SlamNation (1998)

1h 23m
Running Time

January 1, 1998
Release Date

SlamNation (1998)

1h 23m
Running Time

January 1, 1998
Release Date

External Links & Social Media

Plot.

Director Paul Devlin's fast-paced documentary follows four bards as they head to the 1996 National Poetry Slam in Portland, OR. The competition begins with the Grand Slam tournament at New York City's Nuyorican Poets Café, and then it's off to the nationals for chaps Saul Williams, Beau Sia, Mums the Schemer and Jessica Care Moore. The quartet vies against 26 other teams from across the country in a dramatic contest awash with tension, enmity and controversy.

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Details.

Release Date
January 1, 1998

Status
Released

Running Time
1h 23m

Genres

Wiki.

SlamNation is a documentary film by director Paul Devlin. The film follows the National Poetry Slam in Portland, Oregon.

It follows the 1996 Nuyorican Poetry Slam team (Saul Williams, Beau Sia, muMs da Schemer and Jessica Care Moore) as they competed at the 1996 National Poetry Slam held in Portland, OR. The film also features performances by Marc Smith, Patricia Smith, Taylor Mali, Alexandra Oliver and Bob Holman, among many others.

The film is one of the first films to document the art and competition of the poetry slam: a spoken word competition where judges, randomly chosen from the audience, score poets on a scale from one to ten and the poet with the highest score at the end of the evening wins.

SlamNation premiered at the 1998 SXSW Film Festival and was awarded Best Documentary at the 1998 Northampton Independent Film Festival. SlamNation was broadcast on Cinemax/HBO and Starz/Encore, 2000–2002.

Though it would only enjoy a limited theatrical run, the film was nonetheless critically well received. Roger Ebert wrote a glowing review, calling the poetry slam "a pop culture phenomenon". In her book Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, author Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz calls the film "slam's second bible" (behind the Nuyorican anthology Aloud) and writes,

[SlamNation] showcased the best poetry and performances from the best poets across the country, and all within the anxiety-provoking context of the National Poetry Slam. One viewing of the movie could inspire a dozen new poems, and the seamless perfection of the group pieces found in the movie would forever change the number of and quality of the group work presented at the Nationals. It was also the perfect poetry slam propaganda for starting and encouraging new poetry slam venues.

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