Sundance has announced the first two films in the 2023 festival’s From The Collection section – the 25th anniversary digital restoration of Slam and the uncensored director’s cut and restoration of The Doom Generation.
Marc Levin directed Slam, which premiered in U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 1998 festival and won the grand jury prize. The film exposes the structural inequity of the criminal justice system through the story of a young Black performance poet imprisoned for a petty crime who finds salvation in his rhymes. Bonz Malone, Beau Sia, Sonja Sohn, and Saul Williams star.
Sundance Institute, UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Academy Film Archive and Lionsgate worked on the restoration.
”Slam sparked a movement, spreading spoken word poetry around the world,” said Levin. “The key players stayed true to the mission, pursuing a life of independent creative expression and social action. Now, 25 years later, I find myself filming the real-life story of Halim Flowers, whom we met back then in the D.C. Jail, and who ultimately found the magic door out… Its power remains undiminished, but sadly so do the conditions it captured so vividly.”
Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation debuted in the 1995 festival’s Premieres section and marked the second film in Araki’s Teenage Apocalypse trilogy. It has been remastered in 4K by Strand Releasing and follows two disenfranchised suburban teens who link up with a mysterious drifter and embark on a sex-fuelled joyride through a surreal American wasteland. James Duval, Rose McGowan, Johnathan Schaech, Perry Farrell, and Heidi Fleiss are among the cast.
“There are three versions of The Doom Generation,” said Araki. “One is the edited version which was released in theatres and on video. The second is a ridiculous R-rated version made without my approval for Blockbuster Video, which has over 20 minutes chopped out and makes no sense (and I hope disappears forever after this re-release).
“The third is the version shown at the film’s world premiere at Sundance in 1995, which was subsequently censored per the distributor’s request (primarily in the climactic reel). This new 4K remaster is the first time this Uncensored Director’s Cut has been seen since 1995 (and also restored to 1.85 Widescreen versus the lousy pan-and-scan version which has circulated for decades). Needless to say, I’m thrilled that The Doom Generation can finally be experienced in its full glory in this remastered and restored edition.”
Both screenings will be followed by conversations with the filmmakers and special guests. From The Collection holds more than 2,300 titles from past festival iterations, among them The Blair Witch Project, El Mariachi, Reality Bites, sex, lies, and videotape, Hoop Dreams, and Paris, Texas.
Sundance Film Festival runs January 19-29, 2023 in Park City, Salt Lake City, and the Sundance Resort, and online for audiences across the country from January 24-29, 2023.
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