BUCHAREST INTERNATIONAL DANCE FILM FESTIVAL '16
Bucharest International Dance Film Festival (BIDFF) is the only Romanian festival dedicated to the dance film. Last year we had our succesfull debut with a 54 dance films marathon from all over the world, of whom we awarded 4 short films that challenged the limits of the genre and that intrigued the jury. The second edition of the festival brings to Bucharest the two most awarded documentary dance films: Mr. Gaga (d: Tomer Heymann), which captures the internal laboratory of on of the most important contemporary choreographers - Ohad Naharin, alongside with his company, Batsheva Dance Company and Rare Birds (d: T.M. Rives) which captures the backstage of one of the most daring stagings of A Swan Lake, directed by Alexander Ekman, at the Norvegian National Opera House from Oslo.
Among the international guests of the festival there are: the renowned austrian choreographer Chris Haring, awarded with the Golden Lion in the frame of Biennale di Venezia, the multimedia artist Claudia Hart (SUA), the directors Samuel Retortillo, Alex Pachon (Spania) and T.M. Rives (SUA). The showcase of the festival has its opening on the 9th of November with an international conference - Intermedia Body - a concept developed by Mihaela Kavdanska, an event co-organized by Platforma Avmotional with the participation of the multimedia artists Antoni Rayzhekov and Gerhard Funk from Austria, alongside with romanian artists like: Catalin Cretu, Cinty Ionescu, Raluca Nestor Oancea, Cristian Iordache and Simona Deaconescu. Besides the competing and non-competing, this year BIDFF organizes at the Galateca Gallery the international Digital Body Exhibition.
AWARDS
Best FILM:
"WOMEN'S CHRISTMAS NIGHT" by Oonagh Kearney (1000 EUR given by The Romanian Cultural Institute)
Best choreography:
"FOR A MOMENT" by Clemence Poesy ( prize worth 500 EUR)
best digital installation:
"THE LOOKING TRACE" by Camila Levy Daniel, Leyla de la Hoz & Pedro Giacomolli (prize worth 500 EUR)
SPECIAL Mentions
Official competition
"HELENA" by Nadav Heyman
"WEREWOLF HEART" by Christian Weber
THE DIGITAL BODY EXHIBITION
"CRYSTAL FORMING ROBOTS ON OVERHEAD" by Christian Faubel
"o.T." by M.Kardinal
Festival agenda
intermedia body - artistic research meetings
9 NOV | 12:00 - 16:00
@NAtional University of music - Auditorium hall
international conference series
curator: Mihaela Kavdanska (RO/BG/AT)
At the border between body & media, in the eld of performing arts, these practitioners meet to share and exchange ideas, experience and knowledge about the work process during the realization of their projects in the context of the contemporary art world. The event gives the possibility for innovative projects to be presented in a format of public talks/ presentations, followed by Q&A sessions.
The topics of discussions will gravitate around the inter-media oneness in stage-based interaction, the human body as interface for interaction and tool for audio-visual expression, the role of the media as a “digital performer on stage", the transformative experiences during the interdisciplinary work process, the trans-cultural body, AR and VR in theatre performances and many more.
The DiGital body exhibiton
9 NOV | 19:00
@Galateca Gallery
digital art exhibition
curators: Simona Deaconescu & Emilia Paunescu (RO)
Artists from Germany, Italy, Finland, Great Britain and Austria present their research and digital artworks, challenging both the cognitive and the emotional system of the audience. Nine works of video art, robotics, animation, sound engineering and live performance are playfully exhibited in the futuristic space of Galateca Gallery.
The body is a matrix of data, emotionally encapsulated, defragmented and disembodied, in a constant flow of fake memories and super sensorial experimentation. Extracorporeal digital age is a reality that requires a network of information to replicate itself over and over again. Who are you in this environment and how do you deal with it?
The exhibition will be open until the 13th of November, between 12PM and 8PM.
The chicken or the egg?
10 NOV | 10:00 - 13:00
@the national university of theatre and film ”i.l.caragiale”
masterclass with Alex Pachon (ESP)
I will share my point of view on dance and film and we will discuss a little bit about dance, cinema and music. The intensive masterclass is open to up to 20 participants, which will create a collective work using body percussion, shameless, contemporary dance, cracks, body noises, and cinematic experimentation.
Just A Little Avatar DanCE: An Artist’s Journey
10 NOV | 19:00 - 20:00
@galateca gallery
artist talk with Claudia Hart (SUA)
I started working with 3D animation 21 years ago, in 1995. I started teaching it almost immediately after in commercial productions schools or engineering schools. In these environments I was the only woman, and a contemporary artist, showing her work in experimental galleries which were mostly in Soho, in NYC. It was my secret life. I never talked about it to my students. In the frame of the lecture especially developed for BIDFF'16, I will tell the story of the evolution of my avatar dance language as emerging from these politicised and feminist beginnings as shown in my works.
MIRIAM RADUCANU - stories about sense and senz
11 NOV | 18:00 - 18:45
@the national center of dance bucharest
film screening and talk
with Alina Usurelu and Gina Serbanescu
At the beginning of the summer of 2016 Gina serbanescu and Alina Usurelu started a research project on the life and work of the great lady of the Romanian dance, Miriam Raducanu. After many interviews, archive research and discovery of stories from behind the scenes, they decided to make a book and a documentary movie. During the event they will present the process of their research and fragments from the interviews with Mrs Miriam, a series of interviews woven in premiere archive images.
Strange Body in Artificial Paradise
11 NOV | 19:00 - 19:45
@the national center of dance bucharest
lecture
with Chris Haring
Chris Haring is one of the most popular choreographers of the last decade. Invited as a member of the jury in the festival, Chris Haring will hold a public presentation in which he will expose to the Romanian public the laboratory and the creation process of the Liquid Loft company, a process based on the influence of the social media networks on the contemporary man and the way in which this subject has influenced the performative arts of the last years.
MR. GAGA - IN the mind of ohad nahariN
11 NOV | 20:00 - 22:00
@the NAtional center of dance Bucharest
documentary film, 100', 2015 (IL, SE, DE, NL)
The director Tomer Heymann captures with great tenacity the portrait of Ohad Naharin, the most renowned Israeli choreographer, considered to be the man who reinvented modern dance. As an artistic director of Batsheva company, Ohad Naharin developed the Gaga technique, which became a phenomenon in the world of contemporary dance. The documentary presents the artist in his sixties, in a critical point of his life, opening for the first time his laboratory to an audience, in a movie that took 8 years to reach the big screen.
Songs from My Analogue Utopia
12 NOV | 15:00 - 16:00
@Galateca Gallery
shadow-play performance and Q&A session
with Christian Faubel (DE)
In songs from my analogue utopia I explore the self- organizing coordination dynamics of analog oscillators and the Utopian potentials of analogue communication. In analogue communication synchronization and coordination appear as an emergent effects and are not codified. Because synchronization results from the mutual interaction of two or more processes, not a single process is dominating the other. It is in the mutuality and in the degrees of freedom of each participating process where i see the Utopian potential of analogue communication.
REFLEXIons
OFFICIAL COMPETITION I
12 NOV | 19:00 - 20:15
@ the national Music University - Opera and multimedia Studio
short film selection, 65'
The official competition kicks off with ten short dance films that will revive you and will make you wonder. These films are deeply anchored in reality, in which the body is partially, but never totally adulterated, always having the power to start all over again. The directors and choreographers from USA, Chile, Finland, UK, The Netherlands, France and Germany are taking on different routes but with a common goal, to sensitize the masses both regarding the action and the review of each individual’s inner world. We are presenting for the first time in Romania a platform with dozens of mercenary bodies which keep facing the same hard surface repeatedly, always returning changed in a world where all the rules remain the same. We gathered the catalysts of change, those who dare to face the environment when needed or celebrate life when necessary.
REFRACTIONS
OFFICIAL COmpetitio II
12 NOV | 20:30 - 21:45
@ THE NATIONAL MUSIC UNIVERSITY - OPERA AND MULTIMEDIA STUDIO
short film selection, 65'
Dynamically juggling between utopia and dystopia, between the overcrowded and the void, between chaos and monumental science, these films will take you to a sensory journey with an unknown destination, full of adrenaline. Here you can find the outsiders, the rebels and the ones that diverge from the present. In this world, the bodies acquire unusual properties and are moving on bizarre dynamics, going beyond reality into a world where the human changes along with the rules and principles of the natural. Either it appeals to the revival of the past or it places itself in a distant future, the relation between space and time is cautiously unbalanced.
Directors, choreographers, dance companies and atypical communities propose an alternative space, within which the contemporary principles are reconsidered. Ten different approaches proposed by artistic teams from Russia, Canada, France, The Netherlands and Ireland are building a "cinematographic papier colle" within which the reception possibilities are infinite.
RARE BIRDS
Reinventing a swan lake
13 NOV | 20:30 - 22:00
@ control club
documentary film, 59', 2014 (NO, SUA)
Q&A session with the director T.M. Rives
Rare Birds is an intimate look at creativity. Following choreographer Alexander Ekman during production of A Swan Lake (Norwegian National Ballet), the film tracks dance creation from ideas to hard reality. The house’s army of artists and workers took on unique challenges, requiring new approaches to costume and sets, and the installation of a 6000-liter lake onstage. A portrait of Ekman as well as a celebration of the state of the craft (A Swan Lake became a sensation, nominated for the 2014 Prix Benois de la Danse), Rare Birds reveals the challenges and pleasures of production in a major institution.