The Slamdance Film Festival celebrates its 10th year with the 2004 edition of the festival, held, January 17-24 in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah. The festival will once again be headquartered at the cozy Treasure Mountain Inn on Park City’s Main Street. There will be four screening rooms – two inside TMI (now with air conditioning!), one at Brewvies in Salt Lake City and a fourth at a location to be announced. For the first time, there will be separate Juries for Narrative Features and Shorts and Documentary Features and Shorts. The Jury is traditionally comprised of high profile filmmakers and film critics.
“It would be fair to say that in ten years, Slamdance has exceeded expectations. After all, the first Festival was intended to be the last, says Slamdance Co-Founder Peter Baxter. “Thirty filmmakers sweated it out in one house and the former Park City Chief of Police wrote in no uncertain terms that our days were numbered. The fact is we’ve outlasted the Chief and have done our fair share in supporting new filmmakers to Oscar and Palm d’Or glory. Slamdance was the first to program the first films of then unknown directors like Chris Nolan and Marc Forster, who,
let’s face it, no one else appeared interested in at the time. Now all of this is history and what is important is what lies ahead, Slamdance Number 10 – which will celebrate, as always, our original mission of showcasing emerging filmmaking talent.”
The number of Festival feature films will increase in 2004, with several additional films added to the increasingly popular documentary division, as well as a few more in the Special Screenings category. Special Screenings are often the work of festival alumni, while Slamdance’s feature competition is devoted to showcasing the work of first-time
directors (working with limited budgets) who do not have domestic distribution for their films. The increased screening room space will allow the Special Screenings, as well as the short films in the Anarchy online and “$99 Specials” sections to have more than one scheduled screening for the first time in 2004.
For more info, visit the Slamdance website.
