programme two: Thursday 16 October 19:30
Sentence
Rosemary Lee, Hugo Glendinning
United Kingdom
The film Sentence evokes the ephemerality of dance through the experimental use of animation and slow shutter speed.
Shot in a former court room, breath like ghostly traces of the dancer Lauren Potter's movements blur into and out of the dark wooden panelling.
FIlmed in the isolated strange times of lockdown and set against a haunting sound-score by Isaac Lee-Kronick, Sentence suggests a mysterious yearning for permanence.
Father Father
Jozsef Trefeli
Australia, Switzerland
Dancer József Trefeli, named after his grandfather whom he never met, embarks on a deeply personal journey. His father, a Hungarian immigrant, fled to Australia in 1956 following the Hungarian Revolution. Drawn by the echoes of his heritage, József seeks to reconnect with the language and culture of his ancestors. Guided by his father’s voice and cherished stories, he ventures to his ancestral homeland, uncovering a legacy interwoven with history and memory.
Convivencia
John Jota Leaños, Vanessa Sanchez
United States
Convivencia is a dance film that brings to light the lives and stories of female essential laborers along the US/Mexico borderlands through Tap dance, Son Jarocho, and Afro-Carribean rhythms. The film highlights interviews with migrant domestic laborers from "La Colectiva de Mujeres,” a female-led collective of domestic workers in California. The film addresses the struggles, resistance, and resilience of these women to showcase their significant contributions to our communities and celebrates their spirit of community, joy, and resilience. “Convivencia” is a unique fusion of oral histories, percussive dance, footwork, and folkloric dance from choreographer/director Vanessa Sanchez in collaboration with filmmaker John Jota Leaños.
Sharp
Stephan Dorn
Germany
How much does making Art take from us? How much of ourselves do we put into it?
In this stop-motion dance film the protagonists - simple pencils - give themselves up in the process of producing movement. Only by disappearing can they make their art visible.
Give, Up, Give up
Nailong Song
China
Charged showcases an over-caffeinated Everywoman in her kitchen on the brink of disaster. A portrait of a driven, detailed woman who manages an array of tasks, alternating between the discipline of accomplishing and the daydream of departure. Humor, grit, exhaustion, frustration, and liberation emerge as themes as the soloist pursues unexpected and surprising actions within an expected and unsurprising setting.
Disconnect
Evi-Sullivan Toyne
uk
Disconnect is an intimate exploration into the daily struggles of living with mental illness and neurological conditions. An artistic exploration into the prevalence of masking among AFAB (assigned female at birth) neurodivergent people and its deep impacts.
An experience forming dance theatre and film, revealing the unrest and discomfort behind the seemingly normal presentation of someone slowly breaking. Delving into a life when your brain is against you, and a world that refuses help. How long can someone hold that front? What toll does it take? When will they finally break? What is it like when the world is too bright, too loud, too overwhelming, simply just too much? Do you fight it? Or do you disconnect?
noise
Zsuzsanna Vass
romania
A female figure in a space, in real or imagined confinement, accompanied by real or imagined noises. Her journey through this space tells the story of desire, curiosity and fear of freeing herself from being trapped. At the end she has to face who or what is leading her to the way out.
The work was inspired by the building of a closed Tobacco Factory, where time stood still for more than ten years. The film plays with light, body, and time in this space.
L∞p: A Laundry Odyssey
LIAM CHENG
Taiwan
While doing laundry, a woman got trapped in a time paradox. Since these parallel universes kept pushing each other, there were increasingly blurred boundaries between real life and parallels.
