Film Categories: Performance

  • Of Beauty & Deities: Music and Dance of India

    Focused on southern Indian classical bharatanatyam dance and music, this hour-long documentary consists mostly of performance and interviews. The performers come from a group called Kalanjali: Dances of India that maintains performers in Chennai, India, and a dance academy in Berkeley, CA, USA. Our documentary was filmed in the San Francisco Bay Area. The group performers come from the dance academy and are mostly young women from the Indian diaspora. The solo dancer, K.P. Yeshoda, as well as the musicians, come from India but traveled to California to join us in the studio. Kalanjali’s directors are the primary interview subjects:…

  • Masters of Rhythm the Afro-Peruvian Way

    “…a rare and delightful glimpse….capture(s) the artistry, love and philosophy….” (John Santos, percussionist, seven times Grammy nominee) Masters of Rhythm, of filmmaker Eve A. Ma, has screened in five countries on three continents, and won awards in the USA and Germany. A natural outgrowth of my earlier documentary about Afro-Peruvians, it features percussionists Lalo Izquierdo, Cotito and Huevito. Performancs include two original music compositions and a dance form called Afro-Peruvian zapateo, with fancy footwork similar to tap dance.

  • H2T

    Shot on several types of film (16 mm and Super 8 format), ranging from handmade film emulsion to expired films, H2T takes place in the mighty Hotel2Tango Montreal recording studio. The film is a chemical composition where light meets the effervescence and creativity of the band Land of Kush (Constellation Records) during the making of their latest album, The Big Mango (2013). Filming of the recording session during rehearsals and breaks, the picture is just as ephemeral as the musicians’ movements. H2T reflects on the performative aspect specific to experimental film and musical performance.

  • Xam

    Xam is a sci-fi exploration on the future of surveillance and body hacking. While in the London subway, an unsuspecting man opens a strange text, rendering him unconscious and dragging him through a wormhole. He awakes, lost, on the train tracks in Kiev, Ukraine, unable to communicate with friends or family. With the help of the hacker community in Kiev, and then Paris, the man harnesses alternative virtual transmissions in an attempt to find his way home. Xam is told through an intimate, first-person frame and video collage to emphasize the increasing integration of human and technology. The story is…

  • Every Day Burns

    Award winning pole dancer, Sada Velasquez, addresses the familial and social stigma she must overcome in order to pursue her passion for dance. Everyday Burns is a short documentary exploring one artist’s journey towards self expression and community empowerment. Every day Sada overcomes physical limitations, personal doubts and moral perceptions of others in order to create a safe space for folks to explore their sensual freedom.

  • Your Day is My Night

    This provocative hybrid documentary reveals the stories of a Chinatown “shift-bed” apartment through dreams, movement and song. A shift-bed is a domestic space shared by people who are neither in the same family nor in a relationship. Simply put, itʼs an economic necessity brought on by the challenges of urban existence.  In “Your Day is My Night” these beds transform into a stage, illuminating the collective history of Chinese immigration through conversations, autobiographical monologues, and theatrical improvisations.  The film was shot on 16mm, Super 8 and HD video in the kitchens, bedrooms, wedding halls, cafés, and mahjong parlors of New…

  • The Washing Society

    When you drop off a bag of dirty laundry, who’s doing the washing and folding?  THE WASHING SOCIETY brings us into New York City laundromats and the experiences of the people who work there. Collaborating together for the first time, filmmaker Lynne Sachs and playwright Lizzie Olesker observe the disappearing public space of the neighborhood laundromat and the continual, intimate labor that happens there.  Inspired by To ‘Joy My Freedom author Tera Hunter’s depiction of the 1881 organization of African-American laundresses in Atlanta, Sachs and Olesker’s film THE WASHING SOCIETY investigates the intersection of history, underpaid work, immigration, and the…

  • L’Arrière-Pays

    An autobiographical fable at the cross-section between SCI-FI and Memory Film. The film explores the journey of two dreamers trapped between Past and Present, between Dream and Reality. It combines excerpts from an immigration journal, found text and images suspended in a dystopian dark space.

  • Hag’s Taper

    The many names of the herb mullein include hag’s taper, Jupiter’s rod, flannel leaf, velvet plant, felt-wort, tinder plant, candlewick plant, witch’s candle, lady’s foxglove, candlewick plant, torches, cowboy toilet paper, and more. Brought by European settlers to what is now known as Canada over 250 years ago, mullein is native to parts of Europe and Asia. The introduced plant was valued for its medicinal abilities and its use as a fish poison. Today, it is considered a noxious weed in so-called Alberta. This video was shot in the Crowsnest Pass, Alberta where mullein thrives in the disturbed sites including…

  • Ruthless

    Ruthless (2019) Go back in time and witness a ruthless tale of unrequited love. The black and white film was shot on 16mm Bolex film camera using a KODAK 7222 Double-X Negative film, and processed by Niagara Film Lab in Toronto. Filmed in a few hours and is inspired by the Dogme 95 cinema movement. Thank you to The Marías, The Independent Filmmakers Co-operative of Ottawa (IFCO), Kodak, Pudgyboy’s, Marie-Hélène Villeneuve, Justin Pariat, and Warwick Walton. Screenings: September 2019 – The Independent Filmmakers Cooperative of Ottawa at Headquarters (Ottawa, Canada) November 2019 – A Night of Misfit Films at Onyx…