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“WELCOME TO PINE HILL,” “NO ASHES NO PHOENIX” TAKE HOME TOP HONORS AT SLAMDANCE AWARDS
During a ceremony held tonight at Park City’s Treasure Mountain Inn, prize winners were announced for the 18th annual Slamdance Film Festival. Taking home the Narrative Grand Jury Prize was Welcome to Pine Hill, Keith Miller’s vérité portrait of a reformed Brooklyn drug dealer undergoing a crisis of mortality. Meanwhile, Jens Pfeifer’s basketball documentary No Ashes, No Phoenix was awarded the Documentary Grand Jury Prize, while Caskey Ebeling’s Getting Up and Andrew Edison’s Bindlestiffs took home the Audience Awards for documentary and narrative, respectively.
The full list of winners, per The Hollywood Reporter:
AUDIENCE AWARDS
Audience Award for Feature Documentary: Getting Up by Caskey Ebeling
Audience Award for Feature Narrative: Bindlestiffs by Andrew Edison
GRAND JURY AWARDS – NARRATIVE
Grand Jury Sparky Award for Feature Narrative: Welcome to Pine Hill by Keith Miller, “for its poetic and emotionally honest depiction of one man’s final journey in life, crafted from a true spirit of humanity and community.”
Special Jury Award for Bold Originality: Heavy Girls by Axel Ranisch, “for its joie de vivre, an incredibly life-affirming film that is presented with a unique vision and an amazing cast.”
GRAND JURY AWARDS – DOCUMENTARY
Grand Jury Sparky Award for Feature Documentary: No Ashes, No Phoenix by Jens Pfeifer, “for its adeptly piercing and cinematic look at a basketball team’s impassioned struggle not for glory, but to just avoid losing.”
Grand Jury Sparky Award for Short Documentary: The Professional by Skylar Neilsen, for “an honest and natural portrayal of work-as-life, and the slowly disappearing craft of an American working man.”
GRAND JURY AWARDS – SHORT FILMS
Grand Jury Sparky Award for Animation: Venus by Tor Fruergaard, “for its creative use of claymation characters to explore sexual adventure and its lighthearted, touching and memorable story.”
Grand Jury Sparky Award for Short Film: I Am John Wayne by Christina Choe, “for its unique storytelling, cinematography and performances, including the brilliant use of a real horse in an urban environment.”
Special Jury Prize for Experimental Short: Solipsist by Andrew Huang, “for its unique blend of live action footage of the human body, puppetry and computer animation that creates a colorful and insightful fantasy world.”
Honorable Mention for Best Ensemble: I’m Coming Over by Sam Handel, “for its extraordinary ensemble which creates a world that extends beyond the film’s 25 minute length.”
SPECIAL & SPONSORED AWARDS
Spirit of Slamdance Sparky Award: Heavy Girls (Dicke Mädchen) – Axel Ranisch, Heiko Pinkowski, Anne Baeker.
The Kodak Vision Award for Best Cinematography: Faith, Love, and Whiskey by Kristina Nikolova, “for shooting every single frame of this picture in a way that is not only pleasing to the eye, but also strongly supportive to the story being told.”
Panasonic AF100 Award for ‘The Five Flavors of Filmmaking’ Competition: Josh Gibson, director of the short film Kudzu Vine.
