As with other festivals, Slamdance has awards to pass out to the films deemed most noteworthy. Here are some of the awards garnered by the feature documentaries that showed at Slamdance.
The Grand Jury gave an Honorable Mention to Twin Fences. Written and directed by Yana Osman, the film starts as what seems to be an obscure facet of Soviet history—the ubiquitous PO-2 walls designed by Boris Lakhman. These prefab fences are everywhere throughout what was the Soviet Union. But as she speaks with various experts, and then goes to Ukraine to visit her grandfather, we discover that this is really a personal story of her family, with roots in Russia, Ukraine, and Afghanistan. We are left to contemplate the idea of walls and fences—and what they mean in our personal lives and the role they play in the political world.
The Audience Award went to Coroner to the Stars, directed by Ben Hethcoat and Keita Ideno. From 1968-1982, Dr. Thomas Noguchi was Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for Los Angeles County. He was a top of the line forensic pathologist. That means he oversaw newsworthy celebrity deaths. These included Marilyn Monroe, William Holden, Natalie Wood, Jim Belushi, the Tate-Labianca murders by the Manson Family. This gave him a great deal of exposure. Was he seeking publicity or just doing his job? He frequently met resistance—especially from the powerful in the county government, and from celebrities who wanted secrets kept. The film portrays him as a man of integrity who frequently was also the victim of a racist system, but continued to do his job.
The George Starks Spirit of Slamdance Award, voted on by filmmakers and given to the filmmaker who best embodies the spirit of the Festival, went to Ben Kjar, subject of Standout: The Ben Kjar Story¸ directed by Tanner Christensen. The film is the story of a child born with Crouzon Syndrome, a craniofacial disorder. Despite the many surgeries and the way people reacted to his deformities, Kjar went on to become a star wrestler in high school, eventually becoming a college All-American. The film begins with Kjar pondering the Biblical story of the pool of Bethesda where people went seeking healing (John 5:2ff). The imagery of the healing pool recurs frequently throughout the film as he recounts the times and people who provided different kinds of healing throughout his life.
