SlamNation

Infobox Film
name = SlamNation


image_size =
caption =
director = Paul Devlin
producer = Tom Poole: Co-Producer, Michael Shaw: Co-Producer
writer =
narrator =
starring = Sean Williams, Jessica Care Moore, Beau Sia
music = Chris Parker
cinematography =
editing = Paul Devlin
distributor =
released =
runtime =
country = USA
language = English
budget =
gross =
preceded_by =
followed_by = Power Trip
website = http://www.slamnation.com
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0152468

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

"SlamNation" 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 and Bob Holman, among many others.

"SlamNation" 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.

Though it would only enjoy a limited theatrical run, "SlamNation" was nonetheless critically well received. Roger Ebert wrote a glowing review, calling the poetry slam "a pop culture phenomenon" and explaining that "it stands in relation to the sport roughly as Shakespeare's Globe does to drama."http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19981023/REVIEWS/810230305/1023 Roger Ebert's review of SlamNation] . 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,

References

External links

* [http://www.slamnation.com SlamNation official website]
*imdb title|0152468
* [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19981023/REVIEWS/810230305/1023 Roger Ebert's review of SlamNation]
* [http://www.slamnation.com/archive/nytimes/nytimes.htm New York Times review of SlamNation]