Shall we Slamdance?

"More indie than indie.”

That was how the Slamdance Film Festival was described to us, as we wound our way from Salt Lake City airport through snow-covered hills to Park City, Utah.

We were in a van full of filmmakers from all over the world (a couple of guys came from France), though none from as far away as the Philippines, to attend either Sundance or Slamdance, or — for the super-organized film fanatics among us — both.

Every January, Park City transforms from a winter wonderland of ski resorts to a starry venue for independent films, with two film festivals premiering the year’s most promising movies.

The more senior and therefore more famous festival is, of course, Sundance, begun 35 years ago by Robert Redford and his company. Over the years Sundance has turned Park City into a mini-Los Angeles (albeit snowier), with its Hollywood-ready movies poised for distribution, celebrities like Paris Hilton and Joseph Gordon-Levitt trawling Main Street, and starlets vying to get into luxury lounges.

Slamdance, on the other hand, is a much smaller operation. Founded in 1995 by filmmakers Dan Mirvish, Paul Rachman, Peter Baxter, Jon Fitzgerald and Shane Kuhn, mainly as a reaction to their films not being selected for Sundance, it’s headquartered in Main Street’s Treasure Mountain Inn, with two screening rooms that seat hundreds — versus Sundance’s thousands in theaters located as far afield as Ogden, Utah.

The atmosphere at Slamdance is much more intimate, more encouraging, more familial. The motto they flash before every screening is “No limits, no fear,” and that’s the prevailing impression you get: the filmmakers are hungrier, take more risks, and do it with much lower budgets than their Sundance contemporaries.

My sister Marie Jamora’s film, Ang Nawawala — which won Cinemalaya’s Audience Choice and Best Original Music Score awards — was the only Asian film chosen from among the 5,000 entries submitted to Slamdance, no easy feat considering that director Dan Mirvish, one of the co-founders, lamented that it’s gotten harder and harder to get his films into his own festival. (This year he did screen a pet project: Between Us, a blackly funny drama that a Slamdance programmer happened to like.)

Translated to What Isn’t There for international audiences, Ang Nawawala had a memorable run at Slamdance, with Blade Runner actress Sean Young even attending the second screening, but more on that later.

Marie particularly liked Slamdance’s Sled-Off and Hot Tub Summit: she faced her possible demise in the former and a Jacuzzi full of half-naked men in the latter.

“How the Sled-Off works is that people would hike up around 50 feet, and then share inner tubes or sleds down this hill, and there would be a Slamdance bunch of people catching you before you sled off the cliff. I kid you not,” Marie says. “Sometimes, the sledders would be, like, five inches from the edge of the cliff. My producer, Bernard Dacanay, looked at the cliff and told me, with big eyes, ‘This is a bad idea.’ I had never sledded before, so I did it. I even wore a kimono and had a fake katana (umbrella) because I had gotten an e-mail from Slamdance saying I should wear a ‘warrior costume’ (which apparently no one followed). The sled down was terrifying. It went by so fast, and being caught by the Slamdancers felt like bowling/football. The wind is tackled out of you. In hindsight, I am glad I didn’t impale anyone or myself with the katana.” The sled-off ended early because as one girl from the staff tried to catch the next batch of sledders, she got kneed to the head, suffered from a minor concussion and was brought to the hospital.

Another Slamdance founder, Paul Rachman, led the Hot Tub Summit, which turned out to be more instructive than kinky for the first-time feature director. “It was actually a convention of Slamdance and Sundance alumni, intimately sharing their experiences with the festivals and life after the festival: sales, marketing, distribution, and even bad experiences with Hollywood folk,” recounts Marie. “You weren’t forced to swim in the tub (hence it became sort of a sausage fest in there), but Paul would ask each person there why they were there, what they wanted to learn, and the alumni would all give their advice, specifically catered to your concerns. It’s like a panel discussion, but in the most relaxed of circumstances (seeing these dudes wet and shirtless makes you feel quite buddy-buddy with them at the end of the day) and with a cool bunch of people. And that’s what Slamdance is all about, flipping the bird to what is conventional or expected, not catering to the usual Hollywood bull, and being different in the coolest of ways.”

At the red-carpet event, attended by Team What Isn’t There — co-writer Ramon de Veyra, actress Jenny Jamora (the only actor in the film who could make it), producers Bernard, Daphne Chiu and John Sy, and even our mom, Dr. Sylvia Jacinto — Marie met Sean Young, who was also walking the carpet to promote her latest film Jug Face, a southern-gothic horror story. Marie told the Hollywood star that Enid, the female lead in What Isn’t There played by Annicka Dolonius, dresses up as Young’s Blade Runner character Rachael for Halloween, and invited her to watch the second screening. Apparently intrigued, Young pulled out the movie postcards Marie gave her when I later got a chance to speak to her alone, asking where exactly the film was going to be shown and what it was about. I explained, thinking she was just being polite and not really expecting a Hollywood star of such magnitude to show up, but that Tuesday, Young breezed in on the dot, flashing her tickets and taking a seat in the third row with a female friend. And there she stayed until after the Q&A at the end.

“Sean Young came up to me after the screening, hugged me and told me that she found our film, ‘Beautiful and healing,’ which I’ll never forget,” Marie says. Young also handed Marie her calling card, saying, “Call me if you need me.”

What was equally amazing was that, while Marie was expecting to share the film with the Filipino community in Utah, instead she showed it to a predominantly white audience, whose warm reception went far beyond what she had expected.

“The reactions were great: One guy, a DJ at a local radio station, said after he watched the film that it’s been a long time since he saw music used in a movie like this. The last time was Once. That was one of my fave comments.

One of the shorts filmmakers came up to me, saying, ‘You say that white people don’t know the Eraserheads? I know the Eraserheads! Minsan, man! Torpedo! Fruitcake!’ which shocked the bejeezus out of me. Another shorts filmmaker came up to me, saying how much she was touched by the film, and then she started crying as she was telling me this. This means a lot, coming from fellow filmmakers whose work you also respect, because you know that they know how much work you put into it. They see behind the curtain and appreciate the film on a different level. There was a couple in their early 70s who reached out to me in the hallway as I was going to the bathroom, lining up for another film, and they told me how much they loved the film as well. There was a Chilean graduate student from USC who told me that he watched a bunch of films from Sundance and Slamdance and that our film was by far his favorite. I also got a bunch of hugs from random strangers who would come up to me and say, ‘I just need to hug you. Can I hug you?’ which also happened during Cinemalaya.”

After the high of a film festival like Slamdance, however, the independent filmmaker has to face tough questions like: “How do I bring my film to the widest possible audience?”

“We are talking to sales agents and distributors, as well as applying to more film festivals all over the world, searching for the best ways to share our film with more people,” Marie says. “Locally we are still screening the film at schools and are open to more ways to screen the film in other local venues. In case anyone is interested, we can be reached on our Facebook page or at <whatisntthere@gmail.com>.”

The much-awaited soundtrack on clear vinyl (with a download card inside for a digital version of the full score) is also being launched this Saturday, in partnership with our very own Young Star.

It’s a big, wide market out there for young filmmakers. Sometimes, it’s hard not to get lost in the blur of celebrityhood and dealmaking that now surrounds Sundance. Slamdance offers something completely different: a warm, welcoming room to those keeping indie filmmaking alive, a lot of solid career advice (inside hot tubs and out), and, for some … the occasional hug.

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In collaboration with Young Star, Heima, and Strike Back Attack, the Ang Nawawalang Soundtrack will be launched on March 16, Saturday, at the new Heima store in Brixton, Barangay Kapitolyo.