Several UWM alumni will screen work at the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival, Jan. 19-25. The festival is in Park City, Utah, and runs in concurrence with the Sundance Film Festival.
Since 1995, Slamdance has been a showcase of raw, innovative filmmaking from both emerging and well-established artists. Filmmakers Christopher Nolan and Lena Dunham gained notice early in their careers at Slamdance.
Winners of the festival’s jury prizes for narrative, animated and documentary shorts qualify for Academy Awards.
“Back at the Staircase,” directed by Drew Britton, will premiere at the festival in the Beyond Features program. Britton received a BFA in film at UWM in 2011.
In the film, a woman organizes a dinner to celebrate her daughter’s acquittal. When the woman has an accident, her family members’ true natures are revealed.
UWM alumni Jessica Farrell, Quinn Hester, Chris Thompson, Dana Shihadah and Samuel Karow also worked on the production.
Kyja Kristjansson-Nelson, who received a film MFA in 2005, will screen her film “House” in the Documentary Shorts program. Shot in Iceland and North Dakota, the film is a meditation on emigration and immigration, house and home.
Josh Weissbach, who received a film MFA in 2013, will screen his film “38 River Road” in the Experimental Shorts program. In the film, “a sequence of estranged voicemails is framed by unidentified events. Fear resides in the gesture of a telling.”
Lori Felker, assistant professor in the Department of Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres, was on the programming committee for the Experimental Shorts program. She will be presenting the Saturday, Jan. 20, program.
Felker’s narrative short film “Discontinuity” debuted at Slamdance in 2016.
