Alongside the main festival, several other smaller film festivals have grown up in Park City during Sundance – giving the film lover a wide range of choices for films ranging from no-budget oddities to unique and compelling gems that might otherwise go unseen. Festivals with names like X-dance (extreme sports films), Tromadance (look up Troma films if you really want to know), and Nodance (taken over by Forrest Whittaker in 2002, but currently on hiatus), Roadance (that screens films on the side of a moving truck), Slumdance and Lapdance (you may be starting to see a trend), have come and gone, but the enduring alternative to Sundance has been the Slamdance Film Festival, running since 1995 and getting bigger and better every year. In fact, while Chris Nolan of Batman fame was put on the map when he played Memento at Sundance, it was Slamdance that gave him his first big break, screening his debut film Following in 1999.
Started by a group of filmmakers who, for whatever reason, couldn't get their films into the increasingly competitive bigger-name fest, it has now become extremely competitive in its own right. One of the unique things about the festival is that in the competition screenings they show only films without prior theatrical distribution and with budgets under $1 million, from first-time feature directors. Sundance claims to emphasize indie-fare, but many of the films — even in competition — turn out to be vehicles for major stars to get their "indie-cred" and come to the festivals with indirect studio backing. Slamdance ensures that its films — at least those in competition — are on an even playing field.
Every year, in addition to a lineup of sincere fictional and documentary films, they tend to have a decent list of tongue-in-cheek and scary horror flicks. Last year my whole group went to see the low-budget but extremely effective Paranormal Activity and were all creeped out — apparently the rights to a bigger-budget bigger-names version have been purchased by Dream Works.
This year Slamdance is opening with I Sell the Dead, a film that has already generated a huge amount of buzz on the internet and from horror aficionados and stars Dominic Monaghan (Merry from Lord of the Rings), Ron Perlman (you know, Hellboy), and Larry Fessenden (longtime veteran and creator of indie horror, director of The Last Winter that we showed at Eckerd's Environmental Film Festival in 2008). It's also showing Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Undead, and Zombie Girl, and several other scary flicks. For my money, the horror films at Slamdance tend to be every bit as exciting as the "Midnight" screenings at Sundance.
This article appears in Dec 24-30, 2008.