Film Categories: dance

  • Maya at 24

    Lynne Sachs films her daughter Maya in 16mm black and white film, at ages 6, 16 and 24. At each iteration, Maya runs around her mother, in a circle – clockwise – as if propelling herself in the same direction as time, forward, on celluloid at 24 frames per second. Conscious of the strange simultaneous temporal landscape that only film can convey, we watch Maya in motion at each distinct age.

  • Lion in the Wind

    Fugue for wushu in the West.

  • Atmospheric Arrivals

    This film is at once a living archive/polytemporal memory bank and a love letter to my other selves. I consider the act of revisiting my personal archives a time travelling practice and incorporating this into my films is an exercise in making said practice legible to others. “Atmospheric Arrivals” is about home and the (im)possibility of return. The “atmospheric arrival” captures a means of coming into being through memory and imagination; by reaching across spacetimes to “fetch” parts of the self that may exist in elsewheres.

  • LANA

    A determined Palestinian woman confronts Outsiders as they move in.

  • Sand In Her Shoes

    A fantastical, lyrical exploration of a woman’s healing journey created through evocative visual images and sound incorporating elements of ritual and dream. Filmed in the Chihuahua Desert of New Mexico and in a constructed room with trees growing out from the walls. The details of texture, light and colour in the treatment of physical space and the creation of environments become metaphorical expressions of emotion.

  • This is a Crisis

    An anonymous bureaucrat traipses around the City of Toronto, repurposing hostile architecture as their playground. Featuring spliced audio of former mayor John Tory’s victory speeches from 2014, 2018, and 2022 municipal election nights, bleak scenes are juxtaposed with a heavy-handed narrative of progress and inclusion. Documented on January 31, 2023—weeks before Tory would resign—this public performance and accompanying video artwork offer a critique of procedural fetishism, the surveillance and criminalization of poverty, and what cities become when they leave the most marginalized behind.

  • Meditation 4 Black Women

    Four women, with seemingly unrelated lives, meditate on identity setting off a mystical event that allows them to breathe again.

  • Tërra Bëstia

    Amidst a biodiverse wasteland on the brink of being enveloped by encroaching bitumen, the enigmatic Beast of the Earth materializes in a prophetic dance. Its vivid gestures, suspended between the celestial and terrestrial realms, serve as a conduit for conveying the portents of humanity’s impending fate.

  • Self-Portrait in Hell

    Self-Portrait in Hell is a hybrid film that combines analog and digital film manipulation techniques. Multiple layers of 8mm films and disparate fragments are amalgamated to create a self-portrait of the director. A singular self-portrait, since ironically the subject of the film is not the director but the image found in abandoned film archives, the image of another, unknown woman. The first layer is from a 1970s 8mm home movie titled Woman Dancing with Dog and was found in an antique shop. The second layer is an 8mm film belonging to an unknown archive, which the artist buried for a…

  • Muses

    A dancer wishes to break free from his unfaithful choreographer. In the midst of the deteriorating intimate relationship between a dancer and his older choreographer, the latter finds inspiration in another member of their company. This personal film delves into the intricate dynamics of inspiration, domination, and dependence within the LGBTQ+ dance world. It also depicts the raw experience of betrayal through the visceral and universal language of dance.