This documentary follows Martha Clarke's creative process for a year as she finds her own voice as a choreographer following her departure from Pilobolus Dance Theater.
Social & External
A documentary film that highlights two street derived dance styles, Clowning and Krumping, that came out of the low income neighborhoods of L.A.. Director David LaChapelle interviews each dance crew about how their unique dances evolved. A new and positive activity away from the drugs, guns, and gangs that ruled their neighborhood. A raw film about a growing sub-culture movements in America.
A love story, portraying the dilemmas and inevitable consequences of ambition. It is a film about a woman's fight for independence, a woman trying to succeed with her own art in the extremely competitive world of dance.
For two hundred years, the Shakers have been America's most successful utopian society. While seeking harmony, order and perfection in every aspect of their lives, they built minimalistic furniture and buildings that influenced modern design. The Shakers wrote songs of exquisite beauty and danced to the point of ecstasy during their religious meetings. Inspired by this music and dance, choreographer Tero Saarinen created Borrowed Light, a dance piece about communal life and individual sacrifice. Shot in Finland and the United States, featuring interviews and excerpts from Borrowed Light, this documentary explore the cultural legacy of this religious group devoted to creating heaven on earth.
Hussein learnt to breakdance from a soldier in Iraq as a kid, then chased his American Dream to NYC. Now a choreographer, he mistakes a shot at success for a breakthrough and loses everything, but will do whatever it takes to keep dreaming.
Santiago Mitre co-directs his first movement following The Student together with choreographer Onofri Barbato. Although it would have been more accurate to say “his first film-story-adventure-movie-great movie following The Student”, the word movement fits perfectly in Los posibles, the most overwhelmingly kinetic work Argentine cinema has delivered in many, many years. The film deals with the adaptation of a dance show directed by Onofri together with a group of teenagers who came to Casa La Salle, a center of social integration located in González Catán, trying to find some refuge from hardship. Already entitled Los posibles, the piece opened in the La Plata Tacec and was later staged in the AB Hall of the San Martín Cultural Center. Now, it dazzles audiences out of a film screen, with extraordinary muscles and a huge heart: Los posibles is a rhapsody of roughen bodies and torn emotions. Precise and exciting, it’s our own delayed, necessary, and incandescent West Side Story.
A filmed version of Aaron Copland's most famous ballet, with its original star, who also choreographed.
BLACK BALLERINA tells the story of several black women from different generations who fell in love with ballet. Six decades ago, while pursuing their dreams, Joan Myers Brown, Delores Browne and Raven Wilkinson confronted racism, exclusion and unequal opportunity. Today, young dancers of color continue to face formidable challenges breaking into the overwhelmingly white world of ballet. Moving back and forth in time, this lyrical, character driven film shows how far we still have to go and stimulates a fresh discussion about race, inclusion and opportunity across all sectors of American society.
Stepping is a dance form that can be found across the country at virtually every college with a substantial African American enrollment. Stepping is performed informally during parties as well as more formally during organized step shows. This film explores this tradition, its historical roots as well as its contemporary forms, styles and uses, to understand how students construct various levels of identity through this dance form…African American identity, fraternity or sorority identity, gendered identity and personal identity. The film goes behind the scenes with the Alpha Phi Alphas as they prepare for a step show that is only a few hours away. Cutting between this show and interviews with current and past steppers as well as footage from previous shows, the film provides a broad picture of this vibrant and dynamic dance form.
Alone, Eva Fahidi returned home to Hungary after WWII. At 20 years of age, she had survived Auschwitz Birkenau, while 49 members of her family were murdered, including her mother, father, and little sister. Today, at age 90, Eva is asked to participate in a dance theatre performance about her life's journey. This would be her first experience performing on a stage. Reka, the director, imagines a duet between Eva and a young, internationally acclaimed dancer, Emese. Reka wants to see these two women, young and old, interact on stage, to see how their bodies, and stories, can intertwine. Eva agrees immediately. Three women - three months - a story of crossing boundaries. Whilst the extraordinary moments of Eva's life are distilled into theater scenes, a truly wonderful and powerful relationship forms among the three women.
Moving Together is a celebratory love letter to music and dance that brims with kinetic life and energy. This documentary explores the intricate collaboration between dancers and musicians, moving seamlessly between Flamenco, Modern, and New Orleans Second Line.
From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.
A portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.
When Jacques d'Amboise took a group of dancers and members of his teaching staff to China, they worked with acclaimed dancer Dou Dou Huang and more than a hundred Chinese children. Their goal: to create a special performance using a variety of dance styles - including hip-hop, freestyle jazz and traditional Chinese folk dance - that would premiere at the Shanghai Grand Theatre in honor of the 2007 Shanghai Special Olympics World Games. Part of a month-long cultural exchange between d'Amboise's National Dance Institute and several Chinese troupes, featuring some of that country's most talented young dancers, the collaboration underscored the power of dance to transcend obstacles of culture and language.
Five dancers explore shadeism/colourism in the Black community through a series of personal interviews, performance pieces, and dance vignettes leading up to a final performance.
An Austrian director followed five successful African music and dance artists with his camera and followed their lives for a year. The artists, from villages in Ghana, Gambia and Congo, were the subjects of Africa! Africa! touring across Europe, but they have unbreakable roots to their homeland and their families. Schmiderer lovingly portrays his heroes, who tell their stories about themselves, their art and what it means to them to be African with captivating honesty. The interviews are interwoven with dance scenes and colourful vignettes set to authentic music.
MAQUETTE is an excursion into the world of dance and other cultural activities in Toulon: “There is a film that I didn’t complete. I shot it in Châteauvallon with a dance group called Artefact. A rough cut of it exists entitled MAQUETTE, but that’s all I did with it.”
An independent documentary focusing on the Blue Monkey and New Monkey nightclubs in Sunderland. The dawn of the rave scene in the late 80s and early 90s changed the face of music forever and left a legacy that still continues to this day. Hear the stories of those who lived through it and were involved in the North East scene at the beggining. From raid to ruins, we shed light on the rise and fall of the Blue Monkey and New Monkey nightclubs investigating the music and the controversy that came with the all night rave clubs.
Feature documentary, completed but unreleased.
A love letter to Mar del Plata made of images, times and a road trip. "The Happy Ones" is an experimental short documentary composed of past and present family footage. It portrays a place in the summer, the city of Mar del Plata, with a span of 20 years between past and present images (January 2000 and 2020). Despite the time that passed by, it's beaches, essence and people remain, always willing to keep dancing.
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
A documentary that follows six young dancers from around the world as they prepare for the Youth America Grand Prix, one of the most prestigious ballet competitions in the world.
BBC Arena's documentary on the Dames of British Theatre and film featuring Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench and Joan Plowright on screen together for the first time as they reminisce over a long summer weekend in a house Joan once shared with Sir Laurence Olivier.
A documentary focused on plastic pollution in the world's oceans.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
This character-driven film considers the evolving sex trafficking landscape as seen by the main players: the exploited, the pimps, the johns that fuel the business, and the cops who fight to stop it.
A documentary about the life and films of director John Ford.
This special explores the return of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker to the screen, as well as Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen to their classic roles. Director Deborah Chow leads the cast and crew as they create new heroes and villains that live alongside new incarnations of beloved Star Wars characters, and an epic story that dramatically bridges the saga films.
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
Martin Scorsese’s portrait of writer and social commentator Fran Lebowitz, celebrated for her sharp wit and observations on modern life. Filmed at New York’s Waverly Inn and intercut with archival footage and interviews, the documentary captures Lebowitz’s distinctive worldview through her spontaneous monologues and public appearances.
The film follows adventurer Jeff Johnson as he retraces the epic 1968 journey of his heroes Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins to Patagonia.
Performance artist Marina Abramovic prepares for a major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
An unprecedented and intimate look at the life, work and enduring legacy of British actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).
Just two years away from turning 30, participants in Michael Apted's documentary series are facing serious questions of identity and purpose, wondering whether they've found their place in the world.
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
NUDE explores perceptions of nudity in art by chronicling the creative process of photographer David Bellemere as he's commissioned by NU Muses founder Steve Shaw to shoot a fine art calendar of nude photographs.
A documentary about ten very different lives connected by having appeared onscreen wearing masks or helmets in Star Wars.