Offering the most outstanding examples of dance on screen, a rich medium that smashes the boundaries to redefine both dance and film, the 4 year old Los Angeles Dance Camera West Film Festival stretches our imaginations and the way we think about dance.

Friday, June 17, 8 p.m.

Jomfrutur (Maiden Voyage), Vivild Bergersen, Norway, 6 min., 2004
A playful and challenging film about a woman and a very red strawberry. What starts out as a harmless game develops into a dramatic situation. How does she cope?

Tongue Bully, Annie Bradley, Learie McNicolls, Canada, 5 min., 2004
Movement meets spoken word in this videopoem by dancer, actor, choreographer, writer, spoken-word performer and composer, Learie McNicolls. Shot on location in Havana, Cuba.

Mile›0‹, Katrin Oettli, Tamara Stuart Ewing, Germany, 12 min., 1999
An experimental video dance film that considers the themes of falling and gravity. In a nightmarish scenario a dancer discovers her undoing on a steep slope. Tamara Stuart Ewing and Katrin Oettli explore life’s never-ending struggle to achieve and, in so doing, enter into Sisyphus’s world of perpetuity.

Reimerswaal, Clara van Gool, Suzy Blok, Netherlands, 8 min., 2004
The poem Reimerswaal by Gerrit Achterberg is the point of departure of this film about a crime of passion: a young man and a woman dance a fatal duet in and under water.

Mirror, Pontus Lidberg, Sweden,7 min. 19 sec., 2003
What would happen if we met ourselves as another, distinctly physical person? What happens when it is then revealed that this person is not the one we might have imagined? In an empty space, a dancer meets his mirror image and in their following duet he reveals his true self.

The Cost of Living, Lloyd Newson, UK, 34 min., 2004
David and Eddie are street performers struggling to get by in a seaside town. The Cost of Living follows them as they work, argue, fail at romance and fall out with old friends.

Saturday, June 18, 6:00 p.m.

Departure, Mark Adams, Allen Kaedja, Canada, 7 min. 2003
A couple struggles to come to terms with their imminent separation because of impending war.

A Delicate Battle, Mark Adams, Canada, 17 min. 2004
Choreographer Mastjash Mrozewski explores power struggles in romantic relationships in a series of three duets.

At the Door, Liam Clancy, USA, 5 min. 2004
Explores the everyday ritual of saying goodbye and the infinite potential for change that a single moment contains. With two dancers, a doorway, a coat full of keys and 48 stairs, the film reveals how much unspoken faith it requires to say “goodbye” at the door as if it is some kind of guarantee.

Soaring Wings (Veien ut), Lise Eger , Norway, 12 min. 2004
A woman’s search through life: through security and boundness, connected with EARTH and morning; through fantasy and greed, connected with AIR and day: through feelings and lust, connected with WATER and dusk: through determination and degradation, connected with FIRE and night.

Sugar and Snails, Kathi Prosser, William Yong, Canada, 5 min. 2004
Choreographer William Yong collaborated with Kristy Kennedy to explore the duality of human sexuality and the inherent search for identity.

Past Bedtime, Kristin Hauksdottir, Mariano Frumboli, Eugenia Parrilla Norway, 6 min. 2004
The quiet tango of a couple struggling to find time to be together.

Knock Knock, USA,11 min. 30 sec., 2005 Monica Gillette, Company of Strangers
Two strangers wrestle with an inconvenient attraction.

Saturday, June 18, 8:00 p.m.

No Waiting on an Angel, Hans Beenhakker, Netherlands, 8 min. 2003
Water a symbol of a liberated life and the path of self-realization with all the choices and decisions that path entails.

Cantique No. 1, Marie Chouinard, Canada, 15 min., 2003
Emerging from the depths of a black space, a man and a woman choose to meet. A dialogue of their breath and tongues, like strange, independent entities exiting from their mouths to engage in a dance of copulation. The faces of the man and woman, in profile, fill the entire screen, face to face in intense intimacy, without ever touching.

Bittersweet, David Rousseve USA, 16 min., 2005
Created in collaboration with Roberta Shaw. A dialogue on the word “bittersweet” -- when the greatest of both joy and agony are experienced in a single moment - as a metaphor for the human condition.

Distemper, John Albanis, Canada, 5 min., 2004
Propelled by the grinding, distorted music of Amon Tobin, DISTEMPER relentlessly explores the concept of suffocation.

Ma Mere L’Oye, Theirry De Mey, Belgium, 28 min, 2005
Inspired by Charles Perrault’s famous fairy tales, the choreography was produced by choreographer-dancers invited to choose a character and create a dance sequence in the unusual setting of a forest. The plant world acts as an agent provocateur that helps inspire an original quality of movement in front of the camera. The film editing will use different formats: triptych, double screen, split screens, full screen...in order to link the dance sequences according to the musical motifs and orchestral moods.