Author: experimentalfilmfestival

Festival occurs 4 times a year. Showcased the best of experimental short films and music videos from around the world.

Director Biography – Eduardo Zuñiga, Edgar Zendejas, Esdras Hernandez, Ernesto Sebastian Arias (#DANZARESTLESS)

1/4 RESTLESS
Choreographer, audiovisual and musical edition.
Eduardo Zúñiga – Chilean in Alicante Spain.
Music L.V. Beethoven

The first of the 4 pieces that make up the work, is inspired by the night experience of the interpreter, of insomnia as a psychological and creative experience throughout the creation and editing process of this work. Collecting the corporal and mental consequences of the confinement. Restless, the homonym of the complete work, takes us on a journey through hidden places that awakens us more desire to scream, hug, run and watch, come out of the confinement egg. It is a journey into the interior of this being that we are all and that we are one at a time.

“The main inspiration comes from what it means to live in confinement, what we have to live in our homes with our time. Time in the sense of what the use of it means and how it varies depending on what we do. It feels faster or slower. “
Eduardo Zúñiga – May 2020

2/4 ORILLA
Direction and Choreography
Edgar Zendejas – Mexican in Montreal Canada.
Edition
Eduardo Zuniga
Music L.V. Beethoven & Sebastián Arias.
Musical Edition Esdras Hernández and Eduardo Zúñiga.

The inner world shines with its most unexpected voices before a feeling of loneliness. It deepens us to a direct connection between body and soul and makes us explode without any meaning, just for the fact of being and facing our own presence.

“This is the first time that there is a global unification of the artistic endeavor, it is a new challenge that is nurturing us so that we can find our new path.”
Edgar Zendejas – June 2020

3/4 OCASO
Esdras Hernández – Spanish in Santiago de Chile.
Choreography, musical composition (based on the “Symphony No. 9 in G minor, Op 125” and the “Piano Sonata No. 14”, by Ludwig Van Beethoven) and audiovisual editing.

When night falls almost everyone sleeps, but for some it is when they really wake up, the silence after sunset acts as a catalyst to listen to what you really have to say to yourself, the shame disappears, the masks are not necessary and that’s it. It only remains to surrender.

“The invitation was textual, for us to continue creating in quarantine. It is not easy to have a trial ten thousand kilometers away, but also with this current paradigm one is discovering new answers to new questions that perhaps if it were not for the pandemic, one would not question “.
Esdras Hernández – July 2020

4/4 MAURICIO
Direction & Choreography
Sebastián Arias – Uruguayan in Montevideo Uruguay.
Musical composition (based on the “Symphony No. 9 in G minor, Op 125” and the “Piano Sonata No. 14”, by Ludwig Van Beethoven) and audiovisual edition by Esdras Hernández
Interpreter and camera: Mauricio Vera / Window Ballerina: Julia Bengtsson.

In this time where the majority have suffered confinement, we find ourselves alone or saturated with company, suffering from loneliness and various mood. Mauricio films himself showing his intimacy to somehow be closer, with this saturated rhythm he dreams of reopening and dancing to the applause that every day, at 7 pm, New York City offers to the health workers. In that dream is the stage.

Ernesto Sebastián Arias –August 2020

Director Statement

Absolutely every obstacle is a new opportunity for us artists to reinvent ourselves and a further excuse to indulge in our creativity

Short Film: #DANZARESTLESS, 24min., USA, Dance


#DanzaRestless

It is a collaboration composed of 4 audiovisual pieces that are articulated as postcards or impressions of the confinement.
Four glances from four different choreographers who, separated by time and geographical borders, direct the movements of a single performer. The dancer, from the intimacy of his confinement, makes a time-space tour of his apartment, reinterpreting places and objects to transform them into the forced scene of this pandemic. The bed, the windows, the instruments are thus taking on another meaning, transforming the imposed routine of confinement into a kind of vehicle or door to more intimate and at the same time phantasmagorical places, spaces where the deepest aspirations of being can be appreciated. like freedom and communication, as well as all the psychological tensions typical of an imprisoned being. A challenge for the interpreter, a Chilean dancer living in Tribeca New York, the center of the pandemic and the antiracial outbreak, who alone had to juggle the technical and logistical tasks to record and rehearse the various choreographies that make up these works, sometimes all in a same day, turning his department into a creative experimentation laboratory where the body and its different dimensions take on an unusual thickness. With the Symphony No.9 in D Minor, Op. 125, by Ludwig Van Beethoven as a tribute to the 250th anniversary of the German composer’s birth.

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Director Biography – Lindsay Bennett-Thompson (ENTER NIRVANA)


Lindsay is an working actor who has branched her energy into creating her own work over the past 3 years.
Starting her career in theatre she wrote and produced several theatre shows before evolving into screen work.
With 3 films under her belt she’s still very much at the beginning of her creative journey but is making waves with her provocative writing and interesting aesthetics.
Lindsay continues to work professionally as an actor which she feels informs her work behind the camera.

Director Statement

I want to make beautiful work which plays with juxtaposition and a degree of ambiguity. I like the audience to make up their own minds as to what they think my work is saying.
The idea that two people could see my film and both will have their own interpretation excites me as a creative. It’s my story but it’s yours.

Short Film: ENTER NIRVANA, 9min., UK, Experimental

A woman’s journey to find peace leads to esoteric depths.

Art-House horror from the actor – Lindsay Bennett-Thompson

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Director Biography – Antonia Economou (COMPOSITION: SNAKES FOR HER)

Antonia Economou was born in Athens in 1995. She is a choreographer, artistic director and performer. Antonia’s group of artists meet to question the boundaries of a theatre company in an ongoing creative process/workshop, not only driven by reaching an end result or the materialization of a performance. As a History of Art graduate (BA Hons Degree), she has established a close academic relationship with the discipline, and it constitutes her primary source of inspiration for creating images on stage. Antonia is also the artistic director and curator in most of the pieces that she conceptualizes and presents.
She is the founder, executive producer and artistic director at ΕRGO Collective. ERGO Collective (Non-profit Organisation) was initiated in September 2017 and it is a creative platform founded on the premise of collaboration. Antonia finds a way to develop her artistic process as a director in an open field, not limited in the theatre space, as it extends in the Visual Art practices.
Her most recent works performed in Athens include: PiETA (Roes Theatre 2018) and PiETA II (Alternative Stage, Greek National Opera, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre, 2019).
The full lockdown interrupted the materialization of her piece Atitlon- Figure n.3 which is designed to take place in 2021.
Her latest piece, Composition for six bodies was conceived during the pandemic and performed in July 2020 in Athens at the industrial space of Amaxostasio, in the context of Papagou Festival and at the archaeological space of Plato’s Academia. It was filmed in the creative space of the company in August 2020.

Short Film: COMPOSITION: SNAKES FOR HER, 10min., Greece, Dance

Five bodies in composition, create ever changing microcosms: striving to find meaning amidst their shared reality (-ies) when really it is a fluid sequence of narratives bearing no catharsis. Like in her dream, everything is fulfilled in itself. Interrupted.
The bodies are carriers and generators of these microcosms. They live, mature and decay in their own artificial conditions, questioning their very existence.

“…The other night I woke up into another dream. I am in a large black square box. Inside it I encounter a woman and two men. They are trying to wrap their hands around her neck and asphyxiate her. I see something move on her head. Do you know what it was? Snakes. Her hair turned into snakes. The angrier she got, the anger grew the snakes.”

P.S.: Composition was initially materialized as a theatre dance performance. This film is another dimension of the piece. Composition for six bodies was performed five times in July 2020 in Athens at the industrial space of Amaxostasio, in the context of Papagou Festival and at the archaeological space of Plato’s Academia. It was filmed in the creative space of the company in August 2020.

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Director Biography – Alfonso Moreno (INFECTED)

Alfonso is a multifaceted artist from Madrid, Spain, who moved to the US in the XXI century.
He’s known for fronting the seminal hardcore punk band TdeK (or TDK) in the 1980s & playing in lesser-known rock bands The Mezquinos and Los Garduños in the 90s. Today he collaborates with Chano & Germán, from the SoMad band NOUS, in A.C.T., when he travels to Madrid to visit family. This video is about the last song they recorded.

Director Biography – Louis-Martin Charest (CALL/AWAKENING AT THE TOP)

Filmmaker and choreographer, Louis-Martin is a graduate of Canada’s National Ballet School. He danced for Ottawa Ballet, the National Ballet of Portugal, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal and Ciné Qua Non Média. Alongside his interpretive endeavors, he choreographed over 30 works for such companies as BJM-Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, Ottawa Ballet, Ballet Jorgen, Bouchardanse, l’École supérieure de ballet du Québec and Arts Umbrella. Wanting to weave dance and cinema, Louis-Martin founded LIBERAMÆ performance and films in 2005, which he now co-directs with Alisia Pobega. The company produces works for both film and stage, creating choreographic works, fiction as well as documentaries.

Since 2001, Louis-Martin has been working as a director and collaborating with arts organizations such as Kidd Pivot/Crystal Pite, BJM, Théâtre Hector Charland, Usine C, l’École de danse de Québec, l’École supérieure de ballet du Québec, Festival des arts de Saint-Sauveur, Jane Mappin Danse, PPS Danse, Création Estelle Clareton and Fondation Margie Gillis. As a documentary filmmaker, he directed two short docs for CBC’s Exhibitionists. His next project, I Am We Are One, is about a group of differently abled dancers, and will grace the screens in the near future.

Serving the business community, Louis-Martin has also collaborated with such organizations as Hydro-Québec, lemay architecture, Canal Évasion et Desjardins. In 2017, Louis-Martin returned to the stage in Absorbed in Silence by choreographer Victoria May, and the following year in SILK by choreographer Jane Mappin. As a proponent of conveying authenticity in a role as an artist, Louis-Martin also teaches acting for dancers through improvisation workshops.

Short Film: CALL/AWAKENING AT THE TOP, 7min., Canada, Dance

In response to the COVID 19 pandemic, the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur (Quebec, Canada) Artistic Director, Guillaume Côté reacted with innovation and resilience to a cancellation of the live performances and created a digital initiative titled A Shared Solitude in collaboration with the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The result was 20 renowned Canadian artists (10 composers and 10 choreographers) paired to create new works that were performed and filmed outside in nature by Director Louis-Martin Charest.

In “Call / Awakening at the Top”, choreographer Andrew Skeels and composer Isabelle Panneton create a relationship to time and space, poetic yet very precise. Being isolated at home provided an opportunity to examine priorities, to refocus, to strengthen the importance of community and, reinforce their gratitude of being an artist. This work was inspired by how art is one of the deepest ways that society connects with each other. It is one of the few places in society where we are invited to look closely at someone else’s experience, and in doing so, discover the range of human experiences and emotions. The work is interpreted by dancer Andrew Skeels and musician Stéphane Beaulac.

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