WEDNESDAY, SEPT 1st, 21:00 — 22:30
AT MERKATO CULTUR
In the first competitive section of BIDFF, nature and industrialization collide head-on. Directors and choreographers from eight different countries invite us to reflect on our relationship with the environment and the visions of our parents and grandparents, oscillating between fragility and human resilience. A direct result of the events from recent years, these short films explore the cycle of life and death, through stories that are magical yet as real as possible, in which the movement of the city intertwines that of nature. In its search for happiness, the human body dances from the inside out, freeing itself of the tensions accumulated over time, which dissolve and resolve.
BEYOND
3:38, 2020, PL/TW/HK/TH/DK
D: Simone Wierød
C: Simone Wierød
BEYOND is the aesthetic response to one of humankind’s current strategies to handle a global pandemic. Removing oneself from civilization and detaching from whatever does not serve us anymore. Exploring new truths and roads to inner peace seem to be the only way to rise above collective anxiety. The film presents a number of absurd and surreal tableaus – a human being’s awkward attempts on connecting with nature to only find herself more alienated than before. The lack of movement, the abstract non-moving dance, creates an interaction between inner and external motions. Like someone said: When you cannot go outside – go inside.
THEY SAW THE SUN FIRST
8:13, 2020, AUS
D: Stefan Hunt
C: Vanessa Marian
“Old people’s speech is not to be dishonoured - after all, they saw the sun first.”
They Saw the Sun First is a timely film by Stefan Hunt featuring real interviews with New York’s elderly and a dreamy score by FKJ - brought to life through dance, performance and the magic of imagination, the poignant message in this film could not be more relevant in these times. Turn the volume up, turn the lights down, turn your emails off, and take in all the wisdom of our elders. Enjoy.
SCAPELANDS
4:02, 2019, UK
D: Katie Beard, Naomi Turner
C: Liv Lockwood
Scapelands is a short dance film that explores our primal connections with nature and the effect of urban living on the human mind. With countries in lockdown due to the current global pandemic, the psychological impact of our physical environments is being felt more significantly across the world than ever before. Scapelands was commissioned by BBC Arts and Arts Council England as part of the New Creatives scheme.
HUMAN HABITAT
8:27, 2020, NO
D: Flavia Devonas Hoffmann
C: Flavia Devonas Hoffmann
Human Habitat has its origin in the clash between untouched nature and growing industry in the Arctic and explores the oscillation between human resistibility and fragility. A female dancer takes us on an associative, non-narrative journey through emotional states facing the changes from a sustainable to a destructive relationship of humans and landscape.
MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE
12:02, 2020, NL
D: Dance collective Arnhemse Meisjes
C: Dance collective Arnhemse Meisjes
Memories of the Future tells the story of one and each person at the same time. We dance a powerful life path in which experiences from the past and memories from the future emerge. They come together in the present moment. This is a human story. Your story. A story of your ancestors and your (grand)children. Do the future and the past run parallel in the present? Everything is allowed, because everything turns; everything comes, everything passes. Like the seasons, a cycle of life and death. We fall and get up again. We turn, until the present moment is all that remains. That’s what we can hold on to. Here, now. You, me, we.
MOVING BARCELONA
6:21, 2021, UK
D: Jevan Chowdhury
C: Alexander Eckman
Moving Barcelona is a magical realist dance story about the Catalonian capital, an autonomous region in the Spanish State contending with an identity crisis. A city with everything going for it is still haunted by the ghosts of its past and despite much progress, it finds itself unearthing old wounds. Narrated by celebrated actor, Pep Munné, who appeals for calm, there is a sense of reassurance that all is okay. The movement of the city however tells a different story, and he is resigned to the fact that things inevitably, are the way they are. Barcelonians, in pursuit of happiness, find themselves on a treadmill to nowhere in a tale of modern day life.
THE SOFT BIT
7:02, 2021, DE
D: Jana Irmert
C: Lingji Hon
Two hands bend up, slowly at first, then sharply, as if directing the ground to lift. Up and down again, up and down. With The Soft Bit, Jana Irmert explores movement, sound and image in a cinematic way. Connecting the internal and the external, the fragmented and the whole, Lingji Hon’s captivating Taiji quan inspired performance forms the center of gravity, pulling the camera towards her. While Jana Irmert's atmospheric music leads the viewer into an unknown world, the imagery is embraced by an experimental montage that plays by its own rules - revealing the interconnectedness of all elements.
THROUGH GLASS
7:00, 2021, CZ
D: Marek Partys
C: Sylva Safková
The dance film THROUGH GLASS, directed by Marek Partys and choreographed by Sylva Safková, combines contemporary dance and a visual story that describes the image of distorted reality: “Reflections, angles of view, distorted reality… but if you hold it against a mirror, the letters will go again in the right direction.“
TOKE
6:43, 2021, UK
D: NONO
C: Stuart Shugg
Set in the urban metropolis of London, Toke is an intimate portrait of Danish-born dancer Toke Broni Strandby. Director NONO expertly visualizes the emotionally layered journey we endure to fulfill our dreams while exploring themes of identity, contemporary alienation, and acceptance. An inspiring story about triumph, Toke is a celebration of the beautiful resilience of the human spirit.
UTRO
5:18, 2021, NE
D: Polina Mirovskaya
C: Jeroen Janssen, Polina Mirovskaya
In Russia we have a saying ”утро вечера мудренее”- the morning is wiser than the evening. This means that in the darkest point of the evening, in our most emotionally vulnerable state, we risk making poor impulsive choices; choices that we would not otherwise make in the morning, which breaths clarity and even wisdom into our thoughts. As a kid, hearing this saying, I used to picture a physical journey of the thoughts, from dusk to dawn; imagining a stranger as he walked his way through the night, until he reached the ease of a clear mind by sunrise. UTRO means morning in Russian; and in this film, the concept of morning is embodied as the culmination of a long and winding, physical and emotional journey. Spanning the distance and time of a single night; UTRO captures the tension which dissolves and resolves, in the city and ourselves, as the quietness of the morning approaches.
SALIDAS
10:17, 2021, DE
D: Michael Fetter Nathansky
C: Christiane ‘La Mona’
SALIDAS (span., DEPARTURES) is a fictional dance film which tells the story of Giralda, an undertaker who accompanies deceased human beings into their afterlife. Interpreted with the means of Spanish flamenco dance and music and set at an old East German ship canal lift, the film creates an associative fusion between Northern and Southern Europe, movement and silence, and farewells and eternity.