The once-a-year Slamdance Film Competition will permanently go to Los Angeles, commencing in 2025. The following version of the pageant will run Feb. 20-26, and be dependent at the Landmark Theatres Sunset and the DGA Theater Complex, the two in West Hollywood.
Slamdance is leaving its longtime house in Park City, Utah, and also its location on the calendar concurrent with the Sundance Film Pageant. Slamdance was set up in 1995 by a group of filmmakers who experienced been rejected by Sundance’s programmers.
Even though Slamdance has very long had workplaces in Los Angeles, relocating the competition away from Utah and its overlapping dates with Sundance will begin a new chapter in the festival’s record.
“We felt that there was room for us in the Los Angeles melting pot to really add and to continue on the mission of what Slamdance is all about — getting filmmakers,” claimed Peter Baxter, president and co-founder of Slamdance.
“There have generally been possibilities that we’ve produced for filmmakers in Park Metropolis, but L.A. is a area exactly where there are in fact bigger prospects for Slamdance to improve,” Baxter included. “We’ve been striving quite hard to make our pageant accessible and inclusive, and that also has to do with socioeconomics. A whole lot of viewers users find heading to movie festivals pretty pricey, and for filmmakers by themselves, going to Park City is also a sizeable cost.”
Slamdance designs to give in-person competition passes starting at $50 and to have some applications totally free to the public.
Award winners at the 2024 Slamdance Film Pageant in Park Town, Utah
(Lauren Deseberg / Slamdance Film Festival)
The information of Slamdance transferring to Los Angeles arrives at a time when Sundance’s commitment to Park City is underneath scrutiny. Sundance not long ago announced that it is accepting purposes from other opportunity host towns for its 2027 edition, when its present deal with Park Metropolis is up for renewal. (Sundance reps declined to remark for this tale.) Baxter explained that Slamdance’s go to Los Angeles was unrelated to no matter whether Sundance stays in Park Town.
While the two festivals have remained in specific techniques intertwined over the years, Slamdance has occur into its personal. “They have recognized their individual identity with the operate that they do inside of the field with supplemental screenings and grants,” stated a festival veteran, speaking on situation of anonymity in light of associations with both of those Sundance and Slamdance. “They’re not just the anti-Sundance that they were being in the initially 5 or 10 a long time. Obtaining been all over as prolonged as they have, now they are an institution in their own suitable.”
Slamdance alumni have long gone on to some of the highest positions in Hollywood. Filmmakers who had their early operate demonstrated at the festival involve Christopher Nolan, Joe and Anthony Russo, Rian Johnson and Marc Forster, this means that administrators in the DC, Marvel, Star Wars and James Bond franchises all have roots at Slamdance.
Other noteworthy Slamdance alumni contain Gina Prince-Bythewood, Lena Dunham, the Safdie brothers, Sean Baker, Merawi Gerima and “Parasite” Oscar winner Bong Joon Ho.
Slamdance Movie Festival president and co-founder Peter Baxter, photographed in Los Angeles in April.
(Emil Ravelo / For The Situations)
Steven Soderbergh, whose “Sex, Lies and Videotape” in 1989 was a vital film in the emergence of Sundance as an industry power, first attended Slamdance in 1996 as a producer on Greg Mottola’s “The Daytrippers.” Far more a short while ago, Soderbergh premiered his “High Traveling Bird” at Slamdance in 2019.
“It’s a distinctive vibe,” explained Soderbergh of the distinction among the two festivals. “The whole ideology at the rear of currently being an independent filmmaker is not taking no for an answer and figuring out a way to get your operate done and to get it viewed. So it produced whole perception to me that any person would spring up in the shadow of the substantial Sundance oak tree to give alternatives for additional filmmakers. I was extremely content to have my feet on two unique skis simply because I assume they equally serve a purpose.”
Joe and Anthony Russo, who premiered their film “Pieces” at Slamdance in 1997 prior to heading on to large results with their Marvel films like “Avengers: Endgame,” also have preserved a near relationship with Slamdance. Since 2018, they have introduced an once-a-year $25,000 prize by means of their production corporation AGBO.
“Our journey in the movie field commenced at Slamdance, and our motivation to the festival and the prospects it features filmmakers has remained unwavering,” mentioned the Russos in a statement. “The prospect of Slamdance relocating to Los Angeles is actually exciting. This transfer will definitely broaden its accessibility to many more filmmakers and audiences alike. We appear ahead to witnessing the ongoing progress and effects of Slamdance in its new residence.”
Co-director Sonya Ballantyne, still left, and subject matter Sage Morin of the documentary “The Dying Tour” at the 2024 Slamdance Film Pageant.
(Alston Crosby / Slamdance Film Competition)
Market insiders and competition alumni are not the only ones to acquire take note of Slamdance’s shift from Park City to Los Angeles.
In a statement, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass reported, “To know the record and landscape of unbiased storytelling is to know that Los Angeles has often been a household and a source of inspiration for artists, as the innovative funds of the earth. As we welcome filmmakers, artists and cinema lovers from all over the globe, the Slamdance Film Competition will serve as a dynamic hub for creative imagination, relationship and occupation chances for Angelenos.”
In the initially yrs of Slamdance’s existence, Sundance founder Robert Redford notoriously explained that Slamdance “attached alone to us in a parasitical way.” But he sooner or later softened his stance and was quoted in The Occasions in 2002 as stating, “The fact is, I don’t mind you there at all … simply because the full place is to market impartial movie and we can not maybe show all the films.”
Just about every lineup of Slamdance is programmed by filmmakers who have earlier experienced operate in the festival, foremost to the motto “by filmmakers, for filmmakers.” For case in point, writer-director Marie Jamora observed her function “What Is not There” enjoy the festival in 2013 and commenced programming shorter movies in 2014, moving on to programming attribute films in 2015 and 2016. She also started making authentic articles for the pageant, served on a jury in 2021 and is at present on the Slamdance board. (She even achieved her husband at the pageant.)
“You’re surrounded by men and women who are as scrappy as you,” said Jamora, “who are striving to do a little something a tiny distinct, probably a little something not absolutely mainstream. Getting your like-minded tribe. It is a risk-free room. We enable each and every other, elevate just about every other up, which I assume is really fantastic mainly because the filmmakers that I championed to method their movies, I’ve witnessed their professions take off.”
Additionally, the change to February will incorporate a new spot to the yearly festival calendar as the market moves by a yr previously marked by stops at Berlin, Austin’s South by Southwest, Cannes, Tribeca, Venice, Telluride, Toronto, New York, L.A.’s AFI Fest and in other places.
“We will need some more huge dots on the calendar,” explained Soderbergh. “I believe the a lot more stops on the coach line that filmmakers have and that audiences have and distributors have, I just feel it is improved if there’s a lot more bites at the apple.”
“It’s a devotion,” stated pageant president Baxter of Slamdance’s underlying ideology, to give a showcase for rising talent. “Slamdance means having filmmaking to the edge.”
Regardless of issues confronted by film festivals all around the globe, their worth has arguably hardly ever been bigger, bringing persons with each other and supplying a vital spotlight. Stepping absent from its long entanglement with Sundance, a repositioned Slamdance really should present new options for audiences and filmmakers alike.
