Author: experimentalfilmfestival

ENTER NIRVANA, 9min., UK, Experimental

Directed by Lindsay Bennett-thompson

A woman’s journey to find peace leads to esoteric depths.
Art-House horror from the actor – Lindsay Bennett-Thompson

#DANZARESTLESS, 24min., USA, Dance
Directed by Eduardo Zuñiga, Edgar Zendejas, Esdras Hernandez, Ernesto Sebastian Aria

#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.

AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS:
Best Short Film: Dormo Poco e Sogno Molto – Espana Circo Este
Best Music Video: PARTICLES
Best Cinematography: THE LIGHT
Best Performances: FRESH OFF THE BOAT
Best Direction: CANTATA FOR A MORE HOPEFUL TOMORROW
Best Animation Video: READY THE PRINCE – REGICIDE
Best Sound & Music: STRAIGHT INTO THE OCEAN

Theme of night: New Worlds

NOTE: Festival took place during the COVID-19 virus lockdown so all screenings were held in private.

Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Videos:

FRESH OFF THE BOAT, 3min., USA, Music Video

Dormo Poco e Sogno Molto – Espana Circo Este, 4min., Italy, Music

BOY SCIENTIST, 3min., USA, Music Animation

STRAIGHT INTO THE OCEAN, 6min., USA, Musc Video

PARTICLES, 5min., USA, Music Video

LIKE U DO, 4min., USA, Music

CANTATA FOR A MORE HOPEFUL TOMORROW, 23min., USA, Musical

THE LIGHT, 4min., Peru, Music Video

WRECK, 4min., Canada, Music Video

READY THE PRINCE, 4min., USA, Music Video

The beginning of a (temporary) new era.

See you at the festivals. Whenever that happens!

– Matthew Toffolo

AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS:
Best Short Film: SMOKESTACK LIGHTNING
Best Dance Film: WAITING ROOM
Best Cinematography: A PART
Best Performances: SPIRAL
Best Sound & Music: CHAMELEON
Best Direction: BLOOM ON TIPTOE

Theme of night: Alone in conflict.

NOTE: Festival took place during the COVID-19 virus lockdown so all screenings were held in private.

Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Videos:

SMOKESTACK LIGHTNING, 6min., USA, Dance

HISTORIANS, 4min., Canada, Dance

SPIRAL, 3min., USA, Dance

WAITING ROOM, 5min., France, Dance

THIS FAR APART, 6min., USA, Dance

CHAMELEON, 7min,. France, Dance

CAUGHT, 1min., USA, Dance

BLOOM ON TIPTOE, 9min., South Korea, Dance

ZABLEYALO, 6min., USA, Danc

DESCENT: A MOVEMENT FILM, 2min., USA, Dance

A PART, 10min., Sweden, Dance

The beginning of a (temporary) new era.

See you at the festivals. Whenever that happens!

– Matthew Toffolo

Hyonok Kim is Award winning choreographer and director. Los Angeles Independent Film Festival Awards Winner, Gold Award Dance on Camera for Teile dich Nacht, New York, International New York Film Festival Best Experimental Award, Grand Prix Teruel International Video Competition, Spain, Winnie Award Equus Film Festival, Canada Shorts-Canadian & International Short Film Fest Award. Her films were Official Selected by Brooklyn Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Cinedans Dance Screen Amsterdam, Festival International of Film on Art Montreal, Canada, Jumping Frames Dace Video Festival Hong Kong, Moving Image Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, Riff Festival Norway, Europa Film Festival, LA Independent Film Festival Awards, Jumping Frames International Dance Video Festival, Screen Dance International.
Her films have been broadcasted by Canal + TV (France), Kanal 4 (Germany), ABC(Australia),the Shanghai National TV(China), KBS (Korean National TV), VPRO-TV (Netherlands), No TV & Movies (USA). She had taught in the Dance department at Keimyung University, South Korea.
She received PhD on Art at Universite de Paris I and studied dance at Universite de Paris IV, she also studied film directing at New York Film Academy. She taught at Keimyung University Dance Department in South Korea.
She has choreographed and directed 15 dance films such as Weeping Water, For Sunrise, Dance with Horses, ODE ON A KOREAN URN, ISLE OF WAITING SOULS, PASSION & REBIRTH, SOUTH SEA TO ISANG YUN, L’HEURE DU COQ, etc.

Director Statement

What I want to create in my films is the effect of silent film. Instead of using dialogue, I want to create a new language depending on the union of expressive dance movements, music, set, atmosphere with film as the medium to express interaction between these. I am concerned with conveying profound emotions: to externalize inner experience through circumstances in a way that could stir similar responses in the viewer.

In film I want to juxtapose dance, civilization and nature. I am searching time and timeless, the instant and the eternity by which a certain rhythm of life is comprehended and a spiritual vision is manifested to bear on reality.

This film is about the perils of a shark whose fin is hunted to sell as a delicacy. The dancer interprets the grace of the shark’s movements until the dire moment when he is captured in ropes and his fin severed. The dancer twists his body in angular gestures to capture the tragic moment. The pain, the struggle, and the inescapable death of the wounded shark are meant to project the suffering of all animals hunted to satisfy the human greed for domination over all living specIes. A shark’s fin sells for 50 cents but costs this magnificent animal his life.

Benedikte Esperi is an independent performance artist, choreographer, film maker, researcher, producer and curator based in Sweden. She runs the companies Dansverk and Benedikte Esperi Produktion since 2007. She was initially trained for the ‘black box format’ but is published in a variety of sites, such as public realm, contemporary art venues, dance- & theatre venues, festivals and elsewhere – both in local and international contexts. The encounter with sites, intentions and citizens nurture her choices and actions where the body is both the object and subject, mediating current topics. Her works range from solo, co-productions and ”community art” within the genre of performance/live art, installations, dance for screen and choreography. Artistically she´s often referred to the fora of post-modern dance and avantgarde aesthetics.

She invented the public art concept KOREOARTscape

Board member and curator at Galleri 54 , co-producer of The Tiny Festival. Member in professional associations Teaterförbundet, KRO, KcV, Danscentrum Väst and BUS

politically interested women’s circles in Gothenburg, and when the Swedish Society for Woman Suffrage was founded in 1902, she took the initiative for the establishment of the Gothenburg section and was elected as its chairman for its entire duration. She was well informed about in particular the British and American suffrage movement, and once invited English suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst (1882 – 1960) for a lecture. She also represented Sweden at several international conferences of women suffrage: first as a member of the Swedish Society for Woman Suffrage, and the last time, in Rome in 1923, as the representative of the Swedish government.

Writer
As an author of novels and plays, she described both women’s issues and the living conditions of the poor, which influenced policy. Her novel “För rättfärdighets skull” (1918), alongside the novel “Pennskaftet” (1910) by Elin Wägner (1882–1949), is considered one of the more notable novel of the Swedish suffrage movement (Kvinnors kamp för rösträtt)Director Biography – Benedikte Esperi

Project Links

•  Website
•  Facebook
•  Instagram

News & Reviews

• “intervju”on-line Atalante TVhttps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1101338796961437
• “Intervju “Göteborgs Postenhttps://benedikteesperi.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/gc3b6teborgs-p

Rahel Pasztor was born in 1984 in Budapest, Hungary.
She studied Photography at the University of the Arts in Bremen and she completed her Masters Studies in Fine Arts at Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam. She graduated in 2016. She is a freelance filmmaker and photographer currently based in Bremen.

Director Statement

Where do we belong?
Do we belong to the place where we were born, or where we grow up?
Or do we belong to the place where we die?
In 1997, I was in Budapest, I had lived there for 13 years, since I was born, and I was dreaming of nothing but leaving Hungary one day. Fifteen years have passed since I no longer live in my home country. After so many years, I am longing for the places and particularities that made me want to leave Hungary.
Mimi and I never met in Hungary. Our paths crossed in Bremen.
What connects us is the constant transition between wanderlust and longing for home, that simultaneous sense of belonging and the feeling of being a stranger. Our past and our dearest memories’ paths cross in Budapest.
The Budapest from 1997.

In 1997, at the age of sixteen, the dancer and choreographer Mimi Jeong moved to Budapest from South Korea. She stayed in Budapest for two years. It was her first experience abroad.

 She went to Budapest because of her father, who was a conductor in Hungary at the time. 

In the 1990s, shortly after the fall of Berlin wall, Budapest was a city that was inexperienced with people who looked different and who came from a different culture.

Mimi came from Busan, she looked different, she thought differently, and she felt different.

Today her connection to Budapest is a special one, it is light-hearted, lonely, nostalgic and sorrowful.

We go on a journey with Mimi to Budapest, we aim to understand what best describes the Portuguese word ‘Saudade’. 

Anyone who has already met a Hungarian knows that this bittersweet melancholy is central to the country’s identity.

Project Links

•  Website