Slamdance Special Jury Award

Ed Says:
I'm pleased to announce that last night Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football won the Slamdance Special Jury Award for Documentary Feature.

The Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Feature went to the excellent film "Bhopali". Our sincerest congratulations to the producers of that moving and important work.

Everyone at Slamdance has been incredibly supportive of Fordson. At the awards ceremony they said, "The Slamdance jury was moved by this great American story about life, liberty and the pursuit of football."

The juror who presented us with the award, Adrian Belic (director of the 1999 doc Genghis Blues), was personally very vocal, supportive and complimentary of the film. My personal thanks to him for championing us all this week.

Kudos, congratulations and thanks go to the production team: Director Rashid Ghazi's dogged determination to get this thing done and done right, producers Ash-har & Basma Quraishi's creative guidance, Ruth Lietman's insight providing structure to the chaos of 75 hours of raw footage, our amazing photographers Michael Shamus and Mark Berg for their amazing photography, and to all of their unwavering trust in my input and ability to help bring it all together.

I look forward to the next opportunity I might have to submit a work to Slamdance. I'll always keep an eye on Park City, Utah.

Vilmos

Ed Says:
I'm at Slamdance this week. It's been really fun out here in Utah.

We had a pretty full house on the first showing of Fordson and they were a really receptive audience. Very responsive -- and seemed to cue to all the right places, and then some. It was a total kick watching the audience watch the movie. Second showing was on Monday first thing (noon) with a smaller, more subdued (read: hung over) crowd.

I've been getting stopped by people and complimented on the film. My friend Sue Lawson said yesterday that she had been given a list of top 5 must-see docs, and we were first on it.

I'm not bragging, I'm kinda stunned. All of the other work here is so amazing. Last night without realizing, I sat next to Vilmos Zsigmond (the DP for The Deer Hunter) to watch a showing of the first feature he shot (Summer Children, 1965). The dude shot frakking "Deliverance", and all I know is he's some old guy who DP'd once in 1965. After the screening I turned to him and said, "wow, that was really beautiful. Nice job." He looked me in the eye and said "thanks", like no one had ever told him that before. Then he got mobbed by the press, and I realized he was "somebody".

I think he took the compliment the way he did because when he looked at me he realized I didn't know he'd worked with DePalma, or Spielberg, or Cimino, or Altman.

My point is that we're all just sitting in the dark together, hoping someone likes what we've made.

I changed my flight home. I'm staying here 'til the end of the week.


(We don't normally link to clips that we didn't create, but in this case I'm making an exception. Also, you can buy it here)