THE 2024 PORTLAND DANCE FILM FEST
Welcome! Portland Dance Film Fest returns for it’s 8th year and just like the last 7 years, we find ourselves inspired, moved, & excited to share 26 wonderful dance films and one documentary with you.
PDFF 2024 is in partnership with the Portland Art Museum’s Center for An Untold Tomorrow and will be screened at PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater. Get ready for 3 nights of great films, delicious concessions, informal after-screening gatherings and more!
2024 SCHEDULE
September 26th – 28th, 2024
SCREENING
Sept 26th | 7:30
@ The Tomorrow Theater
PICKS 1
*This night contains nudity*
Nostalgia, longing, and reckoning, whether held lightly or earnestly, moves throughout the 8 films of Picks 1. We say hello and goodbye to our ways of life, our memories that orient us to who we think we are, and our thirst. Whether this thirst is for water or for the realization of the curves of peace, we can almost/decidedly feel the knowledge of it in our hands and feet as we answer the call of the music and surrender to the forever dance. Picks 1 shares films from France/Vietnam, Greece, India, USA, Canada, Austria, and The United Kingdom and runs ~1hr. 45min.
SCREENING
Sept 27th | 7:30
@ The Tomorrow Theater
PICKS 2
The aperture of Picks 2 shifts out and in, holding many Revolutions in its frame. With these 10 films we contemplate the revolution of the Earth itself and of our youth’s unconditioned clarity of our one home. Revolutions that nudge our collective madness towards breaking into sanity, the courageous revolutions of resistance and love, and the revolutions of magnetic release all entice us into emergent relationships with our humanity. Each film brings a style unto its own as generations of storytellers converge and give context for each other. Picks 2 comes to us from Spain, USA, Iran, Germany, and Sweden and runs ~1 hr. 45min.
WORKSHOP
Sept 28th | 2:15 PM – 4:15 PM
@ NW Dance Project
CREATING DIALOGUE: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN DANCE & FILM with AUDREY RACHELLE
What are the ways a dancer can ”speak” to the camera without words? How can a camera operator better understand how to move with a dancer in support of the story being told? How does a director decide on the ways to best utilize cinematography and choreography to bring their vision to life?
SCREENING
Sept 28th | 7:30
@ The Tomorrow Theater
PICKS 3
If Picks 3 were a dinner party, it would carry on late into the night, slipping into the realm in between this and that. We end our 2024 Festival with 9 films that evoke geological and bodily time, grief’s many longings and stalemates, the horrors of piecing ourselves back together, the refreshment of piecing ourselves back together, and we follow our dance elders as they offer themselves to the luminous mundanity of a life given to the dance of it all. These films come to us from the USA, China, Spain, Japan, and Sweden. Picks 3 runs ~1hr. 50min.
Celebration
Sept 28th | Immediately following Picks 3
@ The Tomorrow Theater
AFTER FESTIVAL CELEBRATION
Join us for an informal gathering Immediately following the Picks 3 screening for award winner announcements! The concession stand will stay open late, so grab a drink and some popcorn and chat about the films!
LIVE FILM CREATION
All three screenings
@ The Tomorrow Theater
LIVE DANCE FILM CREATION
Be in a dance film! Before each screening, director Matthew Tomac will be working with a dancer and shooting a dance film! They will be asking for attendee participation! The final film will premier on our social media the following week.
Meet the 2024 Guest Judges
Rae Collins
Matthew Tomac
Matthew is a cinematographer and the founder of RUNTHISBLOCK, a video production team based in Portland, Oregon specializing in the creation of commercial and documentary films rooted in dynamic movement and athletics. Dance has been a quintessential part of his personal creative development and plays a central role in many of his films.
Tony Carnell
Two time Princess Grace award nominated Tony Carnell, originally from Boise Idaho began their dance training at age nine. Tony started in the world of hip hop and eventually made their way into the world of classical ballet where they trained for nearly a decade. Attending trainee programs, and apprenticeships all around the country. Shortly after graduating high school Tony accepted a company position as a soloist with a contemporary ballet company in Idaho where they were later promoted to principal dancer. During their time in Boise and aboard Tony also worked for a variety of dance companies and organizations such as, Project flux,LED boise, Ballet Idaho,Alonzo Kings LINES BALLET, Whim Whim Dance company,OPENSPACE,Heidi Duckler dance company and more.
Tony has continued to work professionally in Idaho, Seattle, Portland Oregon, San Francisco and LA. Performing and choreographing in the worlds of classical ballet,hip hop,contemporary and jazz. Currently, Tony is represented by Go2talent Agency in Los Angeles California.
Laura Cannon
Laura Cannon is a dancer, choreographer and educator who has spent over 25 years exploring site-specific work and innovative ways to create dance beyond the traditional boundaries of a stage. She is the founder and director of ProLab Dance, a site-specific project-based dance company in Portland, OR. Laura was an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellow (2023) and a Dance Wire PDX Ambassador (2021/2022). During the pandemic she engaged in several dance film studies and quickly fell in love with blending the two mediums. In 2021, during the height of pandemic isolation, Laura duct-taped her phone to the ceiling to shoot her short film Garden Bed, which was screened in film festivals all over the world and was honored on multiple occasions including Best Film Shot on a Mobile Device at the Inspire Dance Film Festival 2022 in Sydney. Medusa was another one of her self-filmed dance experiments that enjoyed festival honors in 2022, including Honorable Mention at the Mobile Dance Film Festival 2022 at the Harkness Dance Center in New York.
Laura has also led ProLab Dance to explore the use of immersive technologies in performance. Her extended-reality dance work entitled Origins places one viewer in a VR headset to watch a dance film set inside of a decommissioned wind-turbine while they sit in a specially designed chair that a live dancer wears as part of their costume. The dancer then performs choreography that moves the VR viewer through the physical space in directions that correspond to the directionality of the film they are viewing inside of the headset. Outside of the VR headset an audience witnesses the duet that the live dancer is leading with the VR viewer but are left to wonder what is happening in the alternate reality. This work questioned how we deal with not knowing someone else’s reality and who has access to escape the reality we are given. Origins was invited to travel to the 2023 FIVARS festival in Toronto and was met with much enthusiasm at each performance. Laura has also recently explored large scale immersive technologies by setting dance inside of the Kendall Planetarium. When we were Ocean filled the 52 foot dome of the planetarium with 360 degree dance films created by ProLab Dance. The films were accompanied by live dancers and musicians performing in the round for a fully immersive, sensory performance experience.
Laura holds a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin and received the John Bustin Award for Conspicuous Versatility in the Arts from the Austin Crtic’s Table in 2006. She has performed with Deborah Hay Dance, Sharir+Bustamante Danceworks, Rude Mechs and was one of the founders of Blue Lapis Light. She is currently in residence at the historic Zidell Shipyards in Portland, OR where she is engaged in a multi-year, multi-disciplinary, immersive film and performance project called Break to Build. Break to Build Part One enjoyed a completely sold-out run in the summer of 2023 and was named by Dance Watch one of highlights of the year. Break to Build Part Two just wrapped after also enjoying a sold-out run, being seen by over 1000 enthusiastic dance patrons.