The Slamdance Film Festival is an annual film festival focused on emerging artists. The annual week-long festival takes place in Park City, Utah, in late January and is the main event organized by the year-round Slamdance organization, which also hosts a screenplay competition, workshops, screenings throughout the year and events with an emphasis on independent films with budgets under US$1 million. History The festival was founded in 1995 by Dan Mirvish, Jon Fitzgerald, Shane Kuhn, and Peter Baxter, along with Paul Rachman, after they had been unsuccessful in submitting films to the Sundance Film Festival. Baxter has been in charge of Slamdance since 1997. Screenplay competition In addition to the festival, Slamdance's screenplay competition has discovered a number of talented screenwriters, including Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace) and Steven Fechter and Nicole Kassell (co-writers of The Woodsman). In 2008, Slamdance entered into an agreement with Upload Films to develop and produce Drool, the winner of Slamdance's screenplay competition. Written and directed by Nancy Kissam, Drool premiered at the 2009 Festival and thereafter was acquired by Strand Releasing. Chad Crawford Kinkle's southern horror screenplay Jug Face won the 2011 Grand Prize. During the 2012 Festival, Modernciné producers Andrew van den Houten and Robert Tonino announced their production of Jug Face in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2011, Dead in the Room, written by Marjory Kaptanoglu (winner of Slamdance's 2010 Short Screenplay Competition) was directed by Academy Award–nominated filmmaker Adam Pertofsky. In 2012, Harold's Bad Day, written by R.J. Buckley, was directed by Slamdance alum Jordan Brady. The 2011 Grand Prize winner Jug Face, written by Chad Crawford Kinkle, premiered at the 2013 festival, where it was picked up for distribution by Gravitas Ventures. The Slamdance 2013 Screenwriting Competition was presented by JuntoBox Films. Awards were given to the top three scripts in each category, with a Grand Prize of $10,000 cash that went to Butterfly Children by Melanie Schiele. The Short Screenplay winner Think Ink by Emily Hu was produced and premiered at the 2015 Festival, as part of the Special Screenings section. The 2014 Screenplay Competition saw an original teleplay (Search for Life by Andrea Janakas) take home the Grand Prize. Search for Life was also given the award for Best Original Teleplay, the Best Narrative Feature was given to HF Crum's The 3 Faces of Hunger & Thirst, the Best Horror Screenplay was given to Sean Patrick Geraghty's The Hounds