Portrait of a Choreographer

Ballroom dancers Veloz and Yolanda perform the various dance fads of the first half of the twentieth century.

A documentary following the conscious evolution of electronic music culture and the spiritual movement that has awakened within.

This short documentary describes the process and inspiration behind the creation and performance of a new Cuban ballet based on Afro-Cuban traditions and beliefs.

A love story, portraying the dilemmas and inevitable consequences of ambition. It is a film about a woman's fight for independence, a woman trying to succeed with her own art in the extremely competitive world of dance.

After moving to Bucharest, Sânziana reflects on how this change has affected her perception of herself and her body.

In this emotional documentary, Majid Kessab embarks on a moving journey to his Kurdish homeland, where he delves deep into his family history with his father.

Facundo Arteaga is a malambo dancer, who has already passed the barrier of thirties. His life is divided between work in the countryside and the care of his children. In spite of physical strain and lack of time, Facundo will try to compete again to try to get the title of national champion of malambo. According to tradition, whoever wins the championship can never compete again.

A multimedia performance including film, live narration and dance, How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? explores loss and transcendence experienced in human partnerships. Reflecting on his relationship with 102-year-old former sharecropper, carpenter and gardener Walter Carter as well as Andrei Tarkovsky’s science fiction classic, Solaris, Lemon and 6 dancers create a performance which arcs from turbulent physicality to restorative grace.

Why do we do incredibly difficult things that have no practical application? Is there a parallel between geographic and artistic exploration? Fram is a documentary and travel film about two friends journeying to the end of the earth, in order to make a dance film in the arctic wilderness of Svalbard. En route, they explore the history of our ideas of the Arctic, along with the grand questions of life, art and our place in the world. Sharing their love of discovering new geographic and artistic frontiers, choreographer-dancer-filmmakers and outdoor enthusiasts Thomas Freundlich and Valtteri Raekallio take the viewer on an engaging journey to a place where few have been and even fewer have danced.

Filmmaker Maia Wechsler follows choreographer Stephen Petronio as he prepares dancers to restage the 1968 production of "RainForest."

A quickfire portrait of the New York City ballroom scene in the ‘80s.

Merlin nightclub opened in 1992 in Barcelona and its medieval appearance did not leave anyone indifferent from the first day. After more than 30 years of enjoying the night with its characteristic atmosphere and varied musical selection, the castle was forced to close its doors in January 2023 despite filling the room every weekend. This video immortalizes the place through its regular customers and staff.

Inspired by the wind in the grass, the song of birds, the tapestry of the forest, two bodies of water and natural erosion, two dancers and a filmmaker explore the beauty of the Memramcook valley.

For two hundred years, the Shakers have been America's most successful utopian society. While seeking harmony, order and perfection in every aspect of their lives, they built minimalistic furniture and buildings that influenced modern design. The Shakers wrote songs of exquisite beauty and danced to the point of ecstasy during their religious meetings. Inspired by this music and dance, choreographer Tero Saarinen created Borrowed Light, a dance piece about communal life and individual sacrifice. Shot in Finland and the United States, featuring interviews and excerpts from Borrowed Light, this documentary explore the cultural legacy of this religious group devoted to creating heaven on earth.

Actors from Warsaw's garden theatres dance a traditional Polish dance, cracovienne.

Santiago Mitre co-directs his first movement following The Student together with choreographer Onofri Barbato. Although it would have been more accurate to say “his first film-story-adventure-movie-great movie following The Student”, the word movement fits perfectly in Los posibles, the most overwhelmingly kinetic work Argentine cinema has delivered in many, many years. The film deals with the adaptation of a dance show directed by Onofri together with a group of teenagers who came to Casa La Salle, a center of social integration located in González Catán, trying to find some refuge from hardship. Already entitled Los posibles, the piece opened in the La Plata Tacec and was later staged in the AB Hall of the San Martín Cultural Center. Now, it dazzles audiences out of a film screen, with extraordinary muscles and a huge heart: Los posibles is a rhapsody of roughen bodies and torn emotions. Precise and exciting, it’s our own delayed, necessary, and incandescent West Side Story.

This observational documentary was realized by filmmakers at the State University of Paraná. It follows the Federal University of Paraná’s Téssera Dance Company in black-and-white images as the group’s members prepare the dance piece “Black Dog”, a work about confronting depression, in June of 2017. The film’s story, structured in chapters, presents archetypal characters overcoming individual crises for the sake of collective expression. “The pack must walk together”, says the company’s stern but compassionate leader, within the context of a pedagogical work about the importance of a show going on.

A documentary film that highlights two street derived dance styles, Clowning and Krumping, that came out of the low income neighborhoods of L.A.. Director David LaChapelle interviews each dance crew about how their unique dances evolved. A new and positive activity away from the drugs, guns, and gangs that ruled their neighborhood. A raw film about a growing sub-culture movements in America.

Early Balkan footage.

In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.