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On the 26th November 2023 we'd raised £16,274 with 126 supporters in 59 days. But as every pound matters, we're continuing to collect donations from supporters.
The Sundance Stompede is ending after 27 years. Help us make a film about this extraordinary LGBTQ+ dance event and the community behind it.
by xFilm in London, Greater London, United Kingdom
On the 26th November 2023 we'd raised £16,274 with 126 supporters in 59 days. But as every pound matters, we're continuing to collect donations from supporters.
Extra funding will allow us to hire additional crew and equipment, which will allow us to capture even more stories during the event.
We also plan to create a comprehensive archive that we can share with video libraries and stock footage platforms so that this incredible event becomes part of our shared cultural history.
Introduction
The Sundance Stompede is an extraordinary multi-day country-western dance weekend in San Francisco for the LGBTQ+ community and its friends, attracting hundreds of people every year.
More than just dancing, it is an experience that brings people together and builds community in a way that has to be seen to be believed. After 27 years of the event, this year’s Stompede will be the last.
Graham Clayton-Chance, an award-winning filmmaker specialising in dance and arts, wants to create a documentary about the Stompede, using this final opportunity to capture the magic of this extraordinary event. He will be giving his time and skills for free, but making films is expensive and we need your help with funding to make this documentary a reality!
The Last Stompede
The Sundance Stompede began in 1997 as a single-night gala country-western dance fundraising event, and grew over the next decade into an annual four-day weekend featuring educational dance workshops during the day, and four consecutive nights of huge dance parties. The event attracts participants from all over the world, and its inclusive and welcoming focus has helped to achieve its goal of building a global community. It is hard to describe the scale of the positive impact that the Stompede has had within this community. As founder and organizer Ingu Yun says, “For some people that come here, it has changed their lives; for others, it has saved their lives.” Amazingly, this huge undertaking has been an all-volunteer effort for all these years, driven by the passion of its attendees and organisers including Ingu and Dave Hayes Mocci - event director since 2007.
After 27 years, this November’s Stompede will be the last, bringing together LGBTQ+ dancers from across the USA, Canada, Europe, and Australia one final time. Emotions are expected to run high as Dave, Ingu and the entire Stompede community say goodbye to the event that brought them together, where they will share one more glorious weekend of dancing and camaraderie.
More info about the event can be found here: https://stompede.com
Director Graham Clayton-Chance’s Story
"With the help of the Stompede team and the people that take part, I want to make a film that documents this incredible queer event that has become a passionate part of so many people’s lives and touched so many more – people like myself.
My story began in 2017. I’d been invited to the San Francisco Dance Film Festival to show a dance film and was lucky enough to bump into some people at a gay sports bar who were going to the Stompede. I went along with them and it was the most magical thing I’d ever seen. For me, the most striking thing was the diversity, the way the Stompede operates to bring people together, and the visibility and unity that it creates. It was the most joyous celebration I’d experienced as a gay audience member to a cultural event, and the fact that it is created by the people that attend it gives it this overwhelming sense of community, passion, and personal human honesty.
I immediately felt it needed to be captured on film and seen by a larger audience. Unfortunately, life, and then Covid, got in the way. But after Ingu contacted me in early September to let me know that this year’s Stompede would be the last, I knew that I had to get myself to San Francisco again to make this film happen."
Why Is This Important?
This is a story about community – what brings people together – and the joy of being taken by the hand and being invited to dance. This is our last opportunity to capture the spirit of the occasion, the passion, the friendships and the ethos of this communal event. In addition, we want to explore on camera the stories behind the faces on the dance floor and show the impact that the Stompede has had on the lives of its attendees.
This film will be a gift to the world, a way of passing on to the next generation a blueprint of how to build a community. We want this film to reach its true potential: made with craft and heart, whilst ensuring it is seen around the world by thousands of people. We hope it inspires others to reach out, dance, create communities, and love life a little more!
How Will The Story Be Told?
This is a short documentary covering the weekend of the last Stompede. We follow the lifespan of the event as the preparation begins and the doors open, til the last dance is had and the goodbye hugs are felt. Across four days of dancing and friendship we will meet the people on the dance floor and behind the event, discovering how it has touched their lives. This will be an immersive experience for an audience, full of character happiness and warmth. What will rise to the surface is an incredible sense of community, friendship and a shared narration about how this community formed from the most simple pleasure – a dance.
About The Director
Graham Clayton-Chance is a filmmaker who creates moving image works for film, installation and theatre. He lives in the United Kingdom and his award-winning work has screened at International Film Festivals including Berlin, Edinburgh, London and Rotterdam. He has also been commissioned by the UK Film Council, the Arts Council of England and the Scottish Arts Council.
“The highlights of my career are making films that reveal LGBTQ+ issues and culture, from So Mi Madre (nominated for a Queer Teddy at Berlin Film Festival) to helping raise awareness for the need for the first LGBTQ+ care home in the UK (which has now been built!). Also, my dance films documenting the British choreographer Nigel Charnock have reached international audiences and been nominated for awards.
Most importantly I am dedicated to using film as a means to document, record and archive the way LGBTQ+ people live – film is a crucial part of preserving history and also sharing history.” – Graham Clayton-Chance
Here are some examples of Graham's work: https://cargocollective.com/gcc
Cinematographer Casey Regan
NY-based cinematographer Casey is known for the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury and Special Jury Prize-winning 'Step' which documents the senior year of a girls' high-school step dance team against the background of inner-city Baltimore. He has had lots of experience working in dance and understands the importance of documenting communities (Found - Netflix 2021, Hood River - 2021, Ballet Now - Hulu 2018). This experience will help us to create an immersive experience for an audience, full of character happiness and warmth.
About The Production Company
xFilm is an award-winning independent production company based in London specialising in drama and documentaries. Its first feature-length documentary, The Climb, premiered at London Film Festival in 2017 to great acclaim. xFilm has worked with Graham on many projects before and is delighted to support this film.
Here is the company website: https://www.xfilm.co
Donations Are Needed!
We need to raise at least £10,000 (US$12,500) to make this documentary, and £15,000 would substantially increase the quality and the potential of the film. There are numerous expenses to be covered for a documentary like this, which include equipment hire, production, editing, travel and distribution.
Extra funding will allow us to hire additional crew and equipment, which will enable us to capture even more stories during the event. It will also mean that we can create an archive to share with video libraries and stock footage platforms so that this incredible event becomes part of our shared cultural history.
We hope you can make a donation to help document this historic occasion of the last Sundance Stompede. Just as the event is the result of many individuals coming together to make something special happen, we hope that this film will be supported by numerous contributors like you that reflect the breadth of our community in the United States, the United Kingdom, and beyond. If 90 people in the U.K. and 90 in the U.S. donate just £40 (US$50) each, we will already achieve our initial goal.
Financial Information
All donations, minus a small transaction fee (2.4%), will be received by the film’s producers to be applied specifically towards the creation of this film. If we do not reach our funding target, your donation will not be collected. Donations are not supporting a non-profit organisation and are not tax-deductible.
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