:: PROGRAMME: Thursday, March 25th 2004 ::

In association with South East Dance, we presented a programme of dance films which aimed to challenge conventional perceptions of both dance and film-making. This unique selection of shorts represents the cutting edge of both artforms and includes award-winning films from their recent commissions plus some of the best independant dance films from around the UK.

:: INTRODUCING BRIGHTON DANCE FILM - Director Magali Charrier - 4 mins ::
Produced by South East Dance, this short documentary highlights the internationally celebrated dance film scene in Brighton. Featuring comments from some of the artists whose films are screened tonight, it provides an excellent introduction to the emerging dance-on-film phenomena.

:: DUST - 8 mins
Director Anthony Atanasio
Choreographer Miriam King ::
A Butoh-influenced dance piece traces the solitary journey of a stranded, long distance swimmer within a waterless world. Searching for the sea of her dreams, her struggle eventually brings rain, regeneration and hope. Winner of the 1999 IMZ Dance Screen Award for Best Screen Choreography.

:: LEFT OR RIGHT FOR LOVE? - 7 mins
Director Magali Charrier
Choreographer Maria Lloyd ::
A young woman bathes in a bath of milk. She sinks into a dream, meeting her frustrations and her delights, in a naive fair tale. It is only when she finds stillness within herself that love comes down....in a box. Winner of the Norwich International Animation Festival for Best Experimental Animation.

:: GREENWICH FOOT TUNNEL - Directors Sarah Dowling & Christopher Hall - 4 mins ::
An innovative, dryly funny and startling short celebrating of one of Londons most invisible landmarks.

:: LEFT LUGGAGE - Directors Daniel Crawford & Nithus Pummangara - 3 mins ::
Featuring the Loop Dance Company, this film is choreographed Jonzi D and explores the physical and spiritual journeys we make in our everyday lives. Based around an interview with the choreographer, it combines an original soundtrack with performance and location footage to create a portrait of these journeys.

:: IN THE PINES - Director/Choreographer Nerea Martinez de Lecea - 4 mins ::
A short film inspired by the traditional folk music of the Southern Appalachian mountains.

:: ITS ACHING LIKE BIRDS - 11 mins
Director: Lucy Baldwyn
Choreographer : Lin Hixon/Goat Island ::
It's Aching Like Birds draws on a very American sense of landscape and space. Through fragments of movement and story, Goat Island and Lucy Baldwyn have explored the curious dislocation of memory as four characters perform ‘postcards' remembering a world they learned to love. The newly devised choreography reflects the funny ache at the heart of memory.

:: SOUND EFFECTS OF DEATH AND DISASTER - 8 mins
Director: Robert Hardy
Choreographer: John Rowley ::
An inventive and original exploration into the darker side of human physicality, creating a world that is at once simplistic yet alarming, as well as edgy, surreal and surprisingly humorous. South East Dance's second Dance 4 Camera joint commission with Lighthouse Film and Digital Media.

:: MINOU - Director/Choreographer Magali Charrier - 6 mins ::
Minou explores the rich and imaginative domestic life of a solitary young woman through her romantic aspirations and quirky relationships with the objects in her flat. Winner of 2002 IMZ Dance Screen Award for Best Screen Choreography.

:: SKYLARK - 7 mins
Director: Nerea Martinez de Lecea
Choreographer: Silke Mansholt ::
Skylark is inspired by Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean . Drawing on the narrative of this historical event, this is a moving exploration of the desire to fly.

:: SHOWTIME - 7 mins
Director: Dan O'Neil
Choreographer: Steve Kirkham ::
Steve 'Kirky' Kirkham is an amateur dancer: a sympathetic misfit, slightly neurotic and endearingly accident prone. The film follows his riotous attempts to succeed in his first audition.

:: SOLUNA - Directors Luke Jacobs and Jo Shapland - 7 mins ::
Soluna's makers describe it as a 'filmdance' that draws much of its inspiration from the Pembrokeshire coast. Originally performed at the Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire, later versions have been performed at the same site and at three theatre spaces in Wales. The choreography uses geometry, body proportions, floor patterns and motion based on circles, curves and irregular rhythms. Visually and thematically the film is linked to the work of 20th Century women surrealist artists.

:: DRESS FILM - Director Rosalind Peters - 3 mins ::
This clever film stitches together various attempts by its director to put on an unusual green dress that seems to be made of separate sections of material sutured into a human form. By prolonging the point of composure and putting-off 'being' in this world, even editing the film becomes a form of stitch-up, withholding from the viewer the final arrival of a person 'dressed'.

:: GATHER ROUND - Director Susanna Cole - 5 mins ::
Gather Round was filmed with an older peoples dance group in Defiance Walk, Woolwich, London. It is based on their memories of the past - clothes, dancing, work and courting, as well as the often life-long relationship with homes and local environment.

:: AIRBORNE - Directors Sarah Fawcitt, Lianne Wong and Jessica Meinel - 4 mins ::
Inspired by the photography of Lois Greenfield, this film captures that moment in dance when the image 'cannot move and never can hope to move yet it will seem about to move'.