one of Larraín and Calderon’s most telling flourishes, it is Peluchonneau who provides the film’s running voice-over commentary, often in contrapuntal harmony with Neruda’s journey. The two men are almost never seen in the same frame, and yet the ever-mobile camera seems to ping-pong restlessly between them, as though blurring them into one shared, active consciousness.

Peluchonneau’s words may be sardonic and self-flattering, but as the film advances and his own footing in the narrative begins to shift, they also take on their own mysterious, downright Nerudian poetry. (A few verses from his posthumously published “For All to Know” might seem appropriate here: “I am everybody and every time/I always call myself by your name.”)

“Neruda’s” formal spryness and nontraditional appreciation of history will come as little surprise to admirers of “Jackie,” Larraín’s other great bio-experiment of the moment, or his 2012 drama, “No,” a compelling snapshot of the end of the Augusto Pinochet regime that also starred Bernal (with Gnecco and Castro in prominent supporting roles). His filmography, which includes such festival-acclaimed favorites as “Tony Manero,” “Post Mortem” and “The Club,” has sealed his reputation as one of the most distinctive and continually surprising talents in world cinema, though nothing he’s done to date has forced him to take such intuitive leaps, to abandon realism so completely, as “Neruda.”

Unspooling the picture earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival, Larraín confessed that, even after making the movie, he wasn’t at all sure he knew who Neruda was. And in a typically counter-intuitive gesture, “Neruda” doesn’t pretend to know, either. It keeps the man at a playful distance, firm in its belief that the art will sustain our interest, long after the passing of the artist and his historical moment. It’s possible that Pablo Neruda himself would have concurred with this sentiment, though Oscar Peluchonneau might have begged to differ.

sbiff-showcase

(Source: sbiff.org)

Venice International Film Festival

BERLINALE POSTER 2017 – BELOVED BEARS RETURN

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Posted by Larry Gleeson

To attract attention to the Festival these inquisitive animals are again making their rounds throughout town!

*All poster motifs of the 67th Berlinale

Berlinale-
Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick

“Berlin is big and this year we’ll again follow the bear tracks to some typical spots in the capital,” remarks a delighted Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick.

Once more the motifs have been designed by Velvet, a Swiss advertising agency.

The six posters in the series will be visible around town as of mid-January 2017. They will also be on sale at the Berlinale Online Shop starting January 16.

Logo-Berlinale-Facebook

(Source: Press Release provided by Berlinale Press Office)

Venice International Film Festival

How Amazon Is Operating Like a 1970s Studio

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Posted by Larry Gleeson

By Brian Formo

It hasn’t officially happened yet, but with Manchester by the Sea primed to have many Oscar nominations (it’s looking like a lock for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, and likely for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress), prepare to see this sentence reported over and over: Amazon Studios beat Netflix in the race for a streaming service to receive Oscar nominations for Best Picture. But that statement actually bears little resemblance of the reality of the space that Amazon occupies as a film production and distribution company. Unlike Netflix, the film and television divisions of Amazon operate differently. While their TV originals are created to gain more subscribers, the film production is there for a streaming service. For films, Amazon Studios is a prestige-hunting studio and they’re playing by the Hollywood’s theatrical rules, not asking the industry to bend to their will like Netflix is.

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If you’re a fan of auteurs and cringe at the state of the current studio system, you should be grateful for what Amazon is doing. They are filling theaters with films from some of our great indie directors who could not get studio support. By the time 2016 closes, Amazon will have released films from Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea), Whit Stillman (Love & Friendship), Park Chan-wook (The Handmaiden), Jim Jarmusch (Paterson and Gimme Danger) and Nicolas Winding Refn (The Neon Demon). All of those films were acquired at film festivals, but after only existing for two calendar years (Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq was the company’s first dip into theatrical entertainment, released last December), Amazon is already stepping up to develop and distribute new films by Todd Haynes (Carol), James Gray (The Immigrant) and Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) and they’ve even entered the animation arena for a film based on the Emily the Strange series of books.

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Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden (Photo via Amazon Studios/Magnolia Pictures)

The key to Amazon’s 2016 success is primarily banking on established directors, but the key to their awards success is that they’ve fully embraced the theatrical experience. Unlike Netflix, which screens their original films in a few theaters the same day that they release the film online for any subscriber to watch, Amazon is playing the long game with their releases. Amazon has teamed with indie distributors like Bleeker Street and Roadside Attractions to co-distribute many of their 2016 titles and with Manchester by the Sea, Love & Friendship and Woody Allen’s Café Society, they’ve even landed a few in the top 10 for box office receipts in a given week. We need to stop calling the film division of Amazon Studios a “streaming service” because it takes months for their films to land on Amazon Prime, the same way that most theatrical films take months to land on any streaming rental service. Sure, it’s free to subscribers at a certain point, but it’s after a title has carefully ran its course in theaters.

While Netflix has drawn the ire of theater owners by offering their films online at the same time they’re putting titles in select theaters to be eligible for Oscars, Amazon hasn’t rocked the boat. It’s clear that they’re not trying to reinvent the distribution system, but instead they desire the prestige that comes from releasing acclaimed works.

Instead of trying to lead a revolution of providing home entertainment, Amazon is operating instead like a 1970s studio. Often considered the greatest era of Hollywood (and dubbed the “Second Golden Age”), the 70s saw distributors like Paramount operate under a corporate conglomerate (Gulf + Western for Paramount) to earn cool points for that corporation by being associated with great works of art. As the heads of production at Paramount during that time, Robert Evans and Richard Sylbert ushered in The Godfather, Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, Nashville and Days of Heaven and also brokered a deal to co-distribute films with Universal and MGM. Many of the films that were distributed by Paramount at the time did average at the box office, but they were nominated and won many awards, which put Gulf + Western’s business types in close proximity with famous actors and directors while being celebrated for making cerebral works.

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Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon (Photo via Amazon Studios)

Of course, post-Jaws and Star Wars the corporations and conglomerates no longer sought just prestige but also blockbuster returns. Priorities shifted and eventually you can see where film got to this current sequel and universe-obsessed point for the big studios. Most of the Hollywood studios have heads of production that come from the corporate world, not from the film world.

Amazon’s approach fits the 60s and 70s Paramount model not just because they’ve aligned with co-distributors and are releasing prestigious films that make for an esteemed and commendable awards slate party, but also because Amazon Studios’ Roy Price (Head of Amazon Studios) and Jason Ropell (Worldwide Head of Motion Pictures) have brought in two well-versed movie producers and distributors, Ted Hope and Bob Berney, as the head of production (Hope) and distribution/marketing (Berney).

Hope was one of the most prolific indie film producers of the 90s and early 2000s. His Good Machine production and sales company ushered in some of the biggest new auteurs at their earliest incubator stages, from Hal Hartley’s Trust, to Haynes’ Safe, Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm, Todd Solondz’s Happiness, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams and Todd Fields’ In the Bedroom. And Berney ran indie distributor Picturehouse when the (now shuttered) company released such distinguished titles as Pan’s Labyrinth, A Prairie Home Companion, La Vie en Rose and 2014’s The Guest.

What’s exciting about the film division of Amazon Studios isn’t just that Hope and Berney are focusing on established auteurs and giving them an arena to make their films with seemingly no intrusion; it’s that the studio isn’t under the umbrella of a different corporation. Everything is internal and the areas where Amazon entertainment is looking to grow—including purchasing rights to stream major sporting events, increasing their TV production with prestigious gets like a two-season miniseries entirely helmed by David O. Russell—have built in methods to increase their subscription service. Add in free shipping on Amazon’s multi-billion dollar digital store and the film division appears to have the task of netting more subscribers to Amazon Prime off their job description.

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Kenneth Longergan’s Manchester by the Sea (Photo via Amazon Studios/Roadside Attractions)

At a recent party for their Oscar slate, Deadline reported that there were far more directors and actors in attendance than media and agents. The party wasn’t just about Manchester by the Sea. It was an opportunity to let directors and actors know that their bottom line is different than Hollywood’s. Like Amazon’s purchase of IMDb, there’s a service they’re providing for obsessed film fans.

What remains to be seen is whether Amazon Studios will strike up deals with up-and-coming directors who might have exciting projects without their own name recognition. Or if Amazon Studios will let indie darlings like A24 and IFC unearth those talents first. But, with Hollywood being a difficult place for many of our great directors like Todd Haynes and James Gray to even get a film made without pre-existing fandoms, Amazon is an answer to film fan’s prayers. And in case you hadn’t noticed, even their animated intro logo for their film releases (which zooms through a city to the marquee of a movie theater) highlights that they’d like you to venture out to the cinema, rather than stay in and stream.

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James Gray’s The Lost City of Z (Photo via Amazon Studios)

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Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq (Image via Amazon Studios)

Image via Lionsgate

Woody Allen’s Cafe Society (Image via Amazon Studios/Lionsgate)

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Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship (Photo via Amazon Studios/Roadside Attractions)

(Source: http://collider.com)

Palm Springs International Film Festival, Venice International Film Festival

PSIFF Announces 3-Year Platinum Sponsorship with Bennion Deville Homes

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Posted by Larry Gleeson

Palm Springs, CA (December 21, 2016) – Bennion Deville Homes has signed a $100,000 three-year platinum sponsorship with the Palm Springs Bennion Deville
International Film Festival.  The Festival will be held January 2-16, 2017.

“We are excited and grateful to have Bennion Deville return as a platinum sponsor,” said Festival Chairman Harold Matzner.  “For many years, Bennion Deville has played a significant role in the success of both the Film Awards Gala and Festival.  This is a great partnership for our festival and we look forward to working with them for many years to come.”

“We are proud to continue our relationship with the Palm Springs International Film Festival,” said Bob Deville, Co-Founder/Broker of Bennion Deville Homes.  “The Palm Springs International Film Festival is vital to the local community because of the spotlight it shines on our region each year, something we have recognized since we started our business here in 2001. Fifteen years of sponsorship, as well as fifteen years as a board member, shows just how much we care about the Palm Springs International Film Society and their critical role in putting on this marquee event annually. I am honored to play an integral part within the film society and the event itself, and look forward to future support as our festival continues to grow and enhance the global image of Palm Springs.”

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About The Palm Springs International Film Festival The Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) is one of the largest film festivals in North America, welcoming 135,000 attendees last year for its lineup of new and celebrated international features and documentaries. The Festival is also known for its annual Film Awards Gala, a glamorous, black-tie event, presented by Chopard and sponsored by Mercedes Benz and Entertainment Tonight, and attended by 2,500.  The Film Awards Gala honors the year’s best achievements in cinema in front of and behind the camera.  The celebrated list of talents who have been honored in recent years includes Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem, Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper, George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, Matthew McConaughey, Julianne Moore, Brad Pitt, Eddie Redmayne, Julia Roberts, David O. Russell, Meryl Streep, and Reese Witherspoon.  PSIFF is organized by The Palm Springs International Film Society, a 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit organization with a mission to cultivate and promote the art and science of film through education and cross-cultural awareness.   For more information, call 760-778-8979 or 800-898-7256 or visit www.psfilmfest.org.

About Bennion Deville Homes Founded by Bob Bennion and Bob Deville in 2001, Bennion Deville Homes is one of the largest independent real estate brokerages in Southern California, serving the region from 26 offices throughout the Coachella Valley and San Diego and Orange counties. The powerhouse company serves the Coachella Valley from offices in Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Bermuda Dunes, and Indio. Bennion Deville Homes entered the coastal Southern California communities of San Diego and Orange counties in 2010, with offices serving Orange County in Laguna Niguel, and offices in Carlsbad, Carmel Valley, Encinitas, Hillcrest/Mission Hills, and Little Italy in San Diego County. Bennion Deville Homes also serves Southern California from offices in Glendora, Lake Arrowhead, and Redlands.

The LUXE Collection program, exclusive to Bennion Deville Homes, lists and showcases some of the finest properties available on the market, maximizing exposure of high-end luxury homes to qualified buyers across a variety of mediums and channels.

For the location of the office nearest you, please visit BDHomes.com. For the latest trends in Southern California real estate and community news, follow us on Facebook and Twitter @BDHSoCal.

(Source: PSFilmFest.org)

Venice International Film Festival

Mahershala Ali to Receive Breakthrough Performance Award at 28th Annual PSIFF Film Awards Gala

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Palm Springs, CA (December 16, 2016) – The 28th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) will present Mahershala Ali with the Breakthrough Performance Award for his role in Moonlight at its annual Film Awards Gala.  The Film Awards Gala, hosted by Mary Hart, will be held Monday, January 2 at the Palm Springs Convention Center. The Festival runs January 2-16, 2017.

screen-shot-2016-12-13-at-7-27-10-am“Mahershala Ali is one of the most in-demand actors in film and television,” said Festival Chairman Harold Matzner. “Ali gives one of the best supporting performances of the year in Moonlight as Juan, a Miami drug dealer who opens his doors to Little when he sees the boy being chased through the streets by a gang. For this role that has already received several awards and is sure to receive many more, it is our honor to present the Breakthrough Performance Award to Mahershala Ali.”

Past recipients of the Breakthrough Performance Award include Marion Cotillard, Jennifer Hudson, Felicity Huffman, Brie Larson, Lupita Nyong’o, David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike and Jeremy Renner.  In the years they were honored, Cotillard, Hudson, Larson and Nyong’o went on to receive Academy Awards®, while Huffman, Pike and Renner received nominations.

A timeless story of human connection and self-discovery, Moonlight chronicles the life of a young black man from childhood to adulthood as he struggles to find his place in the world while growing up in a rough neighborhood of Miami. At once a vital portrait of contemporary African American life and an intensely personal and poetic meditation on identity, family, friendship, and love, Moonlight is a groundbreaking piece of cinema that reverberates with deep compassion and universal truths. In additional to Ali, the film also stars Naomie Harris, Janelle Monáe, Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes and André Holland.

For his role in Moonlight, Mahershala Ali received a Golden Globe Award nomination, two Screen Actors Guild nominations and an NAACP Image Award nomination. Ali won two Broadcast Critics’ Choice Awards, and numerous Critics Circle awards including Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Boston, etc. Ali was also honored with the Spotlight Award at the Savannah Film Festival and will receive the Virtuosos Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. In addition, the cast will be honored with the Robert Altman Ensemble Award at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Ali has a wide-ranging background in film, television and theater.  On television, he can be seen in the Netflix series’ Luke Cage and House of Cards.  His impressive list of film credits includes Free State of Jones, Kicks, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 & 2, The Place Beyond the Pines, Crossing Over, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Next up he can be seen in Hidden Figures, Roxanne, Roxanne which will premiere at the 2017 Sundance Festival and Alita: Battle Angel in 2018.

Previously announced honorees attending the 2017 Film Awards Gala are Amy Adams, Casey Affleck, Annette Bening, Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, Ruth Negga, the cast of Hidden Figures including Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner and Jim Parsons, and the cast of La La Land, including Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, and director Damien Chazelle.

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About The Palm Springs International Film Festival

The Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) is one of the largest film festivals in North America, annually welcoming more than 135,000 attendees for its lineup of new and celebrated international features and documentaries. The Festival is also known for its annual Film Awards Gala, a glamorous, black-tie event attended by 2,500 guests, presented this year by Chopard and sponsored by Mercedes Benz and Entertainment Tonight.  The Film Awards Gala honors the year’s best achievements in cinema in front of and behind the camera.  The celebrated list of talents who have been honored in recent years includes Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem, Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper, George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, Matthew McConaughey, Julianne Moore, Brad Pitt, Eddie Redmayne, Julia Roberts, David O. Russell, Meryl Streep, and Reese Witherspoon.  PSIFF is organized by The Palm Springs International Film Society, a 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit organization with a mission to cultivate and promote the art and science of film through education and cross-cultural awareness.

For more information, call 760-778-8979 or 800-898-7256 or visit www.psfilmfest.org.

# # #

 

Media contacts:

Steven Wilson / Lauren Peteroy                                                                         David Lee

B|W|R Public Relations                                                                                        PSIFF

212.901.3920                                                                                                         760.322.2930

Steven.wilson@bwr-pr.com / Lauren.peteroy@bwr-pr.com                        david@psfilmfest.org

(Source: Press release courtesy of Nikki Croney/BWR

 

Venice International Film Festival

Slamdance Opening Night Film: World Premiere Of What Lies Upstream. Oscar Qualifying Shorts Program Features 24 World Premieres

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(LOS ANGELES, CA) – Slamdance today announced its Special Screenings, Beyond, and Shorts programs for their 23nd Film Festival. It is a bold selection of films from visionary filmmakers from across the globe. This year the festival will host 35 World, 9 North American and 10 US premieres within these programs.

screen-shot-2016-12-08-at-12-55-20-am “This year Slamdance’s Special Screenings selections are hard-hitting, revelatory films that deserve exposure in Park City,” says Paul Rachman, Special Screening Programmer. “Averting trends and remaining premiere agnostic this program reflects the gut instinct Slamdance programmers rely on in their singular choices.”

Last year the festival presented EMBERS, a sci-fi indie directed by Claire Carre. Carre was recently nominated by the 32nd Film Independent Spirit Awards for the Kiehl’s Someone To Watch Award.

“The support of Slamdance has had a powerful impact on my first feature from selecting the film as the festival’s Closing Night film, through releasing it theatrically with Slamdance Presents,” shares Carre. “It’s challenging making a low budget indie movie on your own, and it’s easy to get lost. Slamdance has championed EMBERS in monumental ways.”

This year, several Slamdance Alumni return with highly anticipated presentations in the Beyond Program. These selections are made be emerging narrative and documentary filmmakers working beyond their first features.

“The films in the Beyond section exhibit bold directorial vision and singular characters that introduce audiences to exciting and uncharted new worlds,” says Beyond programmer Josh Mandel. “These emerging filmmakers are beacons of light in a sea of darkness that will continue to forge new paths in the years to come.”

Films in this program are eligible for the Audience Award. Additionally, the filmmakers are eligible for the Spirit of Slamdance Awards, which is voted upon by their festival filmmakers peers.

“Our slate of short films this year is one of the most daring we have been privileged to showcase,” says Narrative Shorts programmer Taylor O. Miller. Fellow programmer Breven Angaelica adds, “We continue this year with short films that fit into their own category, or none at all, and bring a rawness and and originality to the future of filmmaking that we are humbled to recognize and share.”

The 2017 OscarⓇ Qualifying Shorts competition showcases 51 US and 20 International productions in the Narrative, Documentary, Animation, Anarchy and Experimental sections. All Slamdance films are programmed entirely by the Slamdance filmmaking community from blind submissions.

SPECIAL SCREENINGS PROGRAM

After Adderall
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Stephen Elliott
In 2010 James Franco optioned the rights to my memoir, The Adderall Diaries. In 2015 The Adderall Diaries starring James Franco and Ed Harris premiered at the TriBeca Film Festival. This is a movie about James Franco making a movie about me.
Cast: Stephen Elliott, Mickaela Tombrock, Bill Heck, Michael C. Hall, Ned Van Zandt, James Urbaniak, Lili Taylor, Jerry Stahl

A Narrative Film*
(USA)
Director: Michael Edwards
The most narrative narrative never narrated. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end…. It is at once both a three-act assault on the conceit of the traditional narrative, and also perhaps, a futile attempt to escape the narrative impulse of cinema.

What Lies Upstream
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Cullen Hoback
In this detective story, filmmaker Cullen Hoback investigates the largest chemical drinking water contamination in a generation. But something is rotten in state and federal regulatory agencies, and through years of persistent journalism, we learn the shocking truth about what’s really happening with drinking water in America.
Cast: Dr. Marc Edwards, Dr. Rahul Gupta, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, Cullen Hoback, Randy Huffman, Dr. David Lewis, Maya Nye, Dr. Andrew Whelton

You Never Had It: An Evening with Bukowski
(Italy/Mexico/USA) US Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Matteo Borgardt
A night of drinking and talking about sex, literature, childhood and humanity with the irreverent writer poet Charles Bukowski in his California house in 1981. A story of tapes lost, found and brought back to life.
Cast: Charles Bukowski, Linda Lee Beighle, Silvia Bizio

*Animated Short Preceding You Never Had It: An Evening with Bukowski

BEYOND PROGRAM

Automatic at Sea
(USA/ Denmark) North American Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Matthew Lessner
Eve, a young Swedish traveler, finds herself stranded on a private island with Peter, a wealthy heir whom she hardly knows. While waiting for other guests to arrive, Eve becomes trapped in an unstable reality punctuated by feverish visions, dimensional shifting and secret soft drinks. How can she escape if she’s not even sure she’s there?
Cast: David Henry Gerson, Livia Hiselius, Breeda Wool

The Erlprince
(Poland) North American Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Kuba Czekaj
It’s the end of the world for a teenage genius, the feverish approach of the apocalypse – adulthood.
Cast: Staszek Cywka, Agnieszka Podsiadlik, Sebastian Łach,

Future ‘38
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Jamie Greenberg
1938 screwball comedy set in the far-off future year of 2018
Cast: Betty Gilpin, Nick Westrate, Robert John Burke, Ethan Phillips, Sean Young, Tom Riis Farrell, Sophie von Haselberg, Tabitha Holbert

Neighborhood Food Drive
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Jerzy Rose; Screenwriter(s): Halle Butler, Mike Lopez, Jerzy Rose
A group of awful idiots fail at throwing a party over and over.
Cast: Lyra Hill, Bruce Bundy, Ruby McCollister, Ted Tremper, Marcos Barnes, Jared Larson

Suck It Up
(Canada) World Premiere
Director: Jordan Canning; Screenwriter: Julia Hoff
Faye lost the love of her life, Ronnie lost her brother. These two best friends take off on a debaucherous journey into the mountains to cope with the loss of the man they both loved.
Cast: Erin Carter, Grace Glowicki, Daniel Beirne, Toby Marks, Nancy Kerr, Michael Rowe

NARRATIVE SHORTS PROGRAM

August
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Caitlyn Greene
Deep in Louisiana’s swampland, a woman wakes from a fever dream where it has been August for 16 years.
Cast: Kaelyn Charbonnet, Reginald Robinson, Sanita C. Irvin (Voice)

Birds with Human Heads
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Max Wilde
Basking in the wildlife of a handmade universe, a girl receives her first stick and poke tattoo from her best friend.
Cast: Emma Factor, Emma Kikue Munson

Brad Cuts Loose
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Christopher Good
An uptight office drone seemingly discovers the perfect vehicle for letting off steam when an advertisement for a business catering to his innermost desires pops up one morning on his computer.
Cast: Kentucker Audley, Tipper Newton, John Ennis, Wilson Vance

Business
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Kati Skelton
A terrified young man gets tangled up in a surreal and demoralizing “business opportunity.”
Cast: Branson Reese, Peter Reznikoff, Dagmar Stansova, Matt Dennie

The Cure
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Mike Olenick
A mom cries, photos fly, cats spy, and bodies collide in this sci-fi soap opera that unravels the secret dreams of people who are desperately searching for ways to cure their fears of loneliness.
Cast: David Rysdahl, Jennifer Estlin, Justin Rose, Kait Staley, Mrva Russell

A Doll’s Hug
(Taiwan/USA) World Premiere
Director: Rob Chihwen Lo; Screenwriter(s): Rob Chihwen LO (Story), Cheng-Han WU (Screenplay)
A Taiwanese boy learns to fight back from the threatening violence in his Barbie doll world.
Cast: Pin-Chieh Su, Jackson Lou, Mengxi Hus, Fabio Grangeon, Ivon Huang

Dr. Meertz
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Steve Collins
A renegade psychotherapist has a brief window of time to cure a patient with ungodly dreams.
Cast: John Merriman, Byron Brown, Paul Gordon

E
(Canada) US Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Raphaël Ouellet
5 women : 5 tales of ordinary oppression.
Cast: Victoria Barkoff, Sandrine Bisson, Debbie Lynch-White, Sarah Pellerin, Alexa-Jeanne Dubé

Ford Clitaurus
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: MP Cunningham
An aspiring artist struggles to find his voice, his sexual identity, and the meaning of creativity.
Cast: Bryce Van Leuven, Taylor Young, MP Cunningham

Get Out Fast
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Haley Elizabeth Anderson
Alex’s best friend, Coyote Boy, is missing and he doesn’t know why.
Cast: Hale Lytle, Tre Marquis Frazier, Warren Dedrick, Tori Wolsefer

I’m in Here
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Willy Berliner
When a man finds a family of strangers in his house who claim to have bought the place, he agrees to let them stay until they can get to the bottom of the mix-up. They never leave.
Cast: Dave Hanson, Jim Santangeli, Jillian Lebling, Kathy Searle

The Investment
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Steve Collins
A mysterious salesman offers an inadvisable investment opportunity to a lonely woman in need of a friend.
Cast: Courtney Davis, Paul Gordon

Last Night
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Kent Juliff
On the final night of their DIY stand up tour around Texas, five comics grow closer as friends.
Cast: Kent Juliff, Elizabeth Spears, Joe Tullar, Martin Urbano

Losing It
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Henry Jinings
High schooler Marshall hopes to seal the deal on prom night, but his date, Sarah, might not be as into it as he had hoped.
Cast: Bryce Earhart, Rachelle Henry, Eric Newsome, Anne Ruttencutter, Nic Chase, Mason Knight, Alice Tokaryev

Neon Lights
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Bradley Bixler
After a seemingly ordinary transaction goes wrong, a young stripper encounters a violent customer on her way home to her father’s birthday.
Cast: Adriana Llabrés, Parker Torres, Michael Barbour, Giovanny Cruz-Marín

No Other Way To Say It
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Tim Mason
A voice over actor tries to deliver the right performance while receiving confusing text messages and confusing direction.
Cast: Beth Melewski, Sue Salvi, Megan Kellie

Nonna
(Canada) US Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Pascal Plante
Just another visit at granny’s…
Cast: Micheline Chamberland, Catherine Beauchemin

Oh What a Wonderful Feeling
(Canada)
Director and Screenwriter: François Jaros
Stars, hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires. Nor any truck.
Cast: Karelle Tremblay, Frédérike Bédard, Catherine Hughes, Patrice Beauchesne

One-Minded
(France/USA/South Korea)
Director(s) and Screenwriter(s): Forest Ian Etsler, Sébastien Simon
“One-minded” tells the story of one fan’s transformation from dog to God.
Cast: Moon Choi, Yaerin Erin Joo, Ryu Jun-yeol, Kwak Jin-moo

The Package
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Benjamin Whatley
An experimental narrative which follows the journey of a product from the factory line to a consumer and beyond.
Cast: Michael Rudolf

Paco
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Catalina Jordan Alvarez
He wants you to bounce on his lap.
Cast: Brian Jordan Alvarez, Rosalyn Williams, Daniel Fishkin, Parker Dilworth

Pedazos
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Alejandro Peña
After a garish and violent ceremony, two lovers are thrown into a mysterious cave inhabited by flying creatures.
Cast: Henry MacLean, Will Stryker

Redmond Hand, Private Dick
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Todd Selby; Screenwriter: Jason Kreher
On her quest to find a beautiful woman’s missing cactus, LA’s most notorious detective gets caught up in some crazy shit and then dies.
Cast: Felicia Pearson, Miranda Parham, Katya Zamolodchikova, Jay London

Sadhu in Bombay
(India) North American Premiere
Director: Kabir Mehta
Sadhu In Bombay is a documentary portrait of a man, with ascetic origins, who has been radically transformed by city life . The film explores the grey zones between truth, fiction and the construction of reality; while vividly addressing contemporary life in India.

Student Union
(Hungary) North American Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: György Mór Kárpáti
The return journey on a train from a freshman summer camp, where 18-year-old Dóra has just been sexually abused.
Cast: Katica Nagy, Krisztián Rózsa

Voyage of Galactic Space Dangler
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Evan Mann
A space man meets a cave man.
Cast: Andrew Finzel, Nolan Brown, Rick Romero, Valerie Simon

We Together
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Henry Kaplan
A zombie is awakened.
Cast: Martel Rudd, Kristopher McAfee

DOCUMENTARY SHORTS PROGRAM

Clean Hands
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Lauren DeFilippo
On a Sunday morning the congregation of the Daytona Beach Drive-In Christian Church tunes in.
Cast: Robert Kemp-Baird

Clip-135-02-05
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Sasha Gransjean
Animals are used to express the dislocation, helplessness, and anger, while nature illustrates the lack of control that we have on events that come to pass.
Cast: Sasha Gransjean

Commodity City
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Jessica Kingdon
An observation of the daily lives of vendors who work in China’s Yiwu Markets, the largest consumer market in the world. The film explores moments of tension between the fake and the real, between what is for sale and the humans who sell them.

The Dundee Project
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Mark Borchardt
In his long-awaited follow-up to 1997’s ‘Coven,’ filmmaker Mark Borchardt steps behind the camera again with ‘The Dundee Project,’ a documentary chronicling a small town UFO festival in Wisconsin.
Cast: Mark Borchardt, UFO Bob, Mike, Sheldon

Dust & Dirt
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Chris Stanford
Mason Massey dreams of one day making it to the top level of racing but with a lack of big money sponsorship he knows that it is going to be a long, hard road.
Cast: Mason Massey

Eveready
(Uganda/USA) World Premiere
Director: Paul Szynol
Uganda’s most surprising boxer steps into the ring one more time.

Irregulars
(Italy)
Director: Fabio Palmieri
Against a tellingly hypnotic factory backdrop, a refugee encapsulates the global immigration crisis in his own wrenching words.
Cast: Cyrille Kabore

It Is What It Is
(USA) US Premiere
Director: Cyrus Yoshi Tabar
As filmmaker Cyrus Yoshi Tabar digs deep into his family history for answers to questions that have shaped his life, he finds that there are some things that might be better off left in the past.
Cast: Cyrus Yoshi Tabar, Afsaneh Sade, Roxane Maiko Pate

Moriom
(Switzerland)
Director(s): Francesca Scalisi, Mark Olexa
Moriom, a beautiful but strange young woman, says her parents must be punished for holding her prisoner and torturing her. They have a different story.

The Real Wi-Fi of Baltimore
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Julia Kim Smith
Featuring the genre-busting talent of James Nasty and TT the Artist, The Real Wi-Fi Of Baltimore offers a punny and nuanced view of Baltimore neighborhoods in a short film edited from iPhone screenshots of Wi-Fi network names.
Cast: James Nasty, TT the Artist

Richard Twice
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Matthew Salton
Richard Atkins, the singer and songwriter of the early 70’s California psychedelic folk duo ‘Richard Twice’, was on his way to stardom and a huge success with his first debut album when he mysteriously walked away from it all.
Cast: Richard Atkins

Searching for Wives
(Singapore) North American Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Zuki Juno Tobgye
A foreign worker from South India, whose customs says he is not allowed to marry at an even age, comes to Singapore in search of a job and a chance to find a wife before he turns 32.
Cast: Shanmugavel Pathakarnan, Sheeja Sajeev Lal, K. Sajeev Lal, Ramalingam Muthu

Sweet Pie
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Pierce Cravens
Sweet Pie, also known as Paul Winer, revives his career as the baron of bare-assed boogie-woogie and blues at the Public Theater in NYC.
Cast: Sweet Pie aka Paul Winer, Joanne Winer, Will Perone

This is Yates
(USA)
Director: Josh Yates
A reflexive analog-elegy that hates itself.

Troll: A Southern Tale
(USA)
Director: Marinah Janello
An eccentric artist navigates self-expression through his experiences living and growing up in the South.
Cast: Tony Arnold

ANIMATION SHORTS PROGRAM

Auto
(USA) US Premiere
Director: Conner Griffith
Cars dance on highways, crowds of people wash across sidewalk shores.

Batfish Soup
(USA)
Director: Amanda Bonaiuto
Wacky relatives give way to mounting tensions with broken dolls, boiling stew and a bang.

Chella Drive
(USA) Us Premiere
Director: Adele Han Li
A disembodied memory of adolescence in a Southern Californian suburb. The stuck-stillness of endless summer is disrupted only by a passing El Niño.

Hold Me (Ca Caw Ca Caw)
(USA)
Renee Zhan
Flap flapflapflapflap flap. A large bird and a small boy cohabit in an unhappy relationship, trapped by four walls and a mutual codependency. The fragile balance of their existence is cracked by an un-eggs-pected arrival.

Insect Bite
(USA)
Director: Grace Nayoon Rhee
A tiny bug tries to figure out what it wants to become.

It Is My Fault
(China) North American Premiere
Director: Liu Sha
This work utilizes the own approach of the digital medium itself to deconstruct, to form the subliminal synesthesia visually and to create a fictional experience for the mind.

Monkey
(China) US Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Shen Jie
One of the three monkeys died.

My Father’s Room
(South Korea) North American Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Nari Jang
Sometimes, family members can be worse than strangers.

The Noise of Licking
(Hungary)
Director and Screenwriter: Nadja Andrasev; Short story by: Ádám Bodor
A woman is being watched every day by the neighbor’s cat, as she takes care of her exotic plants. Their perverted ritual comes to an end when the cat disappears. Next spring a peculiar man pays her a visit.

Plena Stellarum
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Matthew Wade
Neon ghosts dreaming in dead landscapes.

Q
(USA) US Premiere
Director: James Bascara
A bashful encounter.

Remember
(Japan)
Director and Screenwriter: Shunsaku Hayashi
“Leaving home, ‘I’ got a phone call. As ‘I’ answered it, the house exploded. ‘I’ went to work and continued as normal”…

Serpentine
(USA) North American Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Bronwyn Maloney
A young woman’s reflective fantasy arouses a surreal exploration of sensuality, self-esteem, and deeply rooted fears.

EXPERIMENTAL SHORTS PROGRAM

Blua
(Colombia) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Carolina Charry Quintero
What do we see when we really look at an animal? Certainly, not just what meets the eye.
Cast: Margarita Quintero, Chuja Seo, Rafa Rojas, José Adam Arriola

Experiments in Non-Cinema
(USA) World Premiere
Director(s) and Screenwriter(s): Spencer Holden, Noah Engel
Making cinematic experiences without a camera apparatus. Non-Cinema
Cast: Spencer Holden, Noah Engel

Girl Becomes Snow
(USA) World Premiere
Director(s) and Screenwriter(s): Ryan Betschart, Tyler Betschart
An investigation into death induced dream ephemera or; a body (mind) dissolves into video signal memories.
Cast: Karissa Hahn

Press Play
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Kym McDaniel
Discernment becomes crucial as a little girl negotiates an adult world where different forms of entrapment threaten reality.

The Trembling Giant
(United Kingdom)
Director: Patrick Tarrant
The bark of the quaking aspen is thought to provide the cure for any fear who cause can’t be named.

Unknown Hours
(USA) North American Premiere
Director: Calum Walter
An observer journeys down a main street in Chicago towards a neighborhood known for its nightlife.

UpCycles
(USA)
Director: Ariana Gerstein
Cycling from original footage shot on super 8mm, up to 16mm, 35mm, down again to 16, optically printed, hand processed, and then optically printed again using a digital still camera to end on digital video.

ANARCHY SHORTS PROGRAM

Ape Sodom
(Canada)
Director and Screenwriter: Maxwell McCabe-Lokos
Three degenerates navigate the descending hierarchy of post-consumerist enlightenment.
Cast: Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Mihaly Szabados, Perrie Olthuis, David Cronenberg

Hell Follows
(USA/Japan) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Brian Harrison
Betrayed by his clan and murdered for his past evil deeds, a sadistic killer’s soul possesses his identical twin’s body and sets out onto the road of vengeance for one final crusade of extermination… Everywhere he goes… HELL FOLLOWS.
Cast: Takuya Iba, Shu Sakimoto, Masahiro Takahashi, Sohanny Rose

Horseshoe Theory
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Jonathan Daniel Brown; Screenwriter(s): Jonathan Daniel Brown, Travis Harrington
A weapons deal between a white supremacist and a member of the Islamic State blossoms into more.
Cast: Jackson Rathbone, Amir Malaklou, Lily Harrington, Travis Harrington

In a World of Bad Breath
(USA) World Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Christopher Graybill
Watch general confusion amongst an ancient presence.
Cast: Oates Wu, Asher Knowles

Lighter Click
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Robbie Ward
An odyssey through a mysterious psychedelic landscape full of monsters and secrets both beautiful and dark.

Silverhead
(USA) US Premiere
Director and Screenwriter: Lewis Vaughn
A deranged, 300 lb. masked ax murderer terrorizes the streets of Chicago as a calculated hunter tracks him.
Cast: Christopher Porter, Corbin Manning, Clayvon Reeves, Jason Grey, Jarren Davis, Rodney Andrews, Ashley Pough

TheBox
(USA) US Premiere
Director(s): Jack Turpin, Davy Walker
An expressionistic journey through the gilt-pop-entrapment in which we find ourselves.

Vitamins for Life
(USA)
Director: Grier Dill; Screenwriter: T. R. Darling
An educational film about some lesser known vitamins.
Cast: Tessa Greenberg

What a Beautiful World This Will Be
(USA)
Director and Screenwriter: Tyler Walker
While a mysterious disease called “the Blank” ravages New York City, a young drunk must find his missing friend.
Cast: Jordan Michael Blake, Luke Marinkovich, Kara Dudley, Amanda Evans

Press Stills: http://bit.ly/2goPmzt

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ABOUT SLAMDANCE
Slamdance is a community, a year-round experience, and a statement. Established in 1995 by a wild bunch of filmmakers who were tired of relying on a large, oblique system to showcase their work, Slamdance has proven, year after year, that when it comes to recognizing talent and launching careers, independent and grassroots communities can do it themselves.

Slamdance alums are responsible for the programming and organization of the festival. With a variety of backgrounds, interests, and talents, but with no individual filmmaker’s vote meaning more than any others, Slamdance’s programming and organizing committees have been able to stay close to the heart of low budget and do-it-yourself filmmaking. In this way, Slamdance continues to grow and exemplify its mantra: By Filmmakers, For Filmmakers.

The 2017 Slamdance Film Festival will run January 20-26 in Park City, Utah.

Notable Slamdance alumni who first gained notice at the festival include: Christopher Nolan (Interstellar), Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity), Marc Forster (World War Z), Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite), Lena Dunham (Girls), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Anthony & Joe Russo (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin), Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses), Lynn Shelton (Humpday) and Matt Johnson (Operation Avalanche). Box Office Mojo reports alumni who first showed their work at Slamdance have earned over $11.5 billion at the Box Office to date.

In addition to the Festival, Slamdance serves emerging artists and a growing audience with several year-round activities. These include the popular Slamdance Screenplay Competition, the traveling On The Road screening events, the Anarchy Workshop for student filmmakers, and The ArcLight Presents Slamdance Cinema Club – a monthly cinema club partnership with ArcLight Cinemas based at the ArcLight Hollywood and ArcLight Chicago, with two screenings and filmmaker Q&A’s each month:
www.arclightcinemas.com/en/news/arclight-presents-slamdance-cinema-club

Slamdance Presents is a new distribution arm established to access broader distribution of independent films. The goal is to build the popularity of independent films and support filmmakers on a commercial level through theatrical releases. In August 2016, Slamdance Presents launched the week long release of Claire Carré’s feature sci-fi film, Embers, at ArcLight Cinemas Hollywood. Steve Yu’s The Resurrection of Jake The Snake was the first film to be released by the company. The documentary reached number one on iTunes in December, 2015.

In November 2015, Slamdance announced DIG (Digital, Interactive & Gaming), a new digital, interactive and gaming showcase dedicated to emerging independent artists working in hybrid, immersive and developing forms of digital media art. Ten works were featured in the inaugural DIG show that opened in Los Angeles at Big Pictures Los Angeles on December 4, running through December 13, 2015. The show was also featured at the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival.

DIG will open December 2-10, 2016 in Los Angeles and form part of the 2017 Film Festival.

2017 Slamdance Film Festival Sponsors include Blackmagic Design, Distribber, CreativeFuture, Directors Guild of America, Fusion, Different By Design, Pierce Law Group LLP, Writers Guild Of America West, Salt Lake City’s Slug Magazine, Beehive Distilling, and BlueStar Café. Slamdance is proud to partner with sponsors who support emerging artists and filmmakers. Additional information about Slamdance is available at http://www.slamdance.com

Facebook: SlamdanceFilmFestival
Twitter: @slamdance
Instagram: @slamogram

Additional References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slamdance_Film_Festival

PRESS CONTACT:

After Bruce PR
Eseel Borlasa
eseel@afterbruce.com
562-881-6725

Tracy Nguyen-Chung
tracy@afterbruce.com
503-701-2115

(Source:www.slamdance.com)
Sundance Film Festival, Venice International Film Festival

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Sundance adds four more films

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Posted by Larry Gleeson

Park City, UT — Rounding out an already robust slate of new independent work, Sundance Institute adds two Documentary Premieres and two archive From The Collection films to the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Screenings take place in Park City, Salt Lake City and at Sundance Mountain Resort.

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Bending the Arc and Long Strange Trip join archive films Desert Hearts and Reservoir Dogs, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1986 and 1992, respectively. The archive films are selections from the Sundance Institute Collection at UCLA, a joint venture between UCLA Film & Television Archive and Sundance Institute. The Collection, established in 1997, has grown to over 4,000 holdings representing nearly 2,300 titles, and is specifically devoted to the preservation of independent documentaries, narratives and short films supported by Sundance Institute, including Paris is Burning, El Mariachi, Winter’s Bone, Johnny Suede, Working Girls, Crumb, Groove, Better This World, The Oath and Paris, Texas. Titles are generously donated by individual filmmakers, distributors and studios.

With these additions, the 2017 Festival will present 118 feature-length films, representing 32 countries and 37 first-time filmmakers, including 20 in competition. These films were selected from 13,782 submissions including 4,068 feature-length films and 8,985 short films. Of the feature film submissions, 2,005 were from the U.S. and  2,063 were international. 101 feature films at the Festival will be world premieres.

DOCUMENTARY PREMIERES

Bending the Arc / U.S.A. (Directors: Kief Davidson, Pedro Kos, Screenwriter: Cori Shepherd Stern) — This powerful epic is about the extraordinary doctors and activists—including Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Ophelia Dahl—whose work 30 years ago to save lives in a rural Haitian village grew into a global battle in the halls of power for the right to health for all. World Premiere

Long Strange Trip / U.S.A. (Director: Amir Bar-Lev) — The tale of The Grateful Dead is inspiring, complicated and downright messy. A tribe of contrarians, they made art out of open-ended chaos and inadvertently achieved success on their own terms. Never-before-seen footage and interviews offer this unprecedented and unvarnished look at the life of the Dead. World Premiere

FROM THE COLLECTION

Desert Hearts / U.S.A. (Director: Donna Deitch, Screenwriter: Natalie Cooper) — Nevada, 1959: Vivian Bell arrives to get a divorce and finds herself increasingly drawn to Cay Rivvers, a self-assured lesbian. The emotions released by their developing intimacy combined with Vivian’s insecurities are played out against a backdrop of rocky landscapes and country and western songs. The Festival will screen a new digitally restored version by the Criterion Collection and UCLA Film & Television Archive in conjunction with Sundance Institute and Outfest UCLA Legacy Project. Cast: Andra Akers, Dean Butler, Patricia Charbonneau, Audra Lindley, Helen Shaver, Glen Welles.

Reservoir Dogs / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Quentin Tarantino) — They were perfect strangers, assembled to pull off the perfect crime. Then their simple robbery explodes into a bloody ambush and the ruthless killers realize one of them is a police informant. But which one? Miramax provided a brand-new 35mm print for this special 25th anniversary screening, which will be followed by an extended Q&A with Tarantino and producer Lawrence Bender. Cast: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Michael Madsen.

The Sundance Film Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most groundbreaking films of the past three decades, including Boyhood, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Whiplash, Brooklyn, Twenty Feet from Stardom, Life Itself, The Cove, The End of the Tour, Blackfish, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Super Size Me, Dope, Little Miss Sunshine, sex, lies, and videotape, Reservoir Dogs, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious and Napoleon Dynamite.
The Sundance Film Festival®
The Festival is a program of the non-profit Sundance Institute®. 2017 Festival sponsors to date include: Presenting Sponsors – Acura, SundanceTV, Chase Sapphire®, and Canada Goose; Leadership Sponsors – Adobe, AT&T, DIRECTV, Omnicom, Stella Artois® and YouTube; Sustaining Sponsors – American Airlines, Canon U.S.A., Inc., Creators League Studio, Daydream, Francis Ford Coppola Winery, GEICO, The Hollywood Reporter, IMDb, Jaunt, Kickstarter, Oculus and the University of Utah Health. Sundance Institute recognizes critical support from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, and the State of Utah as Festival Host State. The support of these organizations helps offset the Festival’s costs and sustain the Institute’s year-round programs for independent artists. Look for the Official Sponsor seal at their venues at the Festival. sundance.org/festival

sundance_logo

Sundance Institute
Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, Sundance Institute is a nonprofit organization that provides and preserves the space for artists in film, theatre, and new media to create and thrive. The Institute’s signature Labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences to artists in igniting new ideas, discovering original voices, and building a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Sundance Institute has supported such projects as Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Sin Nombre, The Invisible War, The Square, Dirty Wars, Spring Awakening, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder and Fun Home. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

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(Source: sundance.org)
Venice International Film Festival

Inside the Mind of a Programmer: Breaking Down the 2017 Sundance Festival Lineup

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Posted by Larry Gleeson

By Nate von Zumwalt

In times that are anything but ordinary, the filmmakers who infuse our world with perspective through storytelling continue to elevate their craft. That notion is as clear as ever in the slate of films announced in Competition and NEXT for the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. If we are a nation – or a world – weighed down by an undulating fear of isolation, these are the stories that encourage us to understand how we got that way and how to come together again.

screen-shot-2016-12-12-at-2-28-59-pm“The work we saw this year adds much-needed depth and dimension to issues, places, and stories, and we aren’t getting that anywhere else,” Festival Director John Cooper says about this year’s lineup. “These films are going there, and I think that can help bring us together.”

Below, Cooper and Director of Programming Trevor Groth dive into their annual breakdown of this year’s Competition lineup and introduce us to the films that have had them hand-wringing amid late-night programming decisions in recent months.

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Trevor Groth, Programming Director for the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, left, and Festival Director, John Cooper (Photo credit: Sundance.org)

As submissions continue to ascend, has programming the Festival evolved to address the ever-growing crop of work?

John Cooper: When we created a platform for showing independent film more than 30 years ago, we also created a system for evaluating submissions — and as we’ve grown, so has our process. I can’t tell you how impressed we are with independent filmmakers who are raising the bar every year.

We were in the final throes of selection when the presidential election took place, and we actually saw two sides of it. On one hand, we were witnessing this polarized country and world. But at the same time, we were seeing these intricate, healing stories about that same world. The work we saw this year adds much-needed depth and dimension to issues, places, and stories, and we aren’t getting that anywhere else. These films are going there, and I think that can help bring us together. Ultimately we are encouraged because we are seeing the filmmakers who will be carrying stories into the future and helping us understand the world.

Trevor Groth: This year we accepted submissions in two new categories – episodic and virtual reality. When you add something new, it can feel disruptive in terms of process, but I feel really good about the amazing work we found. That idea of seeing complete, complex, fully dimensional characters and stories is definitely seen in these sections, too.

Independent film tends to be fertile terrain for coming-of-age films. This year’s U.S. Dramatic Competition slate seems to probe the years of early adulthood through some new and original lenses.

TG: The coming-of-age films in this section are looking at different types of characters. They’re breaking out of what’s expected and what we’ve seen before and exploring the lives of those who haven’t had their stories told.

JC: Ironically, in some of these films it’s the young people who have it together, and the parents or long-term couples who are trying to figure it out.

There has been a sharp focus in recent years on the collision of agency and storytelling in U.S. Documentary Competition. Do we continue to see that this year?

JC: We are seeing a trend of citizen journalism. We are seeing filmmakers use other people’s footage to tell a complete story – particularly out of Syria and Ferguson in the case of this year’s Documentary Competition. These filmmakers are being very clever in procuring footage from other people and creating much richer stories that convey what it’s like to be on the ground for the events.

TG: You look at two films, Water & Power: A California Heist and The New Radical. They play like thrillers, and in that sense they’re pushing the form forward even if it’s in a different way than something like Kate Plays Christine (2016 SFF) or Casting JonBenet, which are inherently more experimental in their approach. In subtle ways, the use of creative tension in documentary is causing us to reconsider what the form looks like.

Talk about the conception of the New Climate program and the timing of this new programmatic element.

JC: The environment is arguably the most important issue facing our planet, but it seems to have fallen off the table in terms of public awareness and debate. These New Climate films are told in a way that is undeniable. As a global society we know what the solutions are, but it’s a matter of getting everyone to agree on executing those solutions. We only arrive at that place through storytelling that has depth to it.

I think people have a tremendous appetite for World Cinema, but they may not know how to navigate that category as well. What do you enjoy about the international sections?

JC: I’m fascinated by the relationship and connection between American and international independent films — what we have in common as well as the unique differences. We’re seeing filmmakers confront subjects that have never been discussed in their respective countries, and I think more and more they are looking to Sundance as the natural home for their groundbreaking films — especially after we had such a strong showing of international films last year with Under the Shadow, The Innocents and Sand Storm.

TG: When I went to Beijing for the first time after Sundance Film Festival: Hong Kong this year, I was curious to explore what their understanding of Sundance was. I was encouraged by the fact that they think of us as a place for their stories to be seen on an international stage. I think they view Sundance as something to work towards, which we’ve also heard from a number of other filmmaking communities around the world.

Trevor, you’ve previously described a “permeable membrane” between NEXT and U.S. Dramatic Competition. How does this year’s group of films and filmmakers either endorse or challenge that notion?

TG: I’m very encouraged by the fact that we have several NEXT category alumni in our Competition category, and vice versa. NEXT was always intended to be a place to showcase the most adventurous and bold feature films in our lineup, and more filmmakers are rising to that lofty goal every year. It’s harder and harder for us to pick only 10 films to include here.

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(Source: sundance.org)