Slamdance 2001 Screenings

by DAVID GEFFNER

Park City 2001 has faded into Hollwyood's memory banks like January snowdrifts come July. But the benefits for indie filmmakers linger. Case in point: the recent DGA screenings of the Slamdance Award winners. Included in the program (in order of appearance) were: the Audience Award winner for Best Short Film, White Face, directed by Brian McDonald; The Trouble With Lou, directed by Gregor and the recipient of the Moviemaker Breakthrough Award; and the winner of the Grand Jury Award for Best Feature Hybrid, directed by Monteith McCollum.

DGA Assistant Executive Director Elizabeth Stanley kicked off the event calling the Slamdance screenings "a tradition here at the DGA, so worth of support because Slamdance is, and always has been, a festival run by and for filmmakers."

White Face co-producers Kristensen and McDonald field questions at the DGA.

Stanley welcomed Slamdance Co-founder and Executive Director Peter Baxter, who talked about the need for independent filmmakers to receive on-going support for their work once the festival is over. "Screenings like these," Baxter said, "have proven to be so important over the years. They help to generate the kind of interest these films need to find distribution. Slamdance is a wonderful starting point, but the support by the indie community should not end there."

First up was Seattle-based director Brian McDonald's White Face, a 14-minute short tracing three "Clown-Americans" and their struggles with assimilation and prejudice. A clever, yet sober mockumentary (considering the subject matter), McDonald's well-paced digital short could easily have been read as a metaphor for the plight of American minorities. But the African-American director downplayed any links to a specific racial group.

"It was intentional that all the clowns I cast were Causcasian," McDonald noted in a post-screening Q&A session with his DP/co-producer Kris Kristensen. "But that's because if I had cast any of the clowns as Asian or black or whatever, the audience would have perceived it as me hitting them over the head witha racial message. I really just wanted to make a film about the problems clowns would have if they had to integrate into mainstream society. What people take beyond that was not a focused racial message."

Photo by Terry Lilly