Darcey Bussell: Looking for Fred Astaire (2017)

Rize

A documentary film that highlights two street derived dance styles, Clowning and Krumping, that came out of the low income neighborhoods of L.A.. Director David LaChapelle interviews each dance crew about how their unique dances evolved. A new and positive activity away from the drugs, guns, and gangs that ruled their neighborhood. A raw film about a growing sub-culture movements in America.

Step

The senior year of a girls’ high school step team in inner-city Baltimore is documented, as they try to become the first in their families to attend college. The girls strive to make their dancing a success against the backdrop of social unrest in their troubled city.

Out of State

Out of State is the unlikely story of native Hawaiians men discovering their native culture as prisoners in the desert of Arizona, 3,000 miles, and across the ocean, from their island home.

Flamenco

The film presents thirteen rhythms of flamenco, each with song, guitar, and dance: the up-tempo bularías, a brooding farruca, an anguished martinete, and a satiric fandango de huelva. There are tangos, a taranta, alegrías, siguiriyas, soleás, a guajira of patrician women, a petenera about a sentence to death, villancicos, and a final rumba.

Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti

This intimate ethnographic study of Voudoun dances and rituals was shot by Maya Deren during her years in Haiti (1947-1951); she never edited the footage, so this “finished” version was made by Teiji Ito and Cherel Ito after Deren’s death.

Madonna: Truth or Dare

From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.

National Gallery

A portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.

Los posibles

Santiago Mitre co-directs his first movement following The Student together with choreographer Onofri Barbato. Although it would have been more accurate to say “his first film-story-adventure-movie-great movie following The Student”, the word movement fits perfectly in Los posibles, the most overwhelmingly kinetic work Argentine cinema has delivered in many, many years. The film deals with the adaptation of a dance show directed by Onofri together with a group of teenagers who came to Casa La Salle, a center of social integration located in González Catán, trying to find some refuge from hardship. Already entitled Los posibles, the piece opened in the La Plata Tacec and was later staged in the AB Hall of the San Martín Cultural Center. Now, it dazzles audiences out of a film screen, with extraordinary muscles and a huge heart: Los posibles is a rhapsody of roughen bodies and torn emotions. Precise and exciting, it’s our own delayed, necessary, and incandescent West Side Story.

Von Trier's 100 Eyes

Although at first sight this might look like a simple ‘making of DANCER IN THE DARK’, the later developments in the film reveal the whole drama of Lars von Trier’s inner life during the shooting process. All his doubts and insecurities in collaborating with the crew and actors - especially actresses - are exposed. The biggest drama started when Björk walked off the set. Nobody knew whether she would be back or not. Admitting that he feels threatened by women, who can ‘make him feel embarrassed’, the director gives this documentary the nature of a personal diary. When he discusses the importance, purpose and beauty of the use of a hundred cameras in a certain sequence or the meaning of the Dogma 95 rules, the audience is witnessing the process of the artist’s search. Is the pain that the director went through during the shooting really visible in the final result, as Lars von Trier claims in this film? (from: http://www.idfa.nl/)

Raised by Krump

“Raised by Krump” explores the LA-born dance movement “krumping,” and how the dance has helped the lives of some of the area’s most influential dancers.

Life in Progress

Plot unavailable

The Decimation of Sanity

A small skit-documentary hybrid, written, shot and edited all in the space of a couple of hours on the 25th of October 2021, by exclusively myself, for a university project.

No Maps on My Taps

The remarkable spirit of tap dancers and their history provides a joyous backdrop for intimate portraits of hoofers Sandman Sims, Chuck Green, and Bunny Briggs.

And The Heads Keep On Movin

Plot unavailable

Who Gets To Be an Influencer?

Chronicles the rise of Collab Crib, one of the first mainstream Black creator mansion, exclusively documenting their whirlwind drive to achieve social media stardom in 90 days.

Two Monkeys

An independent documentary focusing on the Blue Monkey and New Monkey nightclubs in Sunderland. The dawn of the rave scene in the late 80s and early 90s changed the face of music forever and left a legacy that still continues to this day. Hear the stories of those who lived through it and were involved in the North East scene at the beggining. From raid to ruins, we shed light on the rise and fall of the Blue Monkey and New Monkey nightclubs investigating the music and the controversy that came with the all night rave clubs.

Jag Mandir: The Eccentric Private Theatre of the Maharaja of Udaipur

Jag Mandir is a quiet and often overlooked film in the vast oeuvre of Werner Herzog. Apparently, 20 hours of footage was shot that covered the whole fest and the film hardly presents us a twentieth of that. A native walking into the film in between may well fail to immediately realize that it is his country that is being shown and these are figures from the mythology of various sections of his nation. The bulk of the film consists of footage of an elaborate theatrical performance for the Maharana Arvind Singh Mewar at the City Palace of Udaipur, Rajasthan staged by André Heller.

This is Ballet: Dancing Anne of Green Gables

Facing financial challenges and constant risks of injury, an innovative ballet company strives to bring the iconic Canadian story of Anne of Green Gables to new diverse audiences.

Stillness in the Wave

The documentary portrayed one of the most established dance companies in Hong Kong which has a history of over four decades. With a tradition of blending Chinese dance and ballet together in the training, the dance company has set sail to re-evaluate its artistic essence by adapting new physical disciplines and philosophy, picking up different cultural traces, meditation and Chinese martial arts. Through monologues of the company members, the film unveiled their fears, self-doubts, and findings in their quest to refine their dance forms and express their cultural roots. It's an uncertain journey towards the cultivation of inner peace and the essence of movement and stillness.

When the Beat Drops

A documentary exploring the origins and evolution of bucking, as well as the life stories and struggles of various Atlanta performers.

Vertigo

A whistle blower counts the steps. The steppers share glances. The whistle blower stops blowing the whistle and attempts to steal their glances. Steps are broken and transform. A new glance replaces the old.

The Debut

A group of actors gather in a workshop performance. Its aim is to research, create and develop the drama of a future film. With an unfinished script, a story of love and bullfighting background, the TeatroLab actors with director Gabriel Olivares, we are immersed in the passion for the craft of storytelling from the emotion and truth.

Four Women

An imaginatively choreographed dance interpretation of the ballad by Nina Simone explores four common stereotypes of Black women.

Argentina

Argentina continues Saura’s lyrical exploration of the essence, talent and patrimony of popular dance and song in both fiction and documentary

Mr. Gaga

The story of Ohad Naharin, renowned choreographer and artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company, an artistic genius who redefined the language of modern dance.