The Slamdance Film Festival, the movie showcase with a sole mission to nurture, support and introduce truly independent works, has announced its feature film slate and special program schedule for the 2008 fest, which takes place in Park City, Utah, January 17-25. Now in its 14th year, Slamdance has established a unique reputation for premiering new films by first-time writers and directors working within the creative confines of limited budgets.

 As always, Slamdance is featuring an interesting, provocative schedule of screenings and events, with film programs including Twilight Screenings (Slamdance’s late night series); writing competitions for both screenplays and teleplays; the Anarchy Online Short Film Competition; Fireside Chats with notables from the independent film community; a $99 Special short film production project; a best-of games presentation; and the Horror Screenplay Competition, in which the winning script is guaranteed to be produced as a feature film.

 This year, the Opening Night Film is Real Time, written and directed by Randall Cole and starring Randy Quaid (Goya’s Ghosts, Brokeback Mountain) and Jay Baruchel (Knocked Up, Million Dollar Baby). Real Time is a comedic drama about a compulsive gambler who is given one hour to live by the hitman hired to kill him.

 As it does every year, Slamdance will run concurrently with the Sundance Film Festival. Slamdance and the box office will be headquartered and films will screen at the Treasure Mountain Inn, 255 Main Street. For more information and for a complete listing of films in the Festival, visit www.slamdance.com or call 323/466-1786. Festival passes are now on sale on the web site; individual tickets go on sale online December 14. Special ticket packages are also available.

“Slamdance has built a reputation for being at the forefront of what’s new and exciting in culture, media and entertainment” says Peter Baxter, President and Co-Founder. “What that means for us as a film festival in today’s new media environment is that we’re inclusive of all the film viewing platforms out there in the marketplace. We don’t just think about theatrical and DVD release – we know our demographic, and they want to watch movies on their iPods, their computers, on YouTube. By embracing all of these different platforms, we’re better equipped to help our filmmakers find an audience.”

 The Slamdance Film Festival is distinctive in several ways. The competition feature program is reserved for first time feature directors working with budgets under one million dollars, thus supporting the Festival’s mission to give exposure to emerging filmmaking talent. Further, Slamdance is programmed through a unique democratic method. Every film is programmed by majority rule by a committee of filmmakers.  Slamdance alumni are recruited to serve as programmers, so first-timers are represented and assisted by Slamdance veterans. The mantra of “by filmmakers, for filmmakers” resounds at every level of the organization, and plays a part in all of its undertakings.

Slamdance has four programming committees: Narrative Features, Documentaries, Special Screenings, and Shorts (the latter category will be announced shortly in a separate release). 

“This year, we received more than 1,200 feature submissions and selected 29 of them,” says Sarah Diamond, Director of Programming/Chair of Documentary Competition. “Every year, we’re blown away by the quality and creativity of the films that are submitted. Our job as programmers gets more difficult as the films get better and better, but we’re thrilled that the decisions are as hard to make as they are. It means that the bar for independent filmmaking is consistently being raised, and that the spirit of Slamdance is continuing to be embraced by the indie film community.”