Film Categories: dance

  • I Know I’m Late

    Playing on the classic backstage drama, this short musical featuring Jef Barbara’s I Know I’m Late embeds the story of its own making into a fantasy performance in the dressing room of a Montreal cabaret. A chorus of backup dancers distracts the star of the show as he explains his tardiness through song. The film culminates in a dance routine reminiscent of ’90s MTV music videos and offers an appreciative reflection of idiosyncratic individuality, community and inclusion.

  • Skeleton Dance

    Have you ever wondered what would happen if you X-rayed a skeleton at a dance club? This experimental cut-out animation offers something of an answer. Besides dancing between abstract shapes throughout the video, the skeleton character cuts out a pair of pants from some paper, tries them on and runs away. The footage is processed using a variety of analog video synthesizers, including a Paik-Abe Raster Scan Device (aka Wobulator). The electronic voltage of the soundtrack by LA’s Dva Damas directs the parameters of certain effects. Artwork, animation, processing and editing done by Emily Pelstring while in residence at the…

  • Mindtease

    The accidental reveal of a burlesque dancer’s “true” identity leads to a moment of self-questioning for the audience, and for one voyeur in particular, some deeper self-exploration.

  • Sunspots and Solar Flares

    Sunspots and Solar Flares combines found footage of children dancing from a 1968 Toronto educational film with excerpts of Robin Armstrong’s Nuclear war 1984?

  • L’Ennui (Les Reves d’un Somnambule)

    “‘L’ennui (Les Reves d’un Somnambule)’ is a film in three segments. The very beginning consists of a three-minute dedication to Universal Leader. Lots of fun… The first section depicts a beautiful old woman floating through states of insomnia and timelessness. The pace is very slow, serene and dreamlike. The second section deals with the frenzy/insanity of the city. By using entire scenes in negative and layering street scenes one on top of the other, Raphael achieves a surreal and frightening eeriness to this section. The last part is not only an ode to human beauty, but it’s also quite humorous…

  • Shamans, the Cunning

    Referencing mythology and gothic fiction, Shamans, the Cunning is about surviving in evil times. Here, human identity turns fluid and the borderline between human and animal evaporates. Shamans evokes its themes via drama and choreographed movement.

  • Malody

    A young woman, sicker than those who dare to eat the food at the all-night diner she’s perched in, catches a ghostly reflection of herself as a child. This inspires a topsy-turvy cataclysm, hermetically sealed within a huge wheel rolling through a movie studio.

  • Slow Blink

    A camera is locked upon a dancers face, framed in a perpetual and intimate close-up. The film gives the viewer license to stare, to invest and spend time gazing at a face and we feel it in our bodies. This film was made with over 300 stills from a Holga Camera and 8 rolls of Super 8 film.

  • The Dancer and The Crow

    Who we are on the outside does not always represent who we are on the inside. When one man takes a closer look at his inner self, he discovers the beauty he has been hiding from the world. He decides to stop hiding and embrace who he truly is.

  • DP2

    DP2 is the restored version of the film DP (Displaced Person), originally released in 1982. Uniquely melding documentary and contemporary performance art, DP2 is based on the reminiscences of a displaced Ukrainian who spent most of World War II in Nazi Germany and miraculously survived forced labour, concentration camp internment, and near-deportation to Siberia. Intercut with the narrative are dynamic movement sequences shot in a vast glass and marble structure, choreographed and performed by Lily Eng (Canadian Spotlight Artist, Reel Asian International Film Festival, 2011). Eng’s action sequences expand the intellectual and emotional resonances of the narrative, and vice versa. Her…