THURSDAY, SEPT 8, from 21:00
AT GRăDINA CU FILME — CINEMA & MORE
The first international film section of the 8th edition of BIDFF focuses on the idea of border – geopolitical, emotional, aesthetic, and transpersonal. Placing themselves on the fine line between "familiar" and "foreign," directors and choreographers from seven countries explore fluid, transformative identities. Threshold Zones is an affective cinematic journey, guided by bodies of astonishing diversity, running out of sync. This section contains animations, poetic documentaries, and performative experiments that can open a portal to a new way of glimpsing at the future.
TEHURA
13:05, 2022, CA/FP
D: Wei Li
C: Nahema Charles
Tehura aims to explore the vastly different meanings our bodies can hold for ourselves as well as for others. For a tourist, the body of an exotic dancer lifts him into the fantasies of love. For a dancer such as Tehura, her body is a battlefield where she struggles to find herself.
ISN’T IT A BEAUTIFUL WORLD
12:57, 2021, UK
D: Joseph Wilson
Isn’t It a Beautiful World is a short film combining performance, drag, dance and it depicts the traumatising stories of queer performers Soroya, Harry & Kenya and their emotional journey to adulthood. The film takes the audience on a journey through metaphorical locations to explore themes of loneliness, anxiety, addiction and recovery, all common issues within the LGBT+ community.
SHE
7:35, 2021, SE/DK
D: Emil Dam Seidel
C: Dorotea Saykaly
Caught in a room, the protagonist, Clarice, unfolds a vision of her own identity through a mirror interrogator. SHE is a cinematic adaptation of a solo dance performance with the same name. The original performance work was created and performed by Dorotea Saykaly. Inspired by The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector, the solo revolved around identity and doubt. Manifested through movement, distortion and an interview with a phantom interrogator, the original work proposed looking at a questioning body through a female lens.
PASSAGE
13:00, 2020, DE
D: Ann Oren
A foley artist creates sounds for a film starring a dressage horse and dissolves into his own imitation. As the character in the film, played by the gender fluid performer Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau, seems to transform into a gender-defying centaur, the film reflects on the boundaries between the human and the animal as well as on fictional gender roles and their transcendence. Shot on 16mm film, PASSAGE alludes to Eadweard Muybridge’s pre-cinematic experiments with horses.
LA NOSTRA TERRA
17:12, 2022, IT
D: Thomas Born
C: Dalton Jansen
A modern dance tragedy on Sicilian soil, about a search for common ground. This independent film is a Gesamtkunstwerk, inspired by the architectural installation The Forbidden Garden of Europe.