The Together! 2021 Disability Film Festival presents Dance Films by Deaf and Disabled people exploring themes of the city, the environment, identity, and finding a common language through movement, suitable for a mature audience. On Saturday 4 December viewers could watch the Dance Films programme here between 12noon and midnight GMT. Now you can view or follow links where available to the individual films below.
The Perfect Planet
The Perfect Planet. Imogen Butler. UK. 2021. 3m14s. World Premiere. No dialogue. F.DD. Inspired by the mesmerising trailer for David Attenborough’s 2020 BBC nature programme of the same name, the dancers created this dance using the stimuli of phenomena within the natural world: Volcanoes, Sunlight, Weather and Oceans. View on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/8UIooisMsWs
Mydentity. Imogen Butler. UK. 2021. 3.23m. World Premiere. No Dialogue. F. DD. Mydentity explores the idea of how true identities may be hidden through the tendency we have to group or categorise others, and so not see the real person. Sharing certain characteristics creates a bond and an understanding. Maybe in time, our differences can too.
Bats! Together! 2012 CIC. UK. 2021. 3m20s. Film Festival Premiere. No dialogue. FF. DDD. This digital Carnival performance was originally created for Hackney Carnival at Home 2021. Together! 2012 CIC and Clary Salandy from Mahogany Carnival Designs led a Kitchen Carnival for home-based participants, who created their own costumes using kitchen recycling and filmed their dances to add to the whole.
Queen B*tch. Laura Dajao aka LauraDDances. UK. 2021. 12m29s. In English with English Captions & Beatboxing Audio Description for dance. FFF. DDD. Queen B*tch is a Spoken Word poem written by LauraDDances – A culmination of all the things that LauraDDances identifies with: Being a woman; Having a disability; Wheelchair User; Hip Hop music and dance; Dancer; Filipina; Person of Colour; Empowering anyone identifying as female; Owning one’s strength in femininity.
Here/Not Here
Here/Not Here. Bim Ajadi. UK. 2019. 29m20s. In BSL with English Captions. DD. 18+ only. Here/Not Here combines elements of dance, especially Krump and hip hop, with football, BSL and Visual Vernacular (VV), a poetic and choreographic form of sign dance. It looks at how movement is language. The setting is a run-down space that three different gangs, footballers, Krumpers and VV-ers, all think of as their own. The story is about how, despite our competing differences, we can find a common language through movement to communicate and collaborate. In association with the British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust. View here on the BSL Zone website: https://www.bslzone.co.uk/watch/herenot-here#
Interlocuções com a cidade
Interlocuções com a cidade / Interlocutions with the city. Fernanda Amaral. Brazil. 2020. 5m48s. European Premiere. F. D. Made during the pandemic in Sao Paolo, solitary dancers play and deceive the idea of isolation, each one breaking their borders and expanding it into the imaginary. They continue creating encounters with the city and the other through movement and poetry.
Cidade—Reflexōes Poéticas / City—Poetic Reflections / Dinas—Myrfyrdodau Barddonol. Fernanda Amaral, Chris Tally Evans, Fellipe Oliveira. Brazil/Wales. 2021. 2m. World Premiere. No dialogue. F. DD. The film shows diverse dancers in São Paulo, Brazil as they respond to natural elements in their home supercity. From the opening and closing drone shots over the trees surrounding the city the sheer vastness of the supercity becomes apparent. However, in spite of the restrictions imposed on the dance company by Covid-19 and the particular challenges facing Brazil as the pandemic takes its terrible toll on the country, the dancers make spectacular connections with one another, with Welsh writer, musician and filmmaker Chris Tally Evans and with the city itself.
Um Canto na Metrópole / A Corner in the Metropolis / Cornel yn y Metropoli. Fernanda Amaral / Chris Tally Evans / Fellipe Oliveira. Brazil/Wales. 2021. 4.5m. World Premiere. No dialogue. FFF. DDD. The film shows diverse dancers in São Paulo, Brazil as they respond to natural elements in a quiet, nature-rich corner of their megacity home. The inspiration and music comes from Welsh writer, musician and filmmaker Chris Tally Evans with whom the dancers have been collaborating online during lockdown. Unable to meet indoors or touch each other (unthinkable for a dance company) Chris and the dance company, Dança sem Fronteiras, found corners in their city and corners in their souls in which to create this entertaining dance film.
Click here to return to the Together! 2021 Disability Film Festival Programme
Programme supported by Film Hub London, managed by Film London. Proud to be a partner of the BFI Film Audience Network, funded by the National Lottery. www.filmlondon.org.uk/filmhub
