PICKS 2
OCTOBER 5TH - OCTOBER 7TH | Run Time: 62 mins**Picks 2 contains nudity. This curation of 9 films comes to us from Ukraine, Norway, the United States, several Oregon Artists, as well as the premiere of this year’s Oregon Dance Film Commission! These films explore cinematic themes such as the landscape as vital character, grief, youthful independence, black lives, togetherness, malaise, the body as beauty, and one’s journey of radical healing.
Picks 2 will be available for your viewing pleasure and edification for 72 hours. Once you’ve purchased your ticket you’ll receive a link to screen the films. The films will become available to watch at 12:01 am Pacific Time on October 5th and viewing will close at 11:59 pm Pacific Time on October 7th.
I'm here
UKRAINE
Directors Kateryna Tiurina
Director of Photography Kirill San
Choreographer Anatolii Sachivko
Dancers Apache Crew
Composer Myatniy Lemonad
Kyiv, year 2019 – total copying of style, attitudes, hobbies. Unreasonable obsession with everything new, trendy, lack of autonomous thinking, lack of truth and real desires. The new generation stopped asking themselves – what do I really want to do here and now? But these guys have their own reality. This is the new elite youth, that think critically. Original. True. Our short, beautiful video is about the eternal dreamers, boys and girls, called to inspire with their honest deeds. They push us to the new achievements. They know how to dream and fulfill. They live the moment, although it often happens that society breaks their framework of an ideal world, by throwing back to the ugly reality…
Instagram: @Katerula
Human Habitat
NORWAY
Director Flavia Devonas Hoffmann
Director of Photography Ken Are Bongo
Choreographer Flavia Devonas Hoffmann
Dancer Marthe Engdal
Composer Tapani Rinne
Sound Design Flurin Devonas
Human Habitat has its origin in the clash between untouched nature and growing industry in the Arctic and explores the oscillation between human resistibility and fragility. A female dancer takes us on an associative, non-narrative journey through emotional states facing the changes from a sustainable to a destructive relationship of humans and landscape.
Instagram: @fladedans
About Face
UNITED STATES
Director Yoram Savion, YAK Films
Choreographer Drew Dollaz
Featured Dancer Drew Dollaz
Composer Daniel Bernard Roumain
Spoken Word Marc Bamuthi Joseph
Producer Rika Iino & Melissa Higgins
ABOUT FACE is the first of a 3-part short film series that puts a different spin on the school to prison pipeline and the role of fathers of black and brown children in the disruption of that paradigm.
The work was created in tandem with the March 2019 world premiere of The Just and The Blind, an evening length performance presented to a sold out audience at Carnegie Hall, commissioned by Carnegie Hall with support from the Ford Foundation. The short film series was created to carry the timely dialogue surrounding racial profiling outside the walls of performing arts centers.
Based on original spoken word poetry by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, directed by YAK Films, and produced by Sozo Artists, ABOUT FACE features choreographer, dancer and actor Drew Dollaz and musical score by Daniel Bernard Roumain.
SHE/I
UNITED STATES
*Contains Nudity*
Director Shaun Clarke
Director of Photography Daniel Jacobs
Choreographer John Lam
Dancers Maria Alvarez & John Lam
Composers J.S. Bach
Sound Ross Matthei
A meditation on the human body, identity and movement.
John Lam is a principle dancer with Boston Ballet.
Shaun Clarke is a filmmaker based in Boston, MA. His dance films explore ways that movement can be transformed through the tools of the cinema.
Instagram: @shaunclarke2, @johndilam
ensō | mountain divide
OREGON ARTIST
Director Faith Morrison and Robert Uehlin
Directors of Photography Robert Uehlin
Choreographer Faith Morrison
Dancer Alyssa, Enright, Ashley Griffith, Cecilia Potter, Logan Prichard
Composer Michael Wall
Ensō | mountain divide conveys a “kinesthetic experience of place” in the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness. In 2013, choreographer Faith Morrison developed a process using the languages of dance and film to create and convey a kinesthetic experience of place. In her process, dancers are led through site-specific, sensory explorations, listening and responding to the movement of the elements in the environment. The dancers are then given time to reflect on their experiences and identify the most prominent feeling states of the place. Finally, the choreographer and the filmmaker work together to convey those experiences through the medium of film. The initial result of this research was the award-winning screendance, “Ensō,” created in collaboration with filmmaker Robert Uehlin, set in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. Ensō | mountain divide builds on this research to convey an embodied experience of a diverse, mountain ecosystem.
ODFC Film
OREGON ARTIST
Director Ivana Horvat
Director of Photography Lauren Mueller
Choreographers Alexander Dones
Dancers Drew Yowell, Anna Olmstead, & Mahina Moon
To feel a heavy heart is to be human, and in HARBOR, we see three friends explore what it means to hide this heaviness from the world as they embark on a scenic trip in the Pacific Northwest. Every so often a moment arises when the heavy things we harbor are brought to the surface. What begins as an exploration of the world around them quickly transforms into an exploration of their innermost selves and what it means to find connection amongst others.
The dancers were given improvisational games & exercises and were tasked with developing a movement language based on a personal heaviness that was kept secret throughout the entire process. The process reflected our abilities as humans to empathize, connect, and help each other find a moment of lightness, even when the cause of someone else’s suffering is a mystery. We may not heal fully, but for a brief moment we can come together to find peace through connection.
Learn more about the Oregon Dance Film Commission.
Katie Gately: Waltz
UNITED STATES
Director Samantha Shay
Performers Bobbi Jene Smith & Katie Gately
Composer Katie Gately
Waltz is one part music video, and one part dance film, described as a “Neo-gothic mini film” by Fact Magazine, and a powerful portrait of composer, Katie Gately, also starring acclaimed dancer Bobbi Jene Smith, directed by Samantha Shay. ‘Waltz’ emerges off Gately’s forthcoming album Loom, in dedication to Katie’s mother who passed away from an aggressive form of cancer. The song ‘Waltz’ itself came about after spending an entire day listening to Gately’s mother’s favourite artist, Leonard Cohen’s track “Take this Waltz” on repeat. This short film is a feverish duet, rotating around death, shot in an abandoned convent in Brooklyn NY, where Gately grew up. This film is for anyone who has wanted to spin into a circle until the ceiling became the floor.
Diedre
OREGON ARTIST
Director Amy Leona Havin & Tomas Alfredo Valladares
Director of Photography Tomas Alfredo Valladares
Choreographer Amy Leona Havin
Company & Dancers The Holding Project featuring dancers Jennifer Seung Hancock, Heather Hindes, Elle Sevi Crowley, Whitney Wilhardt
Composer James Forest
Diedre is a short dance film rooted in restlessness amid repetition and material value. Embedded in contemplation, Diedre exists in abstraction; nestled between nostalgia, stagnation, and reverie
Amy Leona Havin is a former artist in residence with Disjecta Contemporary Art Center and recipient of the Thessaloniki Cinedance International Semi-Finalist Prize.
Instagram: @theholdingproject, @amyleonahavin
Self Worship
OREGON ARTIST
*Contains Nudity & for Mature Audiences*
Director Asia Brown & Briana Bard
Director of Photography Caitlin Callahan
Choreographer Che Che Luna
Dancers Che Che Luna, Frankie Simone, Carly Ostergaard, Akela Jaffi, Paige Moreland, Jenny Windom
Composers Tanerelle
Production Designer Tiffany Ayers
Editor Molly Preston
Sound Designer Christiann Burch
Assistant Camera Leila Chieko
Gaffer/Grip Jill Petracek
Wardrope Stylist Frankie Simone
Hair and Makeup Queenie Paronda
Production Assistant Kale Chesney
A boldly feminist and genuinely provocative exploration of one sexual trauma survivor’s journey back to their body through the universal language of dance.
Instagram: @che.che.luna
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