Every year about this time aspiring filmmakers head to Utah to show their work. Hoping to launch their career or at least make that next important contact, they flock to a festival that emphasizes scrappy self-reliance, low-budget creativity and the homegrown spirit of (really) independent cinema.
The Sundance Film Festival, you say? No, the Slamdance Film Festival.
Opening its 15th edition today (and running through Jan. 23), Slamdance has settled into a certain rag-tag respectability, albeit while still maintaining the edginess of what was once a renegade upstart. Begun by a group of filmmakers who had been rejected by Sundance, Slamdance would simply not have been created if not for its Park City, Utah, neighbor, and the two festivals now seem to happily coexist.
While it can be easy to dismiss Slamdance's staunch downmarket integrity in the glare of Sundance's glitzier profile, the festival has helped launch an impressive array of now mainstream filmmakers. Christopher Nolan and Marc Forster -- directors of the Batman and Bond franchises, respectively -- both screened early works at Slamdance. Among other alumni are the directors of the recent holiday comedy "Four Christmases" (Seth Gordon) and period melodrama "The Secret Life of Bees" (Gina Prince-Bythewood), as well as the filmmakers who went on to make "Napoleon Dynamite" (Jared Hess), "The Brothers Bloom" (Rian Johnson), "Superbad" (Greg Mottola) and "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" (Marina Zenovich).
"By the time we came along, it was becoming clear that not all new independent films worth showing could be presented by Sundance," said Peter Baxter, president and co-founder of Slamdance.
Of the 29 features screening this year, 23 are by first-time directors. It is not unusual for directors to move on from Slamdance, often showing their next film just down the hill at Sundance. "Our films are the ones where they get representation," joked Executive Director Drea Clark -- in fact, it's expected.
"I think it would be totally counter to how we approach things to resent or be sad about it," Clark said of seeing filmmakers go on to bigger venues after first showing at Slamdance. "Our focus is primarily on first-time directors, that's why we exist and I think that's why we're such a good complement to Sundance, at this point. We want to find people who are going to make another film and be more successful. To me it's gratifying."
