Slamdance Film Festival Announces 2017 Competition Lineup

The awesome and truly indie inspired Park City festival known for being self governed ‘By Filmmakers, For Filmmakers’ known as the Slamdance Film Festival will once again be taking place in Utah this January 20-26, 2017 for the 23^rd Edition and we here at WhySoBlu.com are very excited.  The fest has a history of discovering some of the best filmmakers in the business (see Christopher Nolan, Jared Hess and Oren Peli to name a few!) and embodies the spirit of originality in film – a feat that deserves be recognized and celebrated.  We’re going to have announcements soon about our involvement in the upcoming fest (we’re so excited!), but needless to say we will be there to document and dissect cinematic pictures of all shapes and sizes in Park City for your movie pleasure.  For now we’re revealing the upcoming slate of films in the two main fest competition categories – Documentary and Narrative features. (And with a whopping 19 films overall there’s no shortage of amazing flicks!)  So check out 2017’s selected films below and then head over to www.Slamdance.com and get your tickets and passes now – see you there movie fans!

NARRATIVE FEATURES

Aerotropolis

(Taiwan) World Premiere

Director & Screenwriter: Jheng-Neng LI

Allen invested everything into a beautiful home to flip for profit only to have it languish on the market, turning his daily life into a haze of financial pressures and an erosion of reality.

Cast: Chia-Lun Yang, Jui-Tzu Liu, Chong-Cyuan Huang, Chin-Yu Lin, Sih-Mei Liou, Ting-Li Bao, Chieh-Wen Deng, Zaw Lin Htwe

Beat Beat Heart

(Germany) North American Premiere

Director & Screenwriter: Luise Brinkmann

Daydreaming her way out of a broken heart, Kerstin’s denial as well as her days are shaken up with the arrival of her mother, dealing with her own relationship’s demise.

Cast: Lana Cooper, Saskia Vester, Till Wonka, Aleksandar Radenkovic, Christin Nichols, Jörg Bundschuh
Caroline Erikson

Cortez

(USA)

Director: Cheryl Nichols; Screenwriter(s): Arron Shiver, Cheryl Nichols

Struggling musician Jesse tracks down his ex Anne in a small town in New Mexico, and is forced to face the decisions of his past as present day consequences set in.

Cast: Arron Shiver, Cheryl Nichols, Drago Sumonja, Judith Ivey, Jackson Shiver, Cassidy Freeman, Kristian Moore, Dylan Kenin

Dave Made a Maze

(USA) World Premiere

Director: Bill Watterson; Screenwriter(s): Steven Sears, Bill Watterson

Dave builds a fort in his living room and ends up trapped inside by fantastical pitfalls, booby traps and creatures, leaving his girlfriend Annie to head up the eccentric rescue team to go in after him.

Cast: Nick Thune, Meera Rohit Kumbhani, Adam Busch, James Urbaniak, Stephanie Allynne, Kirsten Vangsness, Scott Krinsky, John Hennigan

Dim the Fluorescents

(Canada) World Premiere

                                   Director: Daniel Warth; Screenwriter(s): Miles Barstead, Daniel Warth

A struggling actress and an aspiring playwright funnel their uninhibited passion into the only paying work they can find: role-playing demonstrations for corporate seminars.

Cast: Claire Armstrong, Naomi Skwarna, Andreana Callegarini-Gradzik, Brendan Hobin, Clare McConnell, Todd Graham, Hannan Younis, Thom Gill

The Family

(China, Australia) US Premiere

   Director & Screenwriter: Shumin Liu

Liu and Deng are a couple in their 70s who set off to visit their adult children in three faraway cities, in an immersive exploration of family dynamics and daily life.

Cast: Shoufang Deng, Lijie Liu, Xiaomin Liu, Jiangsheng Jiang, Erya Chen, Xujun Liu, Liqin Huang, Zepeng Liao

Kate Can’t Swim

(USA) World Premiere

                 Director: Josh Helman; Screenwriter(s): Jennifer Allcott, Josh Helman

When Kate’s best friend Em returns from abroad with a surprising new lover, they embark on a reunion vacation with their partners, but the peaceful getaway quickly becomes emotionally complicated.

Cast: Celeste Arias, Grayson Dejesus, Jennifer Allcott, Josh Helman

Kuro

(France, UK, Germany, Luxembourg) World Premiere

          Director(s) & Screenwriter(s): Joji Koyama, Tujiko Noriko

A Japanese woman living in Paris tends to her paraplegic lover, passing time by recounting a story about the time they once spent together in Japan, rich with anecdotes, myths and an unexpected dark turn.

Cast: Tujiko Noriko, Jackie

Weather House

(Germany) World Premiere

               Director(s): Frauke Havemann; Co-Director: Eric Schefter; Screenwriter: Mark Johnson

Set in an unspecific time of extreme climate change, an isolated group of disoriented characters develop their own strange belief systems and engage in absurd activities to process their dilemma.

Cast: Inga Dietrich, Charles McDaniels, Erik Hansen, Sabine Hertling, Jack Rath

Wexford Plaza

(Canada) North American Premiere

    Director & Screenwriter: Joyce Wong

Betty is a lonely strip mall security guard, and an unexpected moment with charming deadbeat Danny ends up setting off the unraveling of both their lives.

Cast: Reid Asselstine, Darrel Gamotin, Francis Melling, Ellie Posadas

Withdrawn

(Canada) World Premiere

Director: Adrian Murray; Screenwriter(s): Adrian Murray, Marcus Sullivan, Dean Tardioli

Living in a basement he can’t afford, Aaron spends his days doing drum solos and talking his way out of paying for utilities, until he finds a lost credit card and devises a plan to defraud its owner.

Cast: Aaron Keogh, Molly Reisman, Dean Tardioli, Adrian Murray, Greg Wasylyszn, Kelly Paoli, Hallie Burt, Earl Oliveros

DOCUMENTARY FEATURES

Bogalusa Charm

(USA) World Premiere

Director: Stephen Richardson; Screenwriter: Jennifer Harrington

Through the lens of an anachronistic charm school that has existed for almost three decades in rural Louisiana, we explore a town confronted with contemporary issues of class and race.

The Children Send Their Regards

(Austria) World Premiere

Director: Patricia Josefine Marchart; Screenwriter(s): Jakob Purkarthofer, Sepp Rothwangl, Patricia Josefine Marchart

Adult victims of physical abuse by clergy members in Austria revisit the sites of their childhood trauma and make public their stories to shed light into one of the greatest crimes of the post-war period.

Cast: Georg Prader, Jo Auer, Inge Killmeyer, Josef Schörkmayr, Klaus Oberndorfer, Paula Neulinger, Walo Nowak, Anita Ossinger, Klaus Fluch, Sepp Rothwangl

Hotel Coolgardie

(Australia)

Director: Pete Gleeson

Somewhere between Australia’s most isolated city and it’s largest gold pit lies Coolgardie, where the arrival every three months of a new pair of foreign female backpackers to work the only bar in town is keenly anticipated by the town’s hot-blooded males.

The Modern Jungle

(Mexico/USA) North American Premiere

Director(s) & Screenwriter(s): Charles Fairbanks, Saul Kak

A story of globalization filtered through the fever dream of a Mexican shaman, this is an intimate portrait of Zoque culture, commodity fetish, and the predicament of documentary cinema.

Cast: Juan Juarez Rodriguez, Carmen Echevarría Lopez

On The Sly: In Search of the Family Stone

(USA) World Premiere

Director & Screenwriter: Michael Rubenstone

Director and super-fan Michael Rubenstone sets out in search of long-time reclusive funk legend, Sly Stone. Along the way, he meets with some success, but finds countless more failures in trying to capture a man who refuses to be contained.

Cast: Michael Rubenstone, Cornel West, Bobby Womack, Clive Davis, Dick Cavett, Paul Shaffer, David Kapralik, Freddy Stone

Strad Style

(USA) World Premiere

Director: Stefan Avalos

A rural Ohio eccentric with an obsession for ‘Stradivari’ convinces a famous European concert violinist that he can make a copy of one of the most famous and valuable violins in the world. Fighting time, poverty, and most of all – himself – Danny Houck puts everything on the line for one shot at glory.

Cast: Daniel Houck, Razvan Stoica, David Campbell, Rodger Stearns, Mary Houck

Supergirl

(USA)

Director: Jessie Auritt

Naomi seems like a typical 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl; watching her compete to lift almost three times her bodyweight tells a different story.

Who is Arthur Chu?

(USA) World Premiere

Director(s) & Screenwriter(s): Scott Drucker, Yu Gu

Arthur Chu, eleven time Jeopardy! winner turned internet iconoclast, battles dark forces as a blogger and cultural pundit ultimately realizing that to create positive change in the world he must first heal his own wounds.

 

GO TO WWW.SLAMDANCE.COM FOR MORE DETAILS, TICKETS, PASSES AND INFO.