Competition Shorts I

“The Dance Film Festival Prague” presents screening of the “Competition Shorts I”.

Opening collection of dance for camera shorts compiled by a selection from 350 entries from around the world. 30 films in total will be competing for the Best Dance Film Award as well as for the Audience award.

Oměj / Jana Stárková / Czech Republic 2020 – Oměj is a research of the relationship between human body and the architecture of the place we live. It reacts on the specificity of Prague and its rythm and the special communication in between the main characters.

Slip / Kurt Csolak / USA 2020 – We easily fall into the feeling that our self-worth is slipping away when we are isolated and unable to do anything that fills us.

Through Glass / Marek Partyš / Czech Republic 2020 – The dance film Through Glass, directed by Marek Partyš and choreographed by Sylva Šafková, combines contemporary dance and a visual story that describes the image of distorted reality: “Reflections, angles of view, distorted reality… but if you hold it against a mirror, the letters will go again in the right direction.“

The Man Who Traveled Nowhere in Time / Vincent René-Lortie / Canada 2019 – Through the eyes of Eytan, a man who only exists in the dreams and unconscious minds of others, we question what is “real”, what isn’t, and how we each perceive time differently.

Axis Mundi / Patrick Foch / France 2020 – Two bodies merge and evolve between earth and heaven, seeking physical and spiritual ascension along an invisible thread. Axis mundi – the axis of the world, is the connection between heaven and earth, between divinity and matter.

Memories of the Future / Dance collective Arnhemse Meisjes / Netherlands 2020 – Memories of the Future is a short dance film by Dance Collective Arnhemse Meisjes. This film tells the story of one and each person at the same time. We dance a powerful life path in which experiences from the past and memories from the future emerge. They come together in the present moment. This is a human story. Your story. A story of your ancestors and your (grand)children. Do the future and the past run parallel in the present? Everything is allowed, because everything turns; everything comes, everything passes. Like the seasons, a cycle of life and death. We fall and get up again. We turn, until the present moment is all that remains. That’s what we can hold on to. Here, now. You, me, we.

Chanel: Sharing all my colours with you / Arjen Schotel / Netherlands 2021 – “I come from an environment where I’ve learned that there’s a certain standard that I can’t relate to. At least … not as a black woman.” In director Arjen Schotel’s audiovisual dance story, a Dutch dancer with Surinamese roots is Chanel Vyent. A documentary probe into identity and finding a place in life

Mudlove / Tero Peltoniemi / Finland 2019 – Boy meets girl at a coffee shop, and the two are thrown into a mud wrestling ring to find a common path forward, while their best friends act as coaches.

BubbleGum / Ryan Renshaw / Australia 2019 – Bubblegum was inspired by an certain individual who was seen dancing alone at a set of traffic lights in the middle of the day. What was more incredible than this person’s breathtakingly dazzling dance routine was that it was set to nothing more than the sound of passing cars. But everybody’s bubble must eventually burst.

Toporzeł / Iwona Pasińska / Poland 2019 – The beautiful mountain landscape grows out of the bodies of dancers, rocks, shrubs, the harshness of nature and its power, all intertwined, highlighting the strong bonds between nature and man. These are aspects of the latest film project of the Polish Dance Theatre. The project was inspired by Stanisław Szukalski’s sculptures. In the works of this artist, which evokes strong emotions, there is a motif of the human body; muscle tension, movement, gesture and expression can be seen. The Toporzeł project could not have been created anywhere but in the quartz mine “Stanisław” in Szklarska Poręba. The Giant Mountains and Jizera Mountains on the Polish side hold secrets, a place where magic mingles with reality, where the history of the legendary Mountain Spirit still lives.

Salidas / Michael Fetter Nathansky / Germany 2021 – Salidas (span., Departures) is a fictional dance film which tells the story of Giralda, an undertaker who accompanies deceased human beings into their afterlife. Interpreted with the means of Spanish flamenco dance and music and set at an old East German ship canal lift, the film creates an associative fusion between Northern and Southern Europe, movement and silence, and farewells and eternity.