As we kick off our fall season and Northwest Film Forum’s Local Sightings 2020 comes to a close, we invite you to kick back – and occasionally turn up – with this compilation of dance films ranging from experimental analog forms to embodied inner natures.

Featured in this program:

Catherine
(Kailee McMurran, Portland, OR, 2020, 3 min)

Catherine is stuck inside.

Aquí
(Melina Coumas, Portland, OR, 2019, 4 min)

Shot on 16mm, this film explores what home means to a young woman from a multi-cultural background. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Run-of-the-Whip-Poor-Will
(Tamar Tabori, Alan McTavish, Vancouver, BC, 2019, 9 min)

A journey of how routines, patterns, and cycles are a part of human behavior, and that by breaking a habit and practicing the opposite, we challenge what is normal.

Small Spaces and Big Places
(Charlotte Telfer-Wan, Vancouver, BC, 2019, 7 min)

Small Spaces and Big Spaces captures the intimate relationship between people and city structures.

For The Time Being
(Heidi Duckler, Portland, OR, 2020, 10 min)

Dancer, choreographer, and artistic director Heidi Ducklers work captures dancers moving through the seasons in mirrored relationship with a public garden landscape, searching for the first bloom.

Life: Plastic Wrapped
(Sasha Chudacoff, Crested Butte, OR, 3 min)

I am a plastic bride wedded to our collective ruin. This film is me coming to terms with this statement. How do I take ownership in my participation in our plastic culture?

STUCK
(Allison Beda, Vancouver, BC, 2020, 3 min)

A comedic dance film exploration of our modern urban existence (and psychosis?) and the human struggle to connect with each other in an increasingly technologically connected environment that leaves us physically disconnected/starved for human touch.

SassyBlack “Fluidity”
(Clyde Petersen, Anacortes, WA, 2019, 2 min)

We are all unique fluid beings and that is something to be celebrated and fawned over.

Tri-Alogue #4
(Caryn Cline, Linda Fenstermaker, Reed OBeirne, Seattle,WA, 2020, 3 min)

The subtle movement of a dancers arms invites three panels of film into one frame in this micro-symphony of sounds and images.

Sue Sada Was Here
(Cindy Mochizuki, Vancouver, BC, 2018, 9 min)

Sue Sada Was Here is an experimental film that turns written texts Muriel Kitagawa (19121974) into scores of physical movement, which are then enacted in the historic Roedde House. Kitagawas editorial writing and unpublished manuscripts speak to the pre- and post-war periods in Vancouver, particularly the injustices of the Canadian governments policies towards Japanese and Japanese Canadians. The performers embody Sue Sada, one of Kitagawas pen names and use books as objects of print history that can omit histories of violence and colonialism. This film was originally commissioned for Memories of the Future III.

Winner of Best in Show Award at Cadence: Video Poetry Festival 2020 [Online].

AJE IJO SERIES (4th INSTALLMENT FINALE): IMMORTAL
(Kiana Harris, Seattle, WA, 2020, 14 min)

Olodumare; Creator of the world, finished after Obatala got drunk and couldnt finish. Name (olo) means keeper of. No active sexuality.