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Program IV: Body Tales from around the world...
Thursday, March 27, 2003, ProArte Institute, St. Petersburg

One Minute Wanders 11min, 2002 (UK)
Distributor: The Place

One Minute Wonders is a series of extremely short dance films aimed at encouraging the production of zero to low budget short films, by presenting a selection at Dance on Screen and promoting them to other festivals. The series are produced by the Place, a performance center in London, UK. http://www.theplace.org.uk/html_frameset.htm

Apparato 01 by Simon Wilkinson & Miriam King UK 2002 A dance gets drowned out by loud music

Orange Dream by Miwa Kurihara UK 2002 An orange fantasy, blending music and dance

A 1-Minute Wander by Jo Ann Kaplan & Dana Caspersen – UK 2002
Two dancers navigate each other’s bodies

Face It by Claire-Laure Berthier, Hofesh Shechter, Shay Hamias – UK 2002
A dance for three faces and typography

Just A Minute by Torill Haugen Norway 2002 A photographer creates a “top drawer” animated dance

Swanlake by Sonja Junkers / Mirko Hecktor UK 2002 A ballet dancer attempts to escape the humdrum of daily life

Eye to I by Vena Ramphal & Lucy Baldwin UK 2002 A camera is captivated by the gaze of the dancer

Round About Now by Thom & Kate McIntosh UK 2002 A dancer reflects on her behaviour during a crisis

Exosphere by Simon Aeppli & Nic Sandiland UK 2002 A journey from macro to microcosm

Curtain of Eyes 13min, 1998 (US)
Director: Daniéle Wilmouth; Choreography: Daniéle Wilmouth and Katsura Kan
Distributor: Daniéle Wilmouth

photo: D. Wilmouth

Curtain of Eyes is an experimental film, which combines Japanese Butoh dance with psychological imagery and choreographed cinematography to suggest the kinetic life of the body.

Wilmouth is a filmmaker working primarily in movement / dance for the camera. In 1990 she moved to Osaka, Japan. During her six-year residency abroad, she studied contemporary Japanese Butoh dance with Katsura Kan, a Kyoto based Butoh dancer and director, among others. Wilmouth performed with his dance troupe, The Saltimbanques for three years. She is currently an instructor of Film and Video at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Columbia College.

Black Spring 26min, 2002 (France / Nigeria)
Director: Benoit Dervaux; Choreographer: Heddy Maalem
Distributor: Heure D'Été Productions

photo: B. Dervaux

Winner of the Best Choreography for the Camera Award at the New York Dance on Camera Festival 2003, this film questions our way of looking at African bodies in movement. How can we surpass the numerous clichés that arise from our purely Western perception of Africa? Taken out of their usual context and endowed with a certain abstraction, the dancers' movements are filmed in such a way as to reflect very singular experience. The choreography interspersed with scenes of contemporary life in Africa, highlights both the political and emotional sensitivities of modern African dance.

Born in 1966, Benoit Dervaux climbed the ranks from camera assistant to camera operator to become one of the leading cinematographers in Belgium cinema. Simultaneously, started a career of his own as a documentary film director with Gigi and Monica in 1994. In 1996, directed the highly praised Gigi, Monica... & Bianca, nominated for the Prix Europa in the non-fiction category in 1997. Also known for his collaboration as cinematographer with Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne on the acclaimed La Promesse and Rosetta, winner of the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999.

Heddy Maalem was born in Batna, Algeria. Before discovering dance, he had been an avid practitioner of aikido for many years. In 1990, he established “La Compagnie Ivoire”. Heddy Maalem treats the body the same way as the poet treats the language. His precise and refine choreographies evoke light and determination.

Touched 14min, 1994 (UK)
Director: David Hinton; Choreographer: Wendy Houston
Distributor: Concord Video

A romance for hands and faces - and the odd foot, this video is the choreography of close-ups set in a bar in north London. The characters talk, smoke, drink, dance, fight, laugh, and weep.

David Hinton is one of the most celebrated directors working in dance film today and has worked with some of the best known names in contemporary dance including DV8 Physical Theatre, Siobhan Davies, Wendy Houston and Russell Maliphant.

I think making dance films are probably the most interesting films you could possibly make. On a very fundamental level, making a film and making a dance are a very similar kind of activity; they're both about giving structure to action. If you think of film as just a formal language, and you forget about the acting and the talking you can look at any film as a dance film. All films take images of action and try to put these images together in a rhythmic and expressive way. In this sense film and dance work along the same lines. – David Hinton

Wendy Houston is a dancer/actor who has been performing in England for the last eighteen years. She has worked with many contemporary dance companies including DV8. Her solos reveal a highly individual style in which the dancer becomes verbally self-reflective.

Temblor 6.5 min, 1993 (Argentina)
Choreographer / Director: Silvina Szperling
Distributor: Silvina Szperling

photo: S. Szpeling

One naked woman. Seven naked women. Women shaking, spinning and falling. The camera getting so close to the bodies that the images come to an abstraction. A feminine world moving to the beat of the drums. A video-dance that takes the reality as beauty.

Awarded with several grants: from the “Cuballet”, twice from the American Dance Festival (USA), and from the National Fund for the Arts of Argentina, Silvina Szperling has worked as a contemporary dance choreographer since 1986, and since 1993 devoted herself to video-dance, the making of video projections for multimedia pieces and documentaries on dance. As director of the International Video-dance Festival of Buenos Aires, Szperling has curated several selections of Argentine and foreign video-dance pieces both for local and international exhibitions.
http://www.videodanzabsas.com.ar/

Dom Svobode 30 min, 2000 (Slovenia)
Director: Saso Podgorsek; Choreographer: Iztok Kovac
Distributor: En-Knap

photo: En-Knap

Dom Svobode is not only a code for the world that the eyes of our generation see when looking back - it is also a code for the spaces of freedom an artist tries to create, wanting to rise above the banality of everyday life, wishing to inflame his imagination and to untie his body. To make a body stand upright when hanging from the wall is a gesture that in its heresy resembles fluttering of a bird on top of a gigantic chimney: goodbye, Earth! But the bird is not alone anymore, it has its flock of black birdies, which in a fleeting, unfocused shot become one with black dots on a die and with black dots on a piece of white paper. - Stojan Pelko
http://www.en-knap.com/www/noplugin.htm

Cobra and Phantom gave birth to Dom Svobode. The godfathers were Kurasawa and Bunuel. The town of Trbovlje is Galilean see. The walls are not vertical any more.- Saso Podgorsek

Iztok Kovac, solo dancer, choreographer and the founder of EN-KNAP, an international dance group, has one of those creative energies which has enabled him, starting from nothing, to bring Slovene modern dance onto the European and world stages.

Born in 1964, Saso Podgorsek graduated from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Since then he has realized a number of programmes for Studio Ljubljana at TV Slovenia and collaborated with Arxel Tribe production house (computer animation), Iztok Kovac and his group En-knap, as well as of Mute Records, Ajax Studio, ZRC SAZU, Stop magazine and several advertising agencies.

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