Slamdance Announces 2006 Awards, Featuring Over $200,000 in Prizes

Best of Slamdance Screenings in Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and New York

Park City, Utah — The Slamdance Film Festival announced its winners tonight in over 20 categories, including winners in the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition and Screenplay and Teleplay Competitions at the Slamdance Sparky Award ceremonies at Suede in Park City. Over $200,000 in prizes were awarded. Following the Sparky award ceremony was a party featuring celebrity DJ‘s DJ Swamp (Beck‘s DJ); DJ C-Minus (Vanguard LA); and Tito Plenty (San Francisco).

“Over the years the Park City Slamdance screenings have become a place for the industry to discover new talent,” says Slamdance director Peter Baxter.

“Salt Lake City has become increasingly important from a public perspective.

The “Sparkies” were followed by a party featuring celebrity DJ’s

Award Winners will be shown in Salt Lake City in the Westminster College, Gore Auditorium (1840 South 1300 East). The winning films will be scheduled at one of the following times: 1 PM; 3:30 PM and 6 PM (MST). Further information will be posted at www.slamdance.com.

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You overhear a lot of things in the Film Center…usually things that confirm that filmmaking tools are really very poorly understood. I heard one woman–who was clearly knowledgeable about many technology-related things–emphatically insisting that Avid made only high-end systems for Hollywood filmmakers and that the average person had to look to other companies.

“Victim of our own success,” is–not unexpectedly–how Avid‘s Michael Phillips characterized it (while sitting in one of those Mies van de Rohr chair, semi-illuminated by a pinspot). That may sound glib, but it‘s actually true. Very few products in any industry have ever had the market dominance that Avid had at the high end of Hollywood. There was a time when something over 95% of feature films were cut on Avids. Avid‘s higher end products are still dominant in Hollywood. But Avid has been supporting desktop filmmaking for some time now, with Avid Xpress Pro. Phillips, who is principal product designer for Avid‘s post production tools says that Xpress Pro can do for $1500 what a Film Composer used to do when it was essentially inventing non-linear editing. more

HOUSE OF SAND WINS ALFRED P. SLOAN PRIZE AT 2006 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Park City, UT–The 2006 Sundance Film Festival is pleased to announce that THE HOUSE OF SAND, directed by Andrucha Waddington and written by Elena Soarez, is the recipient of this year‘s Alfred P. Sloan Prize. The Prize, which carries a $20,000 cash award to the writer/director provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is presented to the outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer or mathematician as a major character. The Prize will be presented at the Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony on Saturday, January 28.

THE HOUSE OF SAND is the story of a woman across three generations. In the remote dunes of Brazil, Maria spends her life while an entire century passes by her, her house, and sand. The film, which screened in this year‘s World Cinema Dramatic Competition section, was recognized for its “poetic meditation on the physics of time and the biology of human variation in a story of an isolated family’s search for meaning against the backdrop of a half-century’s scientific and technological evolution.”

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