..Gary Dretzka
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Doug Pratt
..Ray Pride

April 8 , 2004

NEW COMPANY FORMED UNDER SLAMDANCE BANNER
SLAMDANCE MEDIA GROUP
TO INCLUDE DISTRIBUTION AND MANAGEMENT UNITS
Output Deal With Ventura Launches Slamdance Home Entertainment Label
Slamdance On the Road Distribution Hits the Ground Running with
Theatrical Release of Award-Winners "Faster" and "Better Housekeeping"
Pact with ArcLight for LA exhibition

April 7, 2004 (Los Angeles, CA) - Leveraging the brand-name recognition accrued by ten-year-old Slamdance Film Festival, Slamdance President and co-founder Peter Baxter has joined forces with veteran film and television producer and talent-manager Robert Schwartz, and Cleveland-based businessman George Ketvertis to launch the Slamdance Media Group.
The company, which will comprise distribution and talent-management units, has pacted a home-entertainment output deal with Ventura Entertainment, a division of independent giant Ventura Distribution, to sell product under a new, branded Slamdance label. The theatrical distribution unit, to be known as Slamdance On the Road, has inked with ArcLight Cinemas for exclusive exhibition of the new company's titles in the Los Angeles market. Additionally, two titles have been acquired for U.S. theatrical release: the award-winning "Faster," an action-packed documentary about grand-prix motorcycle racing, and Slamdance grand-jury prize winner "Better Housekeeping," a cutting-edge drama with a dark satirical streak. The management unit will take off with a roster of clients currently represented by Schwartz, and is also seeking out strategic alliances with film and television production companies.
Slamdance Media Group has licensed the name from Slamdance, Inc., corporate entity that operates Slamdance Film Festival activities. The Festival was launched in Park City in 1995 to showcase undistributed films by emerging filmmakers. Festival "discoveries" have included such directors as Christopher Nolan ("Memento") and Mark Forster ("Monster's Ball"). While remaining strictly faithful to its core mission, the Festival has grown significantly in size, scope and influence. Under Baxter's direction, Slamdance has turned into dynamic a year-round operation that tours festival prize-winners in the U.S. and abroad, produces DVDs of festival shorts, and sponsors a screenplay competition, an online film competition, and the $99 Specials competition, which offers grantees $99 and 99 days for a short-film experiment; this latter program most recently spawned the Bravo network's new hit series "Significant Others."

For Baxter, the new venture is an important next step in the evolution of Slamdance. "First, we grew from a festival into a year-round operation, and now we are continuing to support truly independent filmmakers with a commercial enterprise that brings them just financial reward."
The Slamdance Media Group will operate independently from the Festival, as a for-profit operation, with Robert Schwartz as Chairman and Co-CEO, Peter Baxter as President and Co-CEO, and George Ketvertis as Executive Vice President for Strategic Planning and Business Development. Baxter will remain President of Slamdance, Inc., responsible for year-round programs, and for recently established festivals in China and Poland. A new director is being sought to run the flagship Park City festival. Baxter will maintain a hand, as one of fifty programmers, in selecting documentaries and shorts.

The Slamdance Media group will scout product and clients from among submissions to the Film Festival, among many other sources. Schwartz explains the overall vision for the new company, "We are taking a horizontal approach to the support of filmmakers. We will select films for theatrical distribution or straight-to-video sales, but our management division is also looking for screenplays, features and shorts with remake or production potential, that can be packaged through our alliances with production companies. Additionally we will represent talented writers, directors and actors who might otherwise let them fall through the cracks."

Slamdance On The Road
Named after the Festival's successful three-continent tours of its prize winners (now renamed Best Of Slamdance), Slamdance On the Road offers attractive terms for filmmakers, including a guaranteed release in ten domestic markets, and a fixed percentage of the company's share of box-office gross, what the company is terming a "flat-fee royalty." Says Baxter, "Financially, filmmakers will know up-front what they are getting, and will be partners in the marketing of their movies."

The company will focus on films with strong, identifiable core audiences. Baxter anticipates that "We will be looking beyond traditional concepts in our approach to marketing, taking examples from the kind of street marketing that has served our Festival so well."
First up for theatrical distribution is "Faster," by documentarian and music-video director Mark Neale ("No Maps for These Territories," U2). The no-holds-barred look at the glamorous, dangerous world of high-end motorcycle racing world is winner of the prestigious 2003 award for Documentary Reportage, Individual Sport (Mention D'honneur) at the Sport Movies & TV Festival in Milan. With a marketing campaign geared to a strong network of motorcycle fans, to date the film has unspooled to packed houses in Houston, Portland and Minneapolis. It will open at Hollywood's ArcLight on April 23rd, with additional bookings set for April and May in cities around the country.

Later this spring, the company will release "Better Housekeeping," written and directed by Frank Novak. Winner of the grand jury prize at Slamdance 2000 and the only U.S. film chosen for Critic's week at Cannes that year, the film was orphaned when its original distributor, The Shooting Gallery, went out of business. The New York Times praised Novak's "accuracy of observation… that keeps the film grounded in an undeniable social realism. Roger Ebert called it, "Very funny, as you peek at it through the fingers in front of your eyes." Notes Baxter, "This brilliant film is finally going to reach the audience it deserves."

Slamdance Home Entertainment
Ventura Entertainment, a company with a long track record in distributing niche-market product, will create a new branded label to distribute Slamdance Media Group titles. According to Sally Adams, Vice President of Acquisitions and Development, "We're a matched set with the Slamdance Media Group. They are a portal to cutting-edge product, and carry a brand name that will stand out in a cluttered marketplace. We bring the capital, promotional experience and access to shelf-space in markets that our studio-owned competitors don't reach." Under the terms of the deal, Ventura also gains the opportunity to turn its video product over to the Slamdance Media Group for theatrical release.
Ventura Entertainment is part of the Ventura Distribution group of companies. Ventura is a dynamic, 10-year-old home entertainment company with operations in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, that provides full service sales, marketing, manufacturing and distribution for independent studios and producers. Included in its wide array of prestigious lines it represents are, BET Home Video, Fox Television, Lola Films, Razor&Tie, Showtime, Tokyopop, Viz, and, just to name a few. In addition, Ventura exclusively distributes programming on its in-house labels, UrbanWorks Entertainment, StudioWorks Entertainment, Studio Latino and Ventura Select.

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For more information, please contact Sharon Kahn, Sharon J. Kahn Media Strategies.