The 2005 Slamdance Film Festival (January 21-28, 2005 in Park City, Utah) announced its line up of short films today, including a new jury competition and a short film making challenge.

Nearly five dozen short films will screen during the week-long festival in several categories. Short films will screen in special “Blocks” in the Gallery section: these free screenings will be in competition for the Spirit of Slamdance Audience Award. Short films screening before narrative and documentary features, as well as animated shorts, will be competing in individual Grand Jury Competitions. This marks the first year the Festival has had dedicated Short Film Grand Juries, and the first-ever Animated juried award.

The film that is awarded the Grand Jury Award for Best Short Narrative may automatically qualify to enter the Academy Awards Short Film - Live Action competition, provided it complies with all of the rules, regulations, requirements and restrictions of the competition.

Director of Programming/Filmmaker Relations Sarah Diamond said, "Our 2005 short film slate is as eclectic, outstanding and original as festival audiences have come to except. This year's shorts represent work from 11 countries. We're very excited that due to the acquisition of a second venue on Park City's Main Street, we’ve been able to double the number of screenings for each film.”

Also free to the public are the Anarchy-online screenings at the Festival’s headquarters, the Treasure Mountain Inn on Main Street in Park City. These films have been competing year-round on www.slamdance.com and now the nine monthly winners are in competition with each other for the Global Anarchy Award.

Additionally, the Festival has announced the return of the highly popular $99 Specials -- three filmmakers are given $99 to create a five-minute and under short film experiment, and to supply an often-suspect budget report. The films are made prior to the festival and screened in public for the first time at the festival.

Presented side-by-side will be three short films from the new On-The-Fly program. Three directors will come to Festival to make a documentary -- based on a word drawn out of a hat. Five days later, they have to screen their five-minute short in front of the festival audience. Vendors from Los Angeles and Salt Lake City have donated all goods and services.

These programs are designed to expose the creative filmmaking element in all its raw glory once stripped of the luxuries of time and money.