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Rock Steady Row[/caption]
The Slamdance Film Festival today unveiled its narrative and documentary feature film competition lineup for its 24th edition, taking place January 19 to 25, 2018 in Park City, Utah.
The feature competition lineup will showcase 10 narrative and eight documentary features. All competition films are feature-length directorial debuts with budgets of less than $1 million and without U.S. distribution.
Captain America: Civil War directors and alumni Anthony and Joe Russo are partnering with Slamdance for the inaugural Russo Fellowship award. The award winner will receive a $25,000 cash prize and mentorship from the Russo brothers in the development of the winner’s next project at their new Los Angeles-based studio. Every participating filmmaker at the 2018 festival is eligible for this prize. The award will be presented annually.
“The Russo brothers exemplify our ‘by filmmakers for filmmakers’ paradigm,” says Slamdance co-founder and president Peter Baxter. “They are joined by a great number of dedicated alumni who’ve shown when it comes to recognizing talent and launching careers, Slamdance’s independent and grassroots film community really can do it themselves.”
“Born out of rejection, Slamdance’s artist-led group continues to discover cutting edge talent creating work outside of convention. Our 2018 competition lineup is daring, varied, and vivid. It represents the spirit of our time and leads us into the future.”
2018 Slamdance Film Festival Feature Film Competition Lineup
NARRATIVE FEATURES
Birds Without Feathers
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Wendy McColm
Screenwriter: Wendy McColm
Desperate for human interaction, six emotionally damaged individuals risk self respect, shedding their disillusionment in a last grasp for happiness. A cruel-world comedy populated by struggling Instagram stars, Russian cowboys, Self-help gurus and more, their lives collide and crash in astounding ways.
Cast: Wendy McColm, Lenae Day Cooper Oznowicz, William Gabriel Greer, Sara Estefanos, and Alexander Stasko
Charlie And Hannah’s Grand Night Out
(Belgium) World Premiere
Director: Bert Scholiers
Screenwriter: Bert Scholiers
Two Girls. One Night. Magical Candy Consumed. Twenty-somethings, Charlie and Hannah, find themselves strolling through the city as events take a wildly surreal turn. Transported to a trippy galaxy, filled with cosmic wisdom and contradictions, the pair learn to realize the search for love can take many forms.
Cast: Evelien Bosmans, Daphne Wellens, Patrick Vervueren
Fake Tattoos
(Canada) US Premiere
Director: Pascal Plante
Screenwriter: Pascal Plante
Shy Theo finds himself unexpectedly kicked in the heart by a punk-rock romance on his 18th birthday as Mag bursts into his life for a rollicking encounter. Set against a backdrop of music and mayhem, this coming-of-age tale, explores the thrashing fragility of summer love as life choices and separation loom with no true answers in sight.
Cast: Anthony Therrien, Rose-Marie Perreault
Fish Bones
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Joanne Mony Park
Screenwriter: Joanne Mony Park
Hana, a Korean immigrant on winter break, is caught between worlds. While struggling to find peace with her conservative mother and the expectations surrounding her future, Hana finds herself falling for Nico, a tender and affectionate Latina music producer.
Cast: Joony Kim, Cris Gris
Human Affairs
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Charlie Birns
Screenwriter: Charlie Birns
This richly earnest drama follows Geneviève, a surrogate who must reckon with her ambivalence about the pregnancy and her precarious feelings for the parents-to-be.
Cast: Dominic Fumusa, Kerry Condon, David Harbour, Julie Sokolowski
Lovers
(Denmark) US Premiere
Director: Niels Holstein Kaa
Screenwriter: Magnus B. B. Lysbakken
In the streets, parks and cafes of Copenhagen, a triptych of love stories come to vivid life. Framed with a superb naturalism, these tales through the seasons tackle the ever rising tide of loneliness and self-doubt that can come in the face of new love.
Cast: Marie Mailand, Niklas Herskind, Nina Terese Rask
M/M
(Canada, Germany) World Premiere
Director: Drew Lint
Screenwriter: Drew Lint
Wayward Canadian, Matthew, crushed by the isolation of being new to Berlin, turns his sexual desires toward Matthias that spiral into a dark fixation of assumed identity. Soon, this obsessive power struggle between the two, careens toward brutal passion and violence in a bid for dominance.
Cast: Antoine Lahaie, Nicolas Maxim Endlicher
Rock Steady Row
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Trevor Stevens
Screenwriter: Bomani Story
Demented chaos rules this bizarro-world college campus where the reigning gang-frats target a freshman, who dare crosses their path. Trapped between a blaze of twisted ‘Mad Max’ style power games, he shrewdly plays both sides, fueling apocalyptic-sized battles that escalate to ensnare the school Dean who’s coming unglued.
Cast: Heston Horwin, Diamond White, Logan Huffman, Isaac Alisma, Allie Marie Evans, Larry Miller, Peter Gilroy
Songs in the Sun
(Denmark) US Premiere
Director: Kristian Sejrbo Lidegaard
Screenwriter: Allan Hyde, Kristian Sejrbo Lidegaard
Off the coast of Denmark, young Anna discovers she is the only lifeline to ailing childhood friend Julie and Sonja, Julie’s apathetic mother. Over the course of one momentous afternoon, Anna will learn the healing power of belief and myth-making in everyday living
Cast: Emma Sehested Høeg, Charlotte Munck, Victoria Carmen Sonne
The Starry Sky Above Me
(France) US Premiere
Director: Ilan Klipper
Screenwriter: Ilan Klipper, Raphaël Neal
Bruno is happy to live out his days luxuriating in the existential highs and lows only a brilliant literary mind can appreciate. But when his loved ones seek to intervene with the help of a psychiatrist, Bruno’s bohemian lifestyle may in fact be the perfect anecdote to the colorless, PC lives they didn’t know they hated.
Cast: Laurent Poitrenaux, Camille Chamoux, Marilyne Canto, Alma Jodorowsky, François Chattot, Michèle Moretti, Frank Williams
DOCUMENTARY FEATURES
Circus Ecuador
(Ecuador, USA) World Premiere
Directors: Ashley Bishop and Jim Brassard
James and Ashley travel to the jungles of Ecuador to make a documentary about a school being built for an indigenous community only to discover that the community may or may not be involved in aliens, gold smuggling, human trafficking, and murder.
Freedom for the Wolf
(Germany, USA)
Director: Rupert Russell
From Hong Kong to Tunisia to Bollywood, people are fighting against elected leaders dismantling freedom and democracy. These seemingly disparate international stories are cohesively tied into what is happening in the US to reach some very compelling conclusions.
Ingrid
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Morrisa Maltz
An intimate look at a woman who left her life as a successful fashion designer and mother in Texas to become a reclusive hermit, immersed in nature, focused solely on creating art.
Instant Dreams
(Netherlands) North American Premiere
Director: Willem Baptist
An essayistic quest for the secret of instant film, the magic appeal of Polaroid and what that tells us about the fascinating relationship we have with the photographic image.
Man on Fire
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Joel Fendelman
Grand Saline, Texas was a sleepy, unremarkable town–until a white preacher lit himself on fire to protest the town’s racism in 2014.
MexMan
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Josh Polon
Germán is a young artist and filmmaker struggling to complete his first feature film and express his undying love to a girl, while secretly living at an airport and trying to stay sane.
Mr. Fish: Cartooning From The Deep End
(USA)
Director: Pablo Bryant
This personal documentary follows a controversial political cartoonist as he struggles to provide for his family and stay true to his creativity in a world where biting satiric humor has an ever-diminishing commercial value.
Sunnyside
(Belgium, Netherlands) North American Premiere
Director: Frederik Carbon
On a seaside mountain in Northern California two old friends (one a visionary architect and the other an influential sound artist) dream, talk, live, and create.
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My Name is Myeisha[/caption]
The winners of juried and audience awards of the 4th Annual Mammoth Lakes Film Festival (MLFF) were announced at the Closing Night Award Ceremony at the Sierra Event Center in Mammoth Lakes on Sunday, May 27, 2018. The festival, held from May 23-27, screened over 70 films, including 63 in MLFF’s competition categories. Each of the festival winners received an Orson the Bear Award, handcrafted by Josh Slater of Bear in Mind Carvings located in Mammoth Lakes.
“This year’s festival exceeded our expectations on many levels. We welcomed more filmmakers, audience members, and media than in any of our other three years,” said Festival Director Shira Dubrovner. “Against the backdrop of our beautiful city, we were honored to host such an artistic collection of films that continues our commitment of bringing dynamic storytelling to our appreciative community.”
“The number of attending filmmakers from all over the world and the quality of their work, combined with the involvement of the Mammoth Lakes community, brought to life a series of scintillating events and thought-provoking discussions at this year’s festival,” said Festival Programmer Paul Sbrizzi.
“It has been my privilege to be a part of the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival since it’s conception,” said Documentary Features jury member Allison Amon (EVP Sales & Development, Bullitt). “The festival continues to grow both in scope and reputation, and it is incredibly inspiring to be here in the most beautiful landscape and surrounded by the creativity the festival attracts.”
The 2019 festival is slated for May 22 to 26, 2019.
The full list of Juried and Audience Awards is below:
Caleb Emery, Cory Grüter-Andrew, Judah Lewis and Graham Verchere appear in Summer of ’84 by Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann Whissell[/caption]
ROCK STEADY ROW and SUMMER OF ’84, have been selected as the opening night films of the 2018 Chattanooga Film Festival (CFF) slated for April 5 to 8, 2018. The festival will also screen the world premiere of the highly anticipated documentary LIFE AFTER FLASH.
LIFE AFTER FLASH is an inspiring and moving feature documentary that celebrates what makes that Mike Hodges enduring classic FLASH GORDON so iconic with audiences to this day. This film takes a looks at the real man behind the heroic mask, Sam J. Jones, including his successes, his battles, and his ultimate struggle for redemption. Director Lisa Downs, along with star Sam J. Jones and producer Ashley Pugh, will be in attendance for this once in a lifetime screening.
“The Chattanooga Film Festival has quickly grown over the last four years,” says festival executive director Chris Dortch. “Last year was our biggest, and for our fifth anniversary we weren’t going to settle for anything less than our best, most insane year yet.”
Rock Steady Row – Winner of the Narrative Feature Award and the Audience Feature Award. l-r. Bomani Story (Writer) and Trevor Stevens (Dir.) of Rock Steady Row.. Photo credit: Lauren Desbrg/SLAMDANCE[/caption]
The 24th Slamdance Film Festival wrapped last weekend and presented prizes to the winners of this year’s Sparky Awards in the Audience, Jury, and Sponsored Categories. The festival also announced the recipients of three new awards: The Russo Brothers Fellowship, the CreativeFuture Innovation Award, and a curated Acting Award.
The Sparky Award for Best Narrative Feature went to Rock Steady Row, directed by Trevor Stevens and written by Bomani Story. “Rock Steady Row is a shining star in genre, young adult themes, and ‘save the day’ filmmaking. Done creatively in a comic book meets George Miller meets John Carpenter universe. Sharply directed by Trevor Stevens and written by Bomani Story. With strong ingenuity not commonly seen at this budget and experience level, Rock Steady Row stands tall,” said jurors.
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Mr. Fish: Cartooning From The Deep End
My Name Is Myeisha Winner of the Audience Beyond Feature Award. Actress Rhaechyl Walker was also honored with an Acting Award. l-r. Alex Hines, John Merchant, Rhaechyl Walker, Dee Dee Stephens of My Name Is Myeisha. Photo credit: Lauren Desberg/SLAMDANCE[/caption]
Awards were also given to festival favorites, voted on by Slamdance audiences. The Narrative Feature Audience Award was presented to Rock Steady Row, directed by Trevor Stevens. Freedom For The Wolf, directed by Rupert Russell, received the Documentary Feature Audience Award, The Beyond Feature Audience Award was awarded to My Name Is Myeisha, directed by Gus Krieger.
The festival also recognized the Audience Award runners-up in their respective feature categories: Charlie And Hannah’s Grand Night Out (Dir: Bert Scholiers), MexMan (Dir.: Josh Polon) and Funny Story (Dir.: Michael Gallagher).
A full list of winners is below: