A showcase of the best Dance & Experimental Films in the world today.
AUDIENCE AWARDS:
Best Experimental Film: Café Kuba: Who Dared to Awaken the Dead Memory
Best Dance Film: Split Focus
Best Music Video: Acid Alone In The Woods
Best Choreography: The Moment I Said It
Best Performances: Hallways
Best Cinematography: Matter
Best Art Film: Resonance in the Castle
Best Visual Design: Stamino
Best Micro-Short: The Afternoon of a Faun
Best Sound & Music: Khimairas of the Kinesphere
Best Direction: The plaza of time
The Moment I Said It, 3min., USA
Directed Ryn Deyo
This piece reflects the moment of introspective learning — where the quiet, unseen transformation that occurs when healing begins is explored. We don’t return to what was, but learn to live with what is.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-the-moment-i-said-it
Split Focus, 5min,. USA
Directed by Cherie Carson
“Split Focus” is a captivating dance film that delves into the intricate relationship between self-perception and external projection. Through mesmerizing shadow play, the film explores images of spirit and internal feelings versus outward appearances, prompting viewers to question which aspect demands more attention— the dancer herself or her shadow. Visually poetic, it offers a compelling examination of how we project ourselves into the world and the duality of inner and outer identities.
https://www.instagram.com/upswingaerial
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-split-focus
HALLWAYS, 2min., USA
Directed by Elizabeth Sears
Hallways is a dance film about independence and resilience in the midst of ambiguity. A mix of uncertainty and confidence permeates the choices we makes when navigating the external forces swirling around us.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-hallways
Acid Alone In The Woods, 5min., USA
Directed by Alec Gessert
A dance music video exploring fear, paranoia, and pleasure one experiences alone in a dark forest.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-acid-alone-in-the-woods
MATTER, 21min., USA
Directed by Gabe Katz, Mike Murphy
A young woman enters into a journey of self-exploration, discovery, and identity. As she travels through the ephemeral, working through her understanding of self-perception, other travelers within the same universe try to join. These travelers soon realize that her story is not for them to mimic or assume, but to discover through their own experiences. They learn to accept that one can be empathetic to the experiences of others, without being central to the plot. These travelers become members of a creative community, observing and understanding a greater universal struggle: accepting oneself as a thread within the fabric of existence, and not the fabric itself. The young woman continues on her journey within the greater schema of reality. She endures everything and nothing all at once—accepting her present reality for its momentous nature, knowing it will be quickly lost to the vastness of time.
https://www.gabekatz.com/matter
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-matter
Resonance in the Castle, 17min., USA
Directed by Brandon Katcher
A mysterious castle breathes with light and color, drawing all who enter into its shifting embrace. Stained glass spills vivid hues across ancient stone, golden reflections dance over strange artifacts, and ethereal performances flare up like living paintings. Surreal, electric, and unbound by space or time. Musicians, dancers, and performance artists bring their visions to life, each performance casting a ripple, before fading into the ether. A place of mystery and spectacle, this living museum exists only in the moment it is seen, leaving behind only echoes. Here, the castle is not a place but a state of mind, a dream in motion, inviting us to lose ourselves within its walls.
http://www.lostsummitfilms.com/
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-resonance-in-the-castle
Stamino, 11min., Czech Republic
Directed by Marie-Anna Šulc
Stamino drifts through fatigue and the quiet rituals of nourishment and recovery, always accompanied by vulnerability, the urge to heal, and a wry gaze toward a culture obsessed with the body and its perfection. It moves between closeness and distance, frustration and renewal, tracing the edges of what it means to live in a body that aches, adapts, and resists. Beneath it all runs a longing for meaning, for connection, for transformation, within the slow and uncertain struggle of becoming.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-stamino
The Afternoon of a Faun, 2min., Japan
Directed by Fuyubi Kusamori
“L’Après-midi d’un Faune” emerges as a contemporary digital meditation on Debussy’s timeless masterpiece, itself born from Stéphane Mallarmé’s symbolist poem of 1865. This music video transcends conventional boundaries, weaving electronica and noise music into a sonic tapestry that honors the impressionist legacy while boldly venturing into uncharted territories of sound.
https://www.instagram.com/iammyowncliche/
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-the-afternoon-of-a-faun
Café Kuba: Who Dared to Awaken the Dead Memory, 28min,. Congo
Directed by David Shongo
At its core, Café Kuba explores Kinshasa through the silent presence of a mobile coffee vendor navigating the vibrant streets of the Bandal district. Filmed after the M23 rebel group’s capture of Goma, as they threatened Kinshasa, the film portrays a city on the brink of conflict. David Shongo avoids framing the vendor as a conventional protagonist. Instead, his silence becomes his strength—absorbing and reflecting the city’s tensions, frustrations, and private conversations.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-cafe-kuba
Khimairas of the Kinesphere, 9min., USA
Directed by Eric Souther, Kelsey Paschich
Khimairas of the Kinesphere explores the extension of the mediated body. Human movement choreographed for digital avatars which work as sites for artificially generated images. The crises of climate change demands a hybridization and reexamination of the relationship between humans and nature, a redesign, a second nature. We are forced to reimagine our co-existence and our role in shaping the future.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-khimairas-of-the-kinesphere
The plaza of time, 11min., China
Directed by Xinyuan He
The Plaza of Time is an observational documentary directed by a teenage dancer, chronicling the lives of three elder performers—Auntie Yuan, Auntie Zhang, and Mr. Li—who each bring their own rhythm, resilience, and reason to dance on the public plazas of urban China.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-the-plaza-of-time-film
Experimental Film & Music Video Festival 