Tag: slamdance

Calgary Underground 2023 Review: CASH COW, Educational Deadpan with a Dash of Self Absorption

Is there such a thing as charming narcissism? Inclusive self-absorption?  Apparently, yes, it can be a thing. Matt Barats’ one-man-show pandemic documentary, where he draws parallels between his situation to the prophet of Mormonism, is a black swan. The film...

THE RAINBOW EXPERIMENT: Slamdance Avant-Drama Goes to Gravitas

If you've been digging the weirder, bolder side of American Indies circa 2018ish, namely Josephine  Decker's stupendously stirring Madeline's Madeline, than you may want to keep your eye out for Christina Kallas' The Rainbow Experiment. Preposed as a jarring 21st century Rashomon,...

Slamdance 2018 Review: MAN ON FIRE, One Man's Ultimate Sacrifice and a Town's Reckoning With Its Racism

On June 23, 2014, a 79-year-old Methodist minister named Charles Moore drove to a nearly deserted shopping center parking lot in his former hometown of Grand Saline, Texas, poured gasoline on himself, and set himself on fire. The note Moore...

Slamdance 2018 Review: BIRDS WITHOUT FEATHERS Still Flock Together

We’ve all felt lonely and isolated at one point or another; it’s a feeling that comes and goes. But for the six wayward protagonists of Wendy McColm’s dark comedy/drama Birds Without Feathers, it’s an inescapable part of their lives, a...

Slamdance 2018 Review: HUMAN AFFAIRS, An Intimate Drama With Panoramic, Cosmic Scope

Human Affairs is nominally about the effect of an impending surrogate birth on the childless couple involved, but its title points to its far more panoramic scope. Bracketed by decades-spanning sequences of still photographs, Human Affairs visually and thematically places its three principal characters within...

Slamdance 2018 Preview: 15 Must-See Films

A slew of fresh and dynamic filmmaking voices await you at the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, January 19 - 25. Once the upstart step-sibling of the once Indie minded Sundance, Slamdance (entering its 24th year) is...

BIRDS WITHOUT FEATHERS: Watch The Trailer For Quirky Slamdance Comedy

It promises to be (another) very strong year at the Slamdance Film Festival this year with a lineup packed solid with compelling new talent and idiosynchratic stories hoping to pull audiences up the hill from Sundance. And one of the...

Slamdance 2017 Review: DAVE MADE A MAZE With Entertaining Traps

With its explosion of creativity, its thrilling concept and its lovely characters, Dave Made A Maze is a fine example of how a creative team can overcome the restrains of a tight budget to offer a fun ride.

Slamdance 2017 Preview: ScreenAnarchy's Top Picks

Touted as the festival "for filmmakers by filmmakers", the 23rd Annual Slamdance Film Festical kicks off Friday Jaunary 20th at the Treasure Mountain Inn in Park City, Utah. A stone's throw away from the hustle and bustle of Sundance, Slamdance...

WITHDRAWN: Watch The First Trailer For The Slamdance Selected Indie

Canada's Adrian Murray makes his feature directing debut with Withdrawn, a Slamdance-selected indie that seems to draw its influences from the mid-late eighties wave of American indies that first introduced us to Richard Linklater, Gus Van Sant, Jim Jarmusch and...

Slamdance 2017 Announces Narrative and Doc Competition Slate

The Slamdance Film Festival is revving up for its 23rd edition in Park City, Utah, running from January 20 through 26. The first titles out of the gate for 2017 are the full lineups for both Narrative and Documentary Feature Competition.

Interview: Zapruder Films Talks OPERATION AVALANCHE, Matt Johnson, and the Power of Images

If you can believe it, it's been 17 years since The Blair Witch Project opened the floodgates for found footage films (ff), causing a long-running influx in the mockumentary genre - more troubling, in regular films that bend over backwards...

Hey, LA! Win Tickets to See Visionary Sci-fi Film EMBERS

There are few greater pleasures than discovering a talented filmmaker at the start of what promises to be a dynamic career in storytelling. Claire Carré is one of those filmmakers, and her directorail debut Embers is one of those films....

Slamdance Presents Picks Up Indie Sci-fi Darling EMBERS

Science Fiction with vision -- and done on a budget no less -- is one of our favorite kinds of cinema to give attention to here at ScreenAnarchy. Claire Carré's feature debut Embers is exactly one of those indie sci-fi...

Review: THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE, Terror At Its Very Best

It begins in the dark hollows of your mind. But you can feel it in your heart. Pumping through your veins. The notion that something is wrong. That the world is wrong. That reality is not what it seems. That...

BLOODSUCKING BASTARDS: Scream Factory Announces U.S. Theatrical Date!

You think your 9 to 5 job sucks? Get a load of the crap that Fran Kranz has to deal with in Bloodsucking Bastards, the Slamdance horror comedy from director Brian James O'Connell. Scream Factory Films, a genre theatrical imprint of...

Best Of 2014: Ben Umstead's Reflections And Favorites

As much as I can see 2014 packed to the gills with films people fell head over heels for, many of those mainstream and even ScreenAnarchy favorites will be vacant from this list, simply because I thought this was a...

Watch This: Slamdance Winning Short Film THE GREGGS

Winner of the Spirit of Slamdance award at, you guessed it, this year's Slamdance Film Festival, The Greggs asks a simple question: Where do standardized tests come from?The answer is far sillier, far wackier, and far more frightening than one...

Slamdance 2014 Award Winners

And so it goes... Thursday evening saw the 20th Slamdance Film Festival come to a close with a festive awards ceremony, which included many original and long time Slamdance contributors sharing advice and support, as well as plenty of Sparky...

Slamdance 2014 Review: SOMETIMES I DREAM I'M FLYING Considers The Form Of Ballet With Grace

I recently told a friend that one of my dreams was to see The Rite Of Spring performed as full-on a ballet. I said that really just thinking of Stravinsky's music -- as most of us probably do -- and...