Making Dances: Seven Post-Modern Choreographers (1980)

Tonite Let's All Make Love in London

Peter Whitehead’s disjointed Swinging London documentary, subtitled “A Pop Concerto,” comprises a number of different “movements,” each depicting a different theme underscored by music: A early version of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive” plays behind some arty nightclub scenes, while Chris Farlowe’s rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Out of Time” accompanies a young woman’s description of London nightlife and the vacuousness of her own existence. In another segment, the Marquess of Kensington (Robert Wace) croons the nostalgic “Changing of the Guard” to shots of Buckingham Palace’s changing of the guard, and recording act Vashti are seen at work in the studio. Sandwiched between are clips of Mick Jagger (discussing revolution), Andrew Loog Oldham (discussing his future) – and Julie Christie, Michael Caine, Lee Marvin, and novelist Edna O’Brien (each discussing sex). The best part is footage of the riot that interrupted the Stones’ 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert.

Plató

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Boundless Life

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Gallant Indies

Stéphane Lissner, director of the Paris Opera, entrusts the staging of the opera-ballet Les Indes galantes to the visual artist Clément Cogitore. Based on the experience of his short film Les Indes galantes, the artist updates Jean-Philippe Rameau's baroque masterpiece (1735) by bringing together lyric song and urban dance. The choreography is entrusted to Bintou Dembélé who supervises dancers from krump, popping, voguing or even experimental hip hop. From rehearsals to the Premiere, Philippe Béziat films the meeting of urban dancers with the lyric institution and invites the spectator to share a human and artistic experience.

Pina

Pina is a feature-length dance film in 3D with the ensemble of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, featuring the unique and inspiring art of the great German choreographer, who died in the summer of 2009.

Ingmar Bergman Through the Choreographer's Eye

Four of Sweden's most innovative choreographers travel to Ingmar Bergman's home on Fårö to explore and get inspired. The result is a unique contemporary dance film.The renowned Swedish choreographers Alexander Ekman, Pär Isberg, Pontus Lidberg and Joakim Stephenson, with principal dancers Jenny Nilson, Nathalie Nordquist, Oscar Salomonsson and Nadja Sellrup from the Royal Swedish Ballet, interpret Ingmar Bergman through four unique dance performances reflecting on human relations and intense feelings. The dances are linked together with images of the epic natural beauty of Fårö and Bergman's poetic home Hammars, including the voice of the master himself - Ingmar Bergman - revealing his thoughts about movements and music.

A Dancer's World

A glimpse into the world and methodology of dancer Martha Graham.

If the Dancer Dances

Filmmaker Maia Wechsler follows choreographer Stephen Petronio as he prepares dancers to restage the 1968 production of "RainForest."

The Universal Language

The Universal Language is a new documentary from Academy Award-nominated director Sam Green (The Weather Underground). This 30-minute film traces the history of Esperanto, an artificial language that was created in the late 1800s by a Polish eye doctor who believed that if everyone in the world spoke a common tongue, humanity could overcome racism and war. Fittingly, the word “Esperanto” means “one who hopes.” During the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of people around the world spoke Esperanto and believed in its ideals. Today, surprisingly, a vibrant Esperanto movement still exists. In this first-ever documentary about Esperanto, Green creates a portrait of the language and those who speak it today that is at once humorous, poignant, stirring, and ultimately hopeful.

One Day Pina Asked...

Chantal Akerman followed famous Choreographer Pina Bausch and her company of dancers, The Tanzteater Wuppertal, for five weeks while they were on tour in Germany, Italy and France. Her objective was to capture Pina Bausch's unparalleled art not only on stage by behind the scenes.

Like It Is

This documentary on the "youth movement" of the late 1960s focuses on the hippie pot smoking/free love culture in the San Francisco Bay area.

Appalachian Spring

A filmed version of Aaron Copland's most famous ballet, with its original star, who also choreographed.

Text Messages from the Universe

A film that immerses its audience in subjective states of consciousness they might experience when they die, imagining what they can see and think and hear in a seamless but fragmentary flow of poetic images, words and music. The viewer undertakes a journey into their own interior world of dreams and projections in which time and space, and cause and effect logic, are turned on their heads. Text Messages from the Universe is inspired by The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a text which guides souls on their journey of 49 days through the 'Bardo', or intermediate state, between dying and rebirth.

Breath - with each breath you take you choose life

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Plutocracy I: Divide and Rule

History of US labor movements and their suppression. It includes sections on the American Constitution; the Civil War draft riots; Reconstruction; Industrialization; the evolution of the police; the robber barons; early American labor unions; and major mid-to-late 19th Century labor events including the uprising of 1877, the Haymarket Affair, the Homestead strike and the New Orleans General Strike. The introduction examines the West Virginian coal wars of the early 20th Century, culminating in the Battle of Blair Mountain.

Fibonacci

A human flock runs across the landscape of fields. Thirteen performers in a teardrop formation form a single organism, guided by collective intelligence or intuition. It flows across the landscape of geometric patterns over terrain waves, flows around copses, divides, regroupes, and reunites. It stops at the horizon, rests, and runs on. The contrast between lively movement and the immobile geometry of the landscape. A hunter enters this magical moment. He walks across the field, climbs into a hunting blind, and loads his shotgun. The unsuspecting flock continues its light-footed, aimless journey.

Free Noir Papillon

A short dance film about a mother’s relationship to her pregnancy, as she deals with fear and hope about bringing a black baby boy into the world in 2020.

Play Hard

Nate, a workaholic drummer, spends all his time practicing, always striving for perfection. After he meets Yazmine, a like-minded, dedicated modern dancer, he realizes that the key to success isn't just to work hard – sometimes it requires you to play hard.

Fröken Julie

A well-composed psychological dance drama of a completely different kind from the usual romantic and sometimes superficial ballets. And an intrusive interpretation of August Strindberg's play.

Night and Day

When his first stage show fails, songwriter Cole Porter goes off to fight in WWI until, injured, he lands in a hospital. He impresses nurse Linda Lee with his creativity, but their budding romance must wait as Cole heads home. Back in New York, he mounts a series of popular shows, and when his work brings him back to Europe, he eventually marries Linda. But success doesn't spare him from marital complications or bad news about a beloved relative.

Salomé

Salome was the daughter of Herod II and Herodias. According to the New Testament, the daughter of Herodias demanded and received the head of John the Baptist. This is a choreographed version of the play by Oscar Wilde.

Sand

The grandmother figure in the story is an “artistic speaker” who performs in town but seems enigmatic to her own granddaughter. Over the course of the narrative, the granddaughter realizes that, far from succumbing to despair in old age, her grandmother is full of “young laughter that has found its way back to an old body.”

The Very Eye of Night

Dancers, shown in photographic negative, perform a series of ballet moves, solos, pas de deux, larger groupings. The dancers glide and rotate untroubled by gravity against a slowly changing starfield background. Their movements are accompanied by music scored for a small ensemble of woodwind and percussion.

Fröken Julie

Birgit Cullberg's 1950 dance adaptation of Miss Julie was the breakthrough for modern dance in Sweden. 30 years later one of her sons plays the role of Jean in this adaptation for TV.

Eifman Ballet: The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov novel is the epitome of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s creative work, the acme of the philosophic investigation carried out by this colossal and restless mind throughout his life. World renowned choreographer Boris Eifman offers a remarkable vision of the core ideas within the novel, expanding upon them though body language as a way of exploring the origins of the moral devastation of the Karamazovs; creating through choreographic art an equivalent of what Dostoyevsky investigated so masterfully in his book, the excruciating burden of destructive passions and evil heredity. This ballet production is also known and performed as Beyond Sin.

Soultribe: A Dance of Life

Three families struggle to find their true selves and their soulmates in a world full of expectations, pressure and obstacles. Inspired by real events, this film shows how they pursue their dreams and potential without losing themselves.

Center Stage: On Pointe

Jonathan Reeves is tasked with infusing more contemporary styles and modernism into the American Ballet Academy, and enlists his top choreographers Charlie, Cooper and Tommy to recruit dancers to compete at a camp where the winners will be selected to join the Academy. Bella Parker, who has always lived in the shadow of her hugely successful sister Kate, finally gets her chance to step into the limelight as one of the dancers recruited for the camp.

Mari

Modern dance is an evocative narrative tool in Georgia Parris' debut, which investigates a young woman's identity and the complex relationship she has with her mother and sister.

The Man With Modern Nerves

A pyramid, by no means static, is instead brought to ever-increasing movement by the use of camera motion, cuts and fades. The cinematic illusion jumbles the individual elements and unites them in a symbolic sketch of Adolf Loos' dynamic thought processes. A High Speed Journey through the spinal cord of this revolutionary architect.

Peti Tick-tack

"Everybody has their special someone out there and I will eventually find the one for me" says "Tick Tock" Pete, known and liked by all the locals in his small town of Solymár just outside of the Hungarian capital but considered a special case by most. He takes lonesome daily trips to his favorite spots: having tea at the pub, tending to the horses he adores and the church on main square. Some would say a lonely outcast but he's never bored; if anyone's clock needs fixing, be that a cuckoo or pendulum, they all can but rely on the person whose the most capable in this field: Tick Tock Pete. The only issue is each time he fixes a clock, he'll use parts from another, rendering it useless, a pawn. Something is always missing - no different with our Pete. Is time truly on the clockmaster's side, ever-turning, never-ending? Tick Tock.

The 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts

On October 29th and 30th, 2009, rock 'n' roll royalty held court at Madison Square Garden for what have been called 'the best concerts ever,' and 'where rock 'n' roll history was made.' The concerts featured a who's who of rock 'n' roll from the '50s to the '90s and included artists performing together in unprecedented combinations that will most likely never be witnessed again. 'The 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Anniversary Concerts' included sets by Crosby, Stills & Nash; Stevie Wonder; Paul Simon; Simon & Garfunkel; Aretha Franklin; Metallica; U2; Jeff Beck and Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band. Joining this iconic line up on stage were special guests including: Jerry Lee Lewis, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Smokey Robinson, B.B. King, Annie Lennox, Lou Reed, John Fogerty, Mick Jagger, Fergie and others. A 4-hour special of the concerts aired on HBO to high ratings, and was seen by tens of millions. Now this historic event is available on DVD.

Monster Camp

Welcome to Monster Camp, the true story about a world where people transform into creatures, heroes, and monsters to escape their daily lives. In the vein of Lord of the Rings, World of Warcraft, and Dungeons and Dragons; these enthusiasts have developed a complicated world to bring their fantasies to life. Romantic relationships are forged between characters. Friendships are destroyed over plot disputes. Characters are slain and never return. But keeping this world alive takes a lot of real world work. And unless someone is willing to take charge, the fantasy may be lost forever.

April in Portugal

Beautiful Jocelyn Lane goes sightseeing in Portugal accompanied by bandleader George Melachrino and his orchestra. Featuring Portugal's top singing star Amália Rodrigues and the world-famous Tagide Club Dancers of Lisbon.

Once Upon a Time... Tchao Pantin

A documentary on the making of Tchao Pantin (1983), featuring interviews with writer-director Claude Berri, novelist Alain Page, stars Richard Anconina, Mahmoud Zemmouri, Agnès Soral, cinematographer Bruno Nuytten and others.

Gjama

“Gjama” is a rarely practiced mourning ritual that was performed by Albanian men throughout the centuries. By shouting specific phrases and acting out a strict choreography, it is a way of paying respect to the deceased but also overcoming grief and pain over the loss of a loved one. Through the documentation of the re-enactment of the ritual, Zgjim Elshani seeks to recover fragments of the practice in the communities where this form of collective grieving is still a way of overcoming loss. By doing so, the project intends to rethink collective grieving and what it means to publicly display emotions in a male-headed society.

The Delights

High school students find their way in life at Las Delicias agrotechnical boarding school in the Argentine countryside. This striking coming-of-age film takes place against an inviting backdrop of fields of crops, greenhouses full of tomato plants, and the somewhat dilapidated school buildings, where dogs and chickens roam.

Non-Toxic Island

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Quando A Noite É Vermelha

May 2, 2024. Amidst big names from São Paulo's drag scene, a young filmmaker dives into the experience of becoming a drag queen for one night.

Nordeste Água e Óleo

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Meet the Hustlers

Documentary on "Prince of Broadway"