SLAMDANCE ON THE ROAD presents award-winning Slamdance films of 2010

Shunka, a film by CJ Gardella

Shunka is a vision of the material and spiritual worlds, and their coalescence; and of finding stark poetry in the haze of the every day in a small community in the Badlands. Through Donna, a psychic medium contacting the ghosts of a family’s past, we witness life interacting and sometimes conflicting with the mystical. Through Ed, an old soldier and cowboy whose memories evoke a love for and connection with the things that have passed. Shunka patiently and beautifully broadens its focus. From insects devouring plants; to humans sharing old experiences and taking part in new ones; to ghosts unwittingly haunting the living; to animals, quick to inhabit the material present, and to depart. This film of vivid images is eager to explore the quick and the dead; and the spaces between. 

We will also show a short film titled: Oaks, which follows Ethan Rose who discovers a silent-era-pipe organ at the Oaks Park roller skating rink.  He befriends the resident organist, Keith Fortune and this friendship results in Rose’s critically acclaimed record “Oaks.”  The film chronicles how the recording of “Oaks” elicits new life from the Wurlitzer.