Brighton Screendance Festival: Glitch, Grain, Ground
A selection of experimental dance films that work with grainy, faulty and glitchy images to explore experiences of migration, displacement and loss. Plus discussion with curator Claudia Kappenberg and guest speaker Frank Gray, leading early film historian, archivist, and academic who spent over 35 years developing film studies and research at the University of Brighton.
The screening includes:
VE Day Celebrations in Brighton
Filmed over several days, the VE Day celebrations in Brighton are captured here by an unknown amateur film-maker. The jubilant atmosphere is evident in the many street scenes. Rating: U.
Dancing Glitch by Michael Betancourt, US
Loie Fuller, the American choreographer and dancer, was an early inspiration for Cubist abstraction with her Serpentine Dance. Her performance in Lumiere vue no. 76 (1896) provided the original source material for this visual music work.
This Madness of Loving by Rola Shamas, Lebanon
Intriguing and mesmerising This Madness of Loving employs effective animation techniques and engaging sound design to take us on an existential excursion from matter to light.
Twist Again by Kelia Ideishi, UK
Twist Again is an experimental dance short by Kelia Ideishi offering a visual interpretation of hauntology, and in this case, the persistence of the cultural past as represented by 4 dancers performing the twist. Surreal and uncanny, the film captures the eeriness of a culture that is stuck in a recycled present, one that seems incapable of producing a novel or creative vision for the future.
1905-2001, Vienna – Bombay - London by C. Kappenberg, UK
The video moves through the archive of Viennese-born Jewish dancer, choreographer and pedagogue Hilde Holger. Technical disruptions in the digital media — dropouts, colour artefacting, glitches — unsettle the viewing experience, but also function as a 21st-century echo of Mechanical Ballet, a dance Holger performed in 1926.
How Far…? by Ranbir Kaleka, India
The slow journey of an adult carrying a small child on their back, traversing increasingly devastated landscapes until eventually the image itself dissolves. Rating: U.
Dikra by Pierre-Loys Joubert, France/Morocco
Tafraoute, Morocco. Mounir, a young dancer, has crossed the sea, fleeing the shifting winds of a France that’s closing in on itself.
There, the sun feels familiar, but the walls speak another language. Between two shores, an intimate journey through invisible borders and the deep longing to belong. Rating: 12A.
Age recommendation: 12+
Image: Still from Dancing Glitch by Michael Betancourt.