Film Festival
Dance Italia Film Festival,
Second Edition: Synapse
Monday, July 8 2024
Artists/Audience Reception and Q & A, 20:00-20:30
Screening, 20:45-21:45
Motore592 (Via Matteo Civitali, 592, 55100 Lucca LU, Italy)
Admission is free and open to the public
This second edition of screendance by both established and emerging artists showcases innovative films whose themes revolve around connections throughout our world and work that sheds light on dance and the human condition. Of special interest are perspectives that defy linear paths and take a multi-dimensional view of shared space and somatic interactions. How do we form connections within ourselves, between peoples, and finally with our ever-shifting environment?
Director, Dance Italia: Stefanie Nelson
Festival Curator: Elizabeth Shea
Festival Project Manager: Lindsay Osten
Palindrome – USA
This narrative was created with the idea of stories told forwards and in reverse. The choreographer made the work with the intention of it being reversed in post; they had to learn the choreography in reverse in order to work with the dancer. The final film was reversed to have the dancer appear to be moving forwards in time while the environment he interacted with appears to be moving backwards.
A dancer herself, Amanda Hoover has a passion for displaying dance on film in unique ways that push the boundary of how dance has usually been perceived. Amanda graduated with dual degrees in Contemporary Dance and Cinema and Media Production. Since graduating, she has had five years in the professional filmmaking field working as a video editor at Paradox Post in Vineyard, Utah while also working on various freelance screen dance projects. Her professional career has consisted of directing "Palindrome" which recently won Best of Special Effects at The Utah Dance Film Festival, working with renowned clients such as Panasonic, and "The Chosen", and working on various other projects.
Dancer: Corey Boatner
Choreographer: Amanda Hoover
Video Director: Amanda Hoover
Dop & Filmmaker: Jacob Schwarz
Editing: Amanda Hoover
Producers: Katie Schwarz, Jess Burgin
Production Manager: Willem Kampenhout
Found Choreographies – Italy
Found Choreographies is a video work that talks about dance starting from the representations of dance itself. It reflects on the intangible matter of which dance is made of, freeing its linguistic immediacy from the force of the image to which it is often associated with, through a visual climax that from the movement of the hand leads to an evolution of kinetic matter until its final eclipse and celebration, in a compelling game of meanings and associations. The work is a dense cut-up of the performance project Some Choreographies (2020) and the educational project on transmission and movement incorporation from the Désir Mimétique archive (2017-2020). An editing dialectical exercise with audio curated by musician Francesco Casciaro, composed with intentional temporal asymmetry by cutting out shreds of “found footage” from the history of dance and performance, crossing cinema and the internet, in search of a sensitive kinetic matter. A flow of decontextualized images to be rethought in the present in a new form, to search for other meanings, as if the substance of things existed only in the non-place of detachment.
Jacopo Jenna is a choreographer, performer and filmmaker, creating stage works, video pieces and installations. His works reframe the body in relationship with the perception of movement, through dance, choreography and videos, working across disciplines and generating a variety of performative contexts. Audiovisual arts and movement are in dialogue, creating a performative act.
As a graduate of Sociology in Italy, he also studied dance in Codarts (Rotterdam Dance Academy). He creates training and educational programmes for various age groups experimenting with new ways of relating to performance art.
Video Director: Jacopo Jenna
Composer: Francesco Casciaro
Editing: Jacopo Jenna
Producers: OGR- Official Grandi Riparazioni, in collaboration with Mattatoio, Prender-si cura, curated by Ilaria Mancia (Rome).
Lettre à ma fille – Benin
Michael Maurissens is a Belgian choreographer and filmmaker based in Germany. He founded the MichaelDouglas Kollektiv which focuses on the development of collective creation methods fostering dialogue at the interfaces to disciplines such as communication, architecture, choreography and conflict resolution.His films explore the role of the body as an archive and his interdisciplinary approach
has enabled him to produce films and engage in meaningful cooperations in China, Japan, Uruguay, Tanzania, India, Spain, Morocco, Palestine, Italy, Switzerland, Benin, Turkey and Senegal. www.cbprod.de
Key Cast: Delphine
Video Director: Michael Maurissens
Dop: Michael Maurissens
Text: Amee
Sound Mix: Michael Maurissens
Editing: Michael Maurissens
Producers: CARRÉ BLANC PRODUCTIONS
Produced in the frame of the ‘Villa Karo’ Residency Benin
FÖLD – Sculpted in the Wind – Italy
The sculptor falls into a creative spiral, following the geography of the places he’s lived, raises from the folds of material, confused as in an embrace a vision takes shape, through the wind of creation.
Cristiano Fabbri has been a dancer since 1990, now choreographer,
teacher and poet. During his dance career, he gained a wide variety of experience in: theatre, contemporary dance groups, opera, ballet, television, and commercials. He has collaborated with dance companies and colleagues, artists from visual and music fields. He also has some experience as an actor. To date, he has 24 productions to his name and has taken part in numerous festivals and dance exhibitions including:
Aerowaves, London - BMA, Bratislava in Movement - Fabbrica Europa, Florence - Youngblood Yorkshiredance, Leeds, UK - Teatri di Vita, Bologna - Cango, Florence - DanceProject, Teatro Miela, Teatro Stabile Rossetti, Trieste - C.R.T. Teatro dell'Arte, Milan - Civitanova Danza, Civitanova - and many others.
Marzio Mirabella, the director, is a filmmaker with over 15 years of experience. After graduating in Natural Sciences, he worked in Italy and abroad on documentary films. Today he works as a director of photography in future films, music videos, and branded content for various agencies and production companies, and occasionally as
director. https://www.marziomirabella.com/
Film by: Marzio Mirabella
Music: Matteo Nahum
Sculpture Light Designer: Davide Riccardi
Choreography: Cristiano Fabbri
Production: Balàzs Berzsneyi
Writer: Balàzs Berzsneyi, Cristiano Fabbri, Marzio Mirabella,
again, it pulls – USA
The passage of time is inevitable, but whether or not the moments tick by in a line, only to exist in the past or yet to be felt in the future, is up to question. Suspended in a liminal state, torn between two mentalities, the human mind struggles to understand both the bounded and the boundless constructions of time.
P (Paige) Cowen (they/them) is a Brooklyn based, multi-disciplinary research and performance artist, choreographer and emerging filmmaker. They graduated from Marymount Manhattan College with degrees in Dance Studies and Environmental Studies. P has trained with artists such as Ximena Garnica, Jennifer Monson and Alexandra Beller and has received mentorship and guidance from Elisabeth Motley, Mary John Frank, Tymberly Canale, Ben Stamper and Andrea Miller to name a few. P has performed professionally throughout New York City with Arsenal Movement dance project, The Lowcoco, the LEIMAY Ensemble, and Accent Dance. Their choreography has been presented at film festivals, virtual shows and on the stage through The Tank (CyberTank), The Craft, Dancers at Work and 7Midnights Physical Research. Their debut film, “again, it pulls,” has been presented at Acadia Dance Festival in Maine and Emotion & Soul Festival in New York. Paige is interested in collaborations that combine unexpected techniques, mediums and practices to create thought provoking and change-making work.
Key Cast: Akane Little
Video Director: Paige Cowen
Dop: Paige Cowen
Composer: 3rd track: Aquatic by Daniel Lanois
Sound Mix: Paige Cowen
Text: Paige Cowen
Editing: Paige Cowen
Producers: Paige Cowen
Performer: Akane Little
KR Market – India
The passage of time is inevitable, but whether or not the moments tick by in a line, only to exist in the past or yet to be felt in the future, is up to question. Suspended in a liminal state, torn between two mentalities, the human mind struggles to understand both the bounded and the boundless constructions of time.
P (Paige) Cowen (they/them) is a Brooklyn based, multi-disciplinary research and performance artist, choreographer and emerging filmmaker. They graduated from Marymount Manhattan College with degrees in Dance Studies and Environmental Studies. P has trained with artists such as Ximena Garnica, Jennifer Monson and Alexandra Beller and has received mentorship and guidance from Elisabeth Motley, Mary John Frank, Tymberly Canale, Ben Stamper and Andrea Miller to name a few. P has performed professionally throughout New York City with Arsenal Movement dance project, The Lowcoco, the LEIMAY Ensemble, and Accent Dance. Their choreography has been presented at film festivals, virtual shows and on the stage through The Tank (CyberTank), The Craft, Dancers at Work and 7Midnights Physical Research. Their debut film, “again, it pulls,” has been presented at Acadia Dance Festival in Maine and Emotion & Soul Festival in New York. Paige is interested in collaborations that combine unexpected techniques, mediums and practices to create thought provoking and change-making work.
Key Cast: Akane Little
Video Director: Paige Cowen
Dop: Paige Cowen
Composer: 3rd track: Aquatic by Daniel Lanois
Sound Mix: Paige Cowen
Text: Paige Cowen
Editing: Paige Cowen
Producers: Paige Cowen
Performer: Akane Little
Fistful of Love – USA
Fistful of Love invites the viewer to witness three versions of an exchange between two people. The couple interacts in these altering realities which demonstrate how their separate histories can drastically change the outcome of this singular interaction. This film asks how we can cope with varied and disparate circumstances in our lives and how those mechanisms of coping affect the people around us. Who would I be if my entire past were different leading up this point.
Alexsander Swader (they/he) is from Birmingham, Alabama where he grew up training at the Royal Academy of Dance accredited Alabama Ballet School. While attending intensives like Hubbard Street Winter Intensive and Nederlands Dans Theater Summer Intensive, they also performed various professional roles with the Alabama Ballet Company. He received a BFA in Dance in 2021on scholarship from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and performed guest works by artists like Shamel Pitts and Rena Butler. He joined Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2022 as a guest artist for their Season 45: Sapphire Season and YYDC in 2023 for multiple projects like the world premiere of Nowhere at Chelsea Factory. They continue to work with Yue Yin rehearsing for performances of Ripple and Through the Fracture of Light at APAP and Nowhere at the Schrittmacher Festival in Germany in 2024.
In between rehearsing and performing with YYDC Alexsander also enjoys a successful freelance career in NYC consisting of experiences like performing in the Wiederhoeft NYFW SS 2024 Fashion Show at LaMama Theater, being a filmmaker/choreographer at Films That Move film festival in Virginia, and teaching at/with esteemed institutions like Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Alabama Ballet School, Peridance Center and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Dance Department.
Key Cast: Sarah Allen, Mya McClellan
Video Director: Alexsander Swader
Dop: Francesco Rutigliani
Composer: Ben Atchouel
Sound Mix: Florian Staab
Editing: Francesco Rutigliani
Producers: Sarah Delia Robinson Chow, Renata Sheppard
