Friday, SEPT 9, from 15:00
at THE NATIONAL CENTER OF DANCE BUCHAREST

*Participation at the lecture is free of charge. To reserve a spot, please fill the form beside.


ABOUT THE LECTURE

The dance film was born from the need to explore the body through cinematography. But from the first dance films to the present day, such production has remained in a poorly financed niche area.

The script of a dance film is a hybrid product, combining specific elements of a cinematographic production with features related to structuring a performative work, often called scores. Usually, the dialogue occurs between movements, atmospheres, and dynamics, opening the way to explore worlds where the concrete is replaced by the abstract, the strange, or the sensory. From the constant rewriting of a script, as a result of a creative laboratory always in transformation, to the creation of a storyboard, to finding the most compatible collaborators, a dance film production is atypical for both performing arts and the film industry. 

Given this reality, making a dance film is a long, challenging process for both the artists and the production teams developing it.

Simona Deaconescu, artistic director of BIDFF, choreographer and filmmaker, and 2022 associate artist of CNDB - The National Centre for Dance in Bucharest, discusses the subject with Anda Ionescu, a film producer. Starting from the last production they worked on together, the two will open their laboratory, taking the public through a possible model for making a dance film in Romania. Structured as a case study, the conference is a practical discussion about the last dance film on which the two guests worked together, based on a material that developed during a research residency that Simona Deaconescu had at CNDB, in the summer of 2022, together with four dancers aged 9 to 12.


About Simona Deaconescu (RO)

Working interdisciplinarily at the threshold of performance, installation, and film, Simona Deaconescu examines social constructs and marginal histories that influence our lives. Almost all her works develop in uncertain territory, between reality and fantasy, documentary and fiction, past and future, exploring strange atmospheres with humor and irony. 

She holds a BA and a MA from the choreography department of the National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest and a BA in Film Directing at the Media University in Bucharest. She received the danceWEB scholarship in Vienna (2014), the National Centre for Dance in Bucharest Award (2016), and was an Aerowaves Twenty18 and Twenty22 Artist.

In the past years, she has been an artist in residence with the European Projects Moving Digits and Biofriction, as well as a Dance Research NRW Fellow. In 2022, she is an Associated Artist with the National Centre for Dance in Bucharest and a Forecast Mentee. Her creations have been selected and presented on dance and theater stages, cinemas, galleries, museums, and architectural sites, reaching audiences in Europe, North America, and, more recently, Africa.

In 2014 she founded Tangaj Collective, and since 2015 she has been the co-founder and artistic director of the Bucharest International Dance Film Festival. 

For more information about her work, please visit www.tangajdance.com.


About Anda Ionescu (RO)

With a Master's degree and studies in communication in both Romania and Denmark, Anda Ionescu has been working in film production and cultural management in the two countries for the past 7 years. 

Currently, Anda Ionescu is a Managing Partner and Producer in Tangaj Production and has produced Andra Tarara’s debut documentary Us Against Us and Bogdan Theodor Olteanu’s second feature film Mia Misses Her Revenge. She has also recently produced Andrei Dăscălescu’s third documentary Holy Father through Filmlab, in co-production with HBO Europe and is the delegate producer for Ruxandra Ghițescu’s Otto the Barbarian debut feature - a Romanian-Belgian co-production - as part of a long-term collaboration with Alien Film.  

Anda is active on the European film market, being part of some of the most important industry networks: she is an EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs) Producers Workshop participant (2022) and alumna of Emerging Producers (2021), Berlinale Talents (2021), EAVE+ (2020), EAVE Ties That Bind (2019), as well as a European Women's Audiovisual Network (EWA) and European Producers Club member. 

For more information about her work, please visit www.tangajdance.com.