Homegrown film selection

For Us by Pearl Makayi (12+)

For Us is a short dance film created for Black History Month that celebrates Black joy, everyday brilliance, and community. Blending cinematic movement with intimate portraiture, the piece centres underrepresented narratives—tender friendships, playful swagger, quiet resilience—set to an uplifting soundscape. 

Filmed with a minimalist, documentary feel, it invites audiences to witness Black life beyond trauma, honouring softness, style, and selfhood. For a Brighton screening, For Us offers a vibrant, reflective experience that resonates across generations and creatives alike, opening space for contemplation and connection. Suitable for all audiences and ideal alongside community showcases or local arts programmes, the film spotlights representation in dance and independent film while leaving viewers inspired.

Directed by Pearl Mayaki

Producer: Rachel Thulborn

Director of Photography: James Cooley

Production assistants: Ben Griffiths and Ben Sturgis

Music – Save me LULU

Cast:

Pearl Makayi , HURU, Thabo Gulu, Zamy Alba, Remi Peters, Ifelayo Ojuri, Pablo Franco, Lea Mae, Juliette Tieku-Smith, Naiya Evans, Shammy, Luke Magona, Khnonz, Billy, Nathan Koakan, Claudette Atkinson, Bliss, Sherlyn Assam, Raini, Rhiannon Jameson, Vianneli Davis, Dylan, Shanice Lewis, Ian Tubio, Ronal Ossai, Anna Liliy, Sim, Jaz Johnson, Taz, Priss Nash, Perpetua Makayi, Rudo Maingehama, Yomi Maingehama, Winnie Mwewa, Olivia Maingehama

Meet by the Grandest Tree by Callum Anderson (12+)

Meet Me By The Grandest Tree explores the production of queer space and place through dancing in public. It focuses on the dancing body and how it is rendered through movement and stillness, disrupting the use of a public park and a lawn inside a circular ring of Georgian townhouses. It is a portrait of a queer person’s experience of being in these public spaces and asks what has be done in order to arrive differently, and the time needed for dance to flourish.

Cast & credits:

Concept/camera/edit: Callum Anderson

Dancer/score: Louis Green

Designed Out? A Hoop Dance by Cheshia S. Chalkley-Robinson (Electric Chesh) (U)

A dancer from a low-income background cannot afford Brighton life. The film draws attention to unjust urban regeneration and a passing moment of spatial reclamation through dance. The film is set in the newly developed Circus Street, which was inspired by the original culture of the city when it was built. Land is a public asset, but it is being leased for hundreds of years to private developers to make profit. In the business plan and council documents, Circus Street land is being leased to businesses for 250 years. In comparison, The Dance Space only has a lease of 10 to 40 years. Cheshia is a queer, mixed-heritage cultural critic and performance artist based in Brighton.

Cast & credits:

Dancer: Electric Chesh

Production: Electric Chesh

Assistance: Omowonuola Omoworare

Film: Ruari Barratt

Music: Uma Musk

Additional Sound Production: Daniel W J Mackenzie

We'll Take It From Here, Dear: An Artist's Response by Sue Bridge, Moving Memory Dance (U)

An animated short dance film by Folkestone-based artist and filmmaker, Sue Bridge, exploring the themes of Moving Memory’s current production, We’ll Take It From Here, Dear. Following a self-directed residency in 2025, during which Sue made drawings of the performers in rehearsal, Moving Memory invited her to return in 2026 to create an animation responding to research and development for their new show. Through movement and humour, the work confronts the persistent patronising and disenfranchising of older women – how they are silenced, sidelined and stripped of agency, and how their autonomy can be quietly removed under the guise of care.

Cast & credits:

Creative Director: Sian Stevenson, Moving Memory Dance

Film by: Sue Bridge

Motion Designer: Mike Parry

Musical Director: Nina Clark,

Moving Memory core company performers: Wendy Asprey, Glyn Burnett, Ginette Casey, Meire Machado, Miranda Orton, Jayne Thompson

Ian at 83 by Virginia Farman (12+)

Ian at 83 is a site-dance for camera work created by choreographer Virginia Farman in collaboration with the autistic octogenarian, dancer and professor of education, Ian Cunningham. The film emerged out of a series of site-dance improvisational workshops wherein Farman guided Cunningham in finding non-representational movements to capture and express his love of the natural environment and of dance. The result is a film that shows aging as part of a wider natural cycle and that is set to a specially commissioned sound score by composer/dancer Scot Smith.

Cast & credits:

Ian Cunningham captured by Virginia Farman.

Sound score: Scot Smith.

In Her Steps by Project Female. 

In Her Steps explores what it’s like to navigate a world where safety is not guaranteed.

Over 70% of women in the UK report experiencing sexual harassment in public. Globally, almost 9 in 10 women feel unsafe in public spaces. These statistics are more than numbers, they are lived realities. Almost every woman knows the feeling of walking home with keys clenched between fingers, a phone ready in hand, and eyes glancing back every few seconds.

In Her Steps reflects the strength of women reclaiming their spaces, confronting fear, and asserting their right to move freely.

Cast & credits:

Choreographer: Phoebe Tompsett (in collaboration with the dancers)
Videographer: Rosie Powell

Dancers: Project Flux

Granddaughter of the Witch by Olga Masleinnikova (12+)

Filmed on Easdale Island in Scotland, this film is a quiet meditation on ancestral memory and feminine resilience. Held by land, stone and sea, a woman begins to unearth a wound older than words, a ghost-ache passed down through generations, carried silently in the body. Rooted in the echoes of witch persecution, the piece explores how ancestral trauma lingers and transforms — and how wisdom, though nearly drowned, waits, whispers… and rises again.

Cast & credits:

With Frances Drewery

Composer: Rowan McIlvride

Director: Olga Masleinnikova

Costumes: Frances Drewery

Photography & Editing: Olia Maslen 

Supported by Arts Council England

Audition Project by Francesca Baglione/Miss High Leg Kick (U)

In 2016, Audition Project brought together 75 UK-based artists to re-create the opening audition scene from the 1985 film 'A Chorus Line'. Over the course of a single day, they learnt the audition dance on Birmingham Hippodrome’s main stage. The process was filmed as a ‘Redux’ to match the original film scene. It is a dance choreographed for a large group however the diverse artists featured as individuals in their own right - a snapshot of the performing arts sector. Celebrating its 10th Anniversary - Audition Project explores themes of ambition, creativity and dance, and the challenges faced by artists in a difficult funding environment.

Cast & Credits:

Film by Miss High Leg Kick. 

Starring Katy Baird, Lewis Barfoot, Claire Benjamin, Sarah Blanc, Duo Bogof, Ira Brand, Barbara Brownskirt, Marisa Carnesky, Simon Casson, Fancy Chance, Richard DeDomenici, Chris Dobrowolski, Cheryl Dole, Abi Cunliffe, Dicky Eton, Anna Frisch, Sue Frumin, Chris Gayford, Ruby Glaskin, Kit Green, Susannah Hewlett, Catherine Hoffman, Kazuko Hohki, Jenny Hunt, Luciana Hutt, Holly Darton, Lucy Hutson, Danielle Imara, Mamoru Iriguchi, Tim Jeeves, Bob Karper, Miss High Leg Kick, Paul Kieve, Amy Kingsmill, Jessica Latowicki, Richard Layzell, Lisa Lee, Lennie, Brian Lobel, Stacy Makishi, Tom Marshman, Ursula Martinez, Lucy McCormick, Victoria Melody, Joseph Mercier, Charlie Murphy, Nao Nagai, Steve Nice, Yoko Nishimura, Project O, Harold Offeh, Louise Orwin, Tim Redfern, Marcus Reeves, James Riordan, Anthony Roberts, Reggie Roberts, Bernadette Russell, Annie Siddons, Joshua Sofaer, Boogaloo Stu, Figs in Wigs, Olivia Winteringham, Caroline Wright and Kai-O Joyce Yung. 

Filmed on location at Birmingham Hippodrome / Redux 

Director: Richard DeDomenici

Creator & Director: Miss High Leg Kick 

Produced by Colchester Arts Centre

Supported by Arts Council England, Birmingham Hippodrome, Colchester Arts Centre, Norwich Arts Centre, Live Art Development Agency, Without Walls, Compagnie Nathalie Beasse, IDFB & DanceXchange, Toop Studio (Brighton).

Tend by Melanie Barnes and Zoe Manders (U)

Tend is an encounter between the body and the land - a journey of attention and belonging. Through dance, sound and moving image, the film is a quiet exploration of slowness and our embodied relationship with the natural world. A shift in light, a breath, the slightest movement… stillness. Listening becomes a way of noticing what is already unfolding within the landscape and within the body. Between movement and stillness, something else begins to emerge. Another way to consider our place amongst it all. Body and land equally seen. A captured communion between us and the more-than-human world.

Cast & credits:

Film: Melanie Barnes and Zoe Manders

Dancer: Ruth Polden

Choreography: Melanie Barnes

Music: Zoe Manders

Words: Melanie Barnes and Zoe Manders

Showing on The Village Green:

At a Touching Distance by Jo Cork 

At A Touching Distance is a 14-minute short film inviting audiences into a sensory journey that explores the many layers of touch, asking what might become perceptible when we are willing to quietly tend to and feel what is available to be felt.

Set within the landscape of Devil’s Dyke, the film follows two women moving through shifting terrain, guided by a tactile soundscore and spoken text that attends closely to sensations.

Drawing on Karen Barad’s thinking around quantum entanglement and relationality, the film approaches touch as an ongoing process of becoming-with the world. Wind, earth, sound, movement and bodies are not treated as separate elements, but as interconnected presences that continuously shape and affect one another.

Created as part of Greta Gauhe's PhD exploring remote approaches to touch at the Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University

Cast & Credits:

Director, Camera and Edit: Jo Cork


Concept and Movement Direction: Greta Gauhe in collaboration with Deborah Di Meglio
 

Performers: Greta Gauhe and Deborah Di Meglio
 

Sound Design and Score: Bartosz Szafranski
 

Pinhole Camera: Deborah Di Meglio
 

Spoken word: Greta Gauhe and Deborah Di Meglio
 

Costumes: Greta Gauhe
 

Funding Partner: Midlands4Cities Created as part of Greta Gauhe's PhD exploring remote approaches to touch at the Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University.