Directors' Picks: A Decade of PDFF
October 4th @ 7:00PM | Tomorrow Theater | Run Time: 78 Minutes
Over ten years, we’ve watched a lot of dance films. For our tenth anniversary, we wanted to revisit a few of those films that have stayed with us.
Directors’ Picks: A Decade of PDFF is a cohort of nine films from the festival’s history that have remained especially meaningful to us. They come from nine countries and span a remarkable range of voices, styles, and stories. Together, these films offer a glimpse into the array of work that has excited and moved us over the years.
Old Man at the Corner Store
2023
United States
Directed by Nadav Heyman and Anabella Casanova & Choreography by Nadav Heyman and Cheryl Mann
An elderly man crosses paths with young neighborhood mischief-makers and dances them through a game of “follow the leader.” As they race through the streets, movement becomes their language for exchanging taunts, challenges, and new ways of seeing the world.
What I Know So Far
2022
France
Directed by Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern
Choreography by Emilie Leriche
A movement-and-words soliloquy that keeps track of small thoughts and fragments of knowledge, shaped as a poetic reminder.
Table for one, please.
2024
Germany & United Kingdom
Directed and Choreographed by Samantha Shay
Emerging from rehearsals for the dance-theater work Life in this House is Over, this short explores the social awkwardness of grief through text, movement, memory, and dramatic vignettes. Inspired by Anton Chekhov, artists connected to Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch and Teatr ZAR reflect on the blurred boundary between past and future.
Dive
2021
United Kingdom
Directed by Oscar Sansom
Choreography by Sophie Laplane
Inspired by the visionary work of French artist Yves Klein, Dive immerses Scottish Ballet dancers in a monochrome blue world of empty white space. From stillness, the choreography moves into unexpected complexity, pairing Laplane’s distinctive movement with striking, teal-toned cinematography.
Second Seed
2020
United States
Directed and Choreographed by Amadi “Baye” Washington and Sam “Asa” Pratt
A dance-horror film responding to D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, Second Seed confronts the white-supremacist mythology and white victimhood embedded in Griffith’s film, reframing that history through contemporary Black movement and imagery.
TWINS: You Must Be Related!
2018
United States
Directed by Varya Rootwood & Choreography by India Gonzalez and Ananda Gonzalez
Twin sisters use tightly synchronized, increasingly frenetic movement to examine the assumptions placed on twins, their shared identity, the pressures of sisterhood, and the desire for individual independence.
Your Approval is Not Essential
2017
Belgium
Directed by Leen Michiels
Choreography by Jelena Kostic
After a chance encounter in a supermarket unlocks an unexpected passion, an ordinary woman’s gray routine gives way to a colorful, whimsical sensory overload. The film explores the liberating, and unruly, pleasures of letting go of inhibition.
Aura
2023
China
Directed and Choreographed by Chenglong Tang
Two dancers move through precisely structured, opposing configurations, on a black stage and against the open ocean, exploring balance, interdependence, isolation, and the existential questions of who we are and why we are here.
It Cries Too Loudly
2021
Lebanon / United States
Directed and Choreographed by Dolly Sfeir
Created in response to the 2020 Beirut explosion and its aftermath, this dance film explores the uneasy overlap of joy and tragedy, as well as the emotional distance and divided belonging experienced by a Lebanese American emigré.