The festival day opened with Katie Johnston’s flipbook
animation workshop. Specially tailored for dance artists, the workshop explored
techniques to capture dance movement in drawing. Meanwhile, throughout the day
the audience were invited to leave the buzz of the festival and enter Private
Cinema Installations. Behind the velvety red curtains of the cinema booths, the
viewer found an eclectic collection of short dance films.
The main festival screenings presented a diverse selection
of documentaries. The films documented mature dance company Three Score’s performance at Brighton
Rail Station; an exchange of dance between children in Hackney and New Orleans;
a moving tale between a Mexican and a Taiwanese dancer; and the dedication and devotion
of three prominent Hip Hop dancers. While the emphasis was still on dance, the documentaries provided a
revealing insight into the lives and struggles of the artists.
The following three programmes proved to be an extremely
vibrant mix of dance films. While some films experimented purely with the
relationship between movement and camera, others, like Antoine Marc & Drew
Cox’s Descent and Shireen Talhouni
& Ali Al-Saadi’s Sarmad, provided
moments of stunning visual beauty. Other dance films dealt honestly with issues
of womanhood, disability, sexual empowerment, control and cultural tradition. Overall,
a hugely exciting and international mixture of dance films.
The festival day closed with commissioned dance works from innovative
London based Protocol Dance Company, and
unique video and animation team Garrett
and Garrett Videography. Lastly, an on-the-day collaboration and screening
of work by Mina Aidoo and Brian Gillespie revealed just how accessible dance
film can be.
As well as making screendance highly accessible to viewers,
Dance Film Festival UK fosters curiosity and inquisitiveness. The festival
truly is an invaluable platform to inspire, engage and most importantly, excite
artists about dance film.
No comments:
Post a Comment