Brighton Screendance Festival Digital Stage

Certificate: U

Please note: The film starts with audio, in black. Also, listening with headphones is recommended.

“The hands of the dancers are the hands of my mother and sister, the hands of our grandmother, the hands of their mothers.” These words of celebrated American poet Cornelius Eady serve as an anchor for the short film "Mercy" that weaves poetry and imagery, with gesture, movement and voice into an intricate meditation on black womanhood. Eady’s eponymous cycle of poems is informed by the writing of Phillis Wheatley, the first enslaved person in the American Colonies to publish a full-length volume of poems.

The poetic short, directed by Philip Szporer, voices issues of race, place, and identity, and dives into the double-voiced discourses of a particular Black literary tradition concerning the complication of the slave learning their captor’s language.

Two celebrated dance artists, Angélique Willkie and Amara Barner, embody the poetry through the power of their presence.

Credits

Writer and Director: Philip Szporer

Movement Director: Ami Shulman

Movement Creators and Performers: Amara Barner and Angélique Willkie

Camera and Editor: Pablo Córdoba Salcido

Music Composer and Sound Designer: Devon Bate

Colour Grading: Arto Paragamian

Producers: Marlene Millar & Philip Szporer, Mouvement Perpétuel

Certificate: U

OFFERING creates a meaningful and joyful convergence between Migration Dance Film body percussion mentors and emerging artists from dance and circus arts. The choreography uses the power of procession in Montreal’s streets and parks to amplify its storyline of (re)imagined homescape in the era of mid-pandemic.

Credits

A Migration Dance Film Project Production

Director: Marlene Millar

Choreographer: Sandy Silva

Composers: Sandy Silva + Jean Fréchette

Cinematographer: Zacharie Fay

Editor: Marites Carino

Producers: Marlene Millar, Sandy Silva, Kathy Sperberg

Performers,  Dancers, Circus Artists, Vocalists: 

Omari “Motion” Carter, Sonia Clarke, David Cronkite, Dominic Desrochers, Afia Douglas,

Issac Endo, Chloe Hart, Rachel Hutchison, Sana Hutchison, Edaï Larobina, Hélène Lemay,

Mathilde Richer, Kimberly Robin, Louis Roy, Sandy Silva, Bobby Thompson

Certificate: U

Set in the spectacular Burren region of the west coast of Ireland, Navigation uses the land itself to explore how we navigate through unknown terrain. Themes of survival and perseverance, departure and renewal emerge in a nuanced and layered interpretation of the migration experience. The rhythms, movement, vocals and landscape define and embody this exploration, featuring the performances of 10 dancers, singers and a community choir of 40 participants.

CREDITS

Director: Marlene Millar

Choreographer: Sandy Silva

Performers:

Andrew Bathory,Sonia Clarke, David Cronkite, Dominic Desrochers, Afia Douglas, Isaac Endo, Hélène Lemay, Kimberly Robin, Sandy Silva, Bobby Thompson with Kate Daly and the Lismorahaun Singers