New York, NY – January 19, 2012 – The Orchard (www.theorchard.com) today announced that three action sports films in The Orchard Sports catalogue were recognized at the X-Dance Action Sports Film Festival earlier this week. Widely respected in the action sports world, and often referred to as the biggest film festival in the field, the 12th annual X-Dance Film Festival took place on January 12-15 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The awarded films included Solitaire, the western-inspired tale of backcountry gambles that follows skiers, snowboarders and telemark skiers into landscapes never before visited on film, which landed the Best Director & Best Editing awards; Defy, a wakeboarding extravaganza starring four-time X-Game gold medalist Danny Harf, which took home the award for Best Soundtrack; and The Ordinary Skier, which traces the journey of professional skier Seth Morrison from the middle-class suburbs of Chicago to the Colorado Rockies and into the underground ski-burn subculture that would eventually become Freeskiing, which earned the award for Best Original Score.
“It’s a wonderful and rewarding feeling to see these unique films that we work with be recognized like this,” says Danny Grant, GM of The Orchard Sports. “These guys put so much heart and passion into their films, it’s simply an honor to work with them and help them share their work with the world digitally. I whole-heartedly congratulate the winners and look forward to collaborating again with all the producers in the future.”
Don’t miss Defy, Solitaire, The Ordinary Skier and others, available for download on iTunes and/or YouTube via The Orchard Sports.
About X-Dance
For one insane week each winter, the world’s top action sport filmmakers and athletes, along with cutting-edge bands and DJs and key figures from the entertainment industry, gather in Salt Lake City, Utah, to celebrate action sports culture at the annual X-DANCE Action Sports Film Festival. Launched in 2001 and coinciding each year with the Sundance Film Festival, X-DANCE showcases the year’s top action sport films, followed by post-screening Q&A’s with filmmakers and athletes. X-DANCE also features open forum panels with athletes, filmmakers, industry figures and icons from the action sports world, plus special screenings, privately sponsored parties and a legendary Closing Party/Awards Ceremony. With roots in both the core industry as well as the mainstream, no other event on earth harnesses the creative energy of adrenaline culture and brings it together under one roof like the X-DANCE Action Sports Film Festival. www.x-dance.com
About The Orchard Sports
The Orchard Sports (www.theorchardsports.com) is a new action sports and lifestyle film distribution label offering producers the leading option for worldwide digital distribution, reaching their core demographic of 18-34 year old action sports enthusiasts via internet video retailers, gaming consoles and subscription services. Headquartered in New York City with a West Coast operation in San Luis Obispo, CA, The Orchard Sports accesses the largest global network of viewers in the action sports industry, offering its films as downloads, rentals and streams to over 200 million users globally. Promotion of the films extends beyond the digital retail network to the Internet’s top action sports destinations dominated by influential action sports enthusiasts.
The Orchard Sports is powered by The Orchard’s digital distribution platform, meaning producers and brands get access to the industry’s leading dashboard, providing seamless visibility into their accounting, delivery status, daily iTunes sales estimations down to zip code and a growing suite of tools, services and analytics. Additional benefits as a client include professional music supervision and YouTube piracy prevention, as well as in-house encoding, delivery and asset management. www.theorchardsports.com
