Memories of the Future
New York Premiere
Dance Collective Arnhemse Meisjes, 2020, The Netherlands, 12m
Memories of the Future is a short dance film by Dance Collective Arnhemse Meisjes. This film tells the story of one and each person at the same time. We dance a powerful life path in which experiences from the past and memories from the future emerge. They come together in the present moment. This is a human story: your story. A story of your ancestors and your (grand)children. Do the future and the past run parallel in the present? Everything is allowed, because everything turns; everything comes, everything passes. Like the seasons, a cycle of life and death. We fall and get up again. We turn, until the present moment is all that remains. That’s what we can hold on to. Here, now. You, me, we.

Child of the screen
New York Premiere
Nathan Hirschaut, 2021, USA, 5m
Child of the screen is a short dance/theatre film about a boy who is raised and shaped by the screen, and other mediating forces.

Widow’s End
New York Premiere
Jil Guyon, 2020, USA, 5m
The perils of isolation and climate instability meet in this split-screen video set against the backdrop of a volcanic red-rock quarry in southern Iceland. Caught in an extreme, inhospitable landscape, a bereaved woman finds herself enveloped in a swath of black fabric. The intensity of her stillness combines with a stark sound score to form a slowly shifting visual tableau that explores the terrain where inner and outer realities collide.

They Dance With Their Heads
New York Premiere
Thomas Corriveau, 2021, Canada, 8m
English and French with English subtitles
The severed head of a choreographer is held captive by an eagle on a desert island. With a dazzling mastery of drawing and painting, this animated short unexpectedly takes us into the sensitive world of an artist madly in love with dance. “The film was developed from a series of workshops with fabulous dancers in Montréal,” director Thomas Corriveau explains. “As I was drawing and painting, I wanted the energy of the colored lines to fully participate in the emergence of a strong and sensitive bodily presence for the dancers.”

Liminality
New York Premiere
Jennifer Akalina Petuch, Annali Rose, 2020, USA, 8m
Liminality is an underwater dance film inspired by the inevitable journey ballet dancers face when retiring from their professional careers. Co-directors Annali Rose and Jennie Akalina Petuch explore the question of “What happens when the fairy tale is over?” Looking to Swan Lake as the quintessential classical ballet, Liminality imagines what Odette may have experienced upon plunging to her watery death in the depths of the lake. There is no prescribed happily-ever-after; instead, you will witness a moment of suspended reality, disenchantment, vulnerability, self-discovery, and transformation. Here, the heroine explores the space in between life and death, coming to terms with the end of her world as she knew it, and finding the strength and courage to move into a new existence—one that is full of possibilities yet to be written.

Evidence of it All
New York Premiere
Drew Jacoby, 2021, USA, 9m
Film director and choreographer Drew Jacoby (Nederlands Dans Theater, Royal Ballet of Flanders) explores the realm of the seven deadly sins in her first short dance film for SFDanceworks. With an original story by Pulitzer Prize–winning librettist Royce Vavrek, the film captures a woman in solitude, pulsating through her memories. Drawing inspiration from iconic artists Maya Deren and Peter Lindbergh, Jacoby’s graphic movement style and aesthetic give the film an eerie, absurd, and sometimes surreal sensuality. With narration by Golden Globe–winning and Oscar-nominated actress Rosamund Pike and sound design by the brilliant composer Mikael Karlsson (an Alicia Keys and Lykke Li collaborator), Princess Grace Award–winning contemporary dancer Meredith Webster (Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet) takes the viewer on an intimate and riveting journey through her troubled mind, shedding light on the perpetual inner carnal struggle.

Dive
New York Premiere
Oscar Sansom, 2021, UK, 13m
Scottish Ballet’s Choreographer in Residence Sophie Laplane partners with James Bonas (director of the 2019 ballet The Crucible) and filmmaker Oscar Sansom to create Dive, a short film inspired by French artist Yves Klein and what has become the world’s most famous shade of blue. Expect Laplane’s quintessentially quirky choreography paired with striking visuals in this teal-toned treat.