Dances For Camera - 2012

Still from Two Seconds After Laughter (source: San Francisco Dance Film Festival)

Please join us for the 2nd annual “Dances for Camera” on Saturday, April 21st from 2-4 pm and/or Wednesday, April 27th from 5:45-7:45 pm. Two distinct programs at the San Francisco Public Library will showcase highlights from the 3rd annual San Francisco Dance Film Festival, with some of the best dance films from around the globe, selected out of more than 100 entries from 25 countries.

These short experimental dance pieces are created specifically for the camera, independent from the traditional stage. Interpretations can range from narratives to collages of music, movement and images, sometimes including the use of animation and other new media. Local directors will be available for Q&A following the screenings.

On Saturday the following short will be screened:

SCREENDANCE SHORTS PROGRAM 1
2:00 pm | Saturday April 21
San Francisco Public Library – Koret Auditorium
100 Larkin Street San Francisco, CA 94122

Into Minds
(UK, 2011) 5min
Director: Azul Sierra

A hybrid film that mixes poetry with dance and movements, Into Minds explores the difference between two mindsets: a rigid mind that wants to control everything with absolute reason, and a mind that is connected to the heart, one that wants to be river, fount and flow.

Beautiful Illusion
(UK, 2011) 4min
Director: Jessica Taylor & Aaron Buckley

A dance between the vulnerability of flesh and the hard reality of science. At what cost do we suffer for our art?

Handke, Part One: Solos
(HUNGARY, 2011) 9min
Director: Réka Szűcs

"I have lived in time. I have thought about the beginning and the end. I have realized that I am not you." —Peter Handke, "Self Accusation"

In A Moment
(CANADA, 2011) 8min
Director: Ricky & Jeffrey Kuperman

A man with no memory fights to recognize his wife.
View Trailer

There, Again
(USA: Tuscaloosa, 2011) 10min
Director: Sarah M.Barry

Within each room, dancers explore their surroundings and find different ways to confront their confinement.

Where Do You Live?
(USA: Corte Madera, 2011) 3min
Director: Kate Duhamel

Robin Cantrell and Mira Cook dance on the New York City skyline to an original song by Mira Cook.

Two Seconds After Laughter
(USA: Sherman Oaks, 2011) 16min
Director: David Rousseve

Weaving Indonesian dance, Sundanese music, and a true-life narrative of an immigrants journey, Two Seconds After Laughter creates a border-jumping dialogue on a universal irony: The heart longs most for the place to which it can never return...home.


SCREENDANCE SHORTS PROGRAM 2

New London Calling
(UK, 2010) 10min
Director: Alla Kovgan

An unsupervised tribe of seventy-five children takes over the entire city of New London, creating their rites and rituals through playing street games.

Vias de Vuelo (Rails To Fly)
(MEXICO, 2011) 11min (excerpt)
Director: Alfredo Salomón

A humorous reflection on the liberty of human beings.

Origami
(USA: San Francisco, 2011) 3min
Director: RJ Muna

A study of movement and physical architecture based on the symmetry of folding and unfolding figures.

Pursuit
(USA: Los Angeles, 2011) 4min
Director: Amy “Catfox” Campion

Feet meet pavement at full speed as Danni G races down the sidewalk, flies over obstacles, and careens through crowds of dancers. Is he being pursued or is he in pursuit?

The Pendulum Heart
(USA: San Francisco, 2011) 9min
Director: Nara Denning

A mask carver of changing identity, forever driven to transformation by the "call of the heart." This is the trial of a winded spirit, a meditation on the evolution of identity and also an examination of the pendulum swing within the secret heart of every woman and man.

Love Song
(ISRAEL, 2011) 4min
Director: Simon Birman & Harel Kay

An homage by dancer and singer Harel Kay to Ofra Haza, a famous Israeli singer of Yemenite origin who died in 2000.

Lysergic Worlds
(SPAIN, 2010) 19min
Director: Javier Cardenete

Dr. Vega has a brand new patient: Diego. It seems he never leaves his room. All he does is paint and pin things to the wall, making lysergic worlds where he lives.


On Wednesday the following will be screened:

SCREENDANCE SHORTS PROGRAM 3
5:45 | Wednesday April 25
San Francisco Public Library – Koret Auditorium
100 Larkin Street San Francisco, CA 94122

Bränner Staden
(SWEDEN, 2011) 9min
Director: Olof Werngren

Sweden’s largest independent dance institution, Skånes Dansteater, and the acclaimed Swedish band Gaby and the Guns stand behind the short film Bränner Staden. It is about shaking life into things that have become fixed in patterns. About a feeling of being trapped in a ”place” that feels smaller every day.

Two Sink, Three Float
(BELGIUM, 2010) 7min
Director: Satya Roosens

On a thin membrane between top and bottom, one is taken into a surreal and visual story.There is an underworld, a world under, which we do not see. It is not shown on the surface. Or is it?

Marie
(USA: New York, 2011) 2min
Director: Brian Oakes

An experimental dance film that utilizes motion-capture technology in a uniquely minimal manner.

Black Train Is Coming
(USA: San Jose, 2011) 3min
Director: John T.Williams

Black Train is Coming is based on the 1926 sermon, “Death’s Black Train is Coming” by Rev J.M Gates, one of the most prolific black preachers in the United States.
View Trailer

Parts Don't Work
(USA: Seattle, 2011) 8min
Director: KT Niehoff

Set in the Fun Forest Amusement Park in Seattle, the heroine grapples with her outsider status in relationship to a go-go booted, lipstick-slinging Girl Gang.

Seven Dolors
(USA: New York, 2011) 4min
Director: Eli Rarey with Katherine Helen Fisher

Seven Dolors was created following the death of the dancer/choreographer’s uncle in the attacks of September 11th. Dolors is a sober, intimate window into the universality of the maternal grieving process.

Body of War
(UK, 2010) 20min
Director: Isabel Rocamore

Set in the Normandy Landing geography and punctuated by testimonies of active-duty soldiers, a visceral military hand-to-hand combat is gradually deconstructed – inviting the viewer to engage in the relationship between intimacy and brutality.

Claude Bessy: Lignes d'une Vie (Traces of a Life)
(USA: New York, 2011) 54min
Director: Fabrice Herrault

French ballerina Claude Bessy was a much-admired Étoile of the Paris Opera Ballet who also ran its prestigious school for decades. Narrated by its subject, the film features rare vintage class and performance footage of the dancer in her prime. Includes works by Gene Kelly, Serge Lifar, and Maurice Béjart.


Reading List:

Dance On Camera: A Guide To Dance Films And Videos, edited By Louise Spain (Scarecrow Press, 1998).

Modern Dance & Ballet On Film & Video: A Catalog, compiled And edited by Susan Braun (Dance Films Association, 1986).

Dancefilm: Choreography and the Moving Image by Erin Brannigan (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Envisioning Dance on Film and Video, edited by Judy Mitoma, Elizabeth Zimmer, Dale Ann Stieber, Nelli Heinonen, Norah Zuňiga Shaw (World Wisdom, 2007).