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HomeDallas Dance Film Festival

Celebrate Dance in Film: Dallas Dance Film Festival Season 5!
and the winners are...
When Snow Falls | Best of Fest | $500 Prize
LUCE | DDFF Creative | $250 Prize








CONGRATULATIONS TO THE SELECTED FILMS! 
EVERY STEP COUNTS - TAKANO YONEN | CHINA - Andreas Guzman, Professional Filmmaker A brief inside look at a Japanese soloist member of the Hong Kong Ballet, Takano Yonen.

BESTIALS PASSAGE | USA - Demetrius Dukes, Amy Taylor, Emerging ArtistS A CG animated project that incorporates the use of motion capture technology and performance data.

AN OCEAN AWAY| USA - Wilma Casal, Professional Filmmaker Dreaming of the big catch, a fisherman drags himself wearily to the shore, early as every morning.

ST.RANGER | Republic of KOREA - Hyukjin Jeon, Professional Filmmaker Strange beauty, unrealistic reality... It soon becomes a routine.Strangely or not, we have always evolved that way.

IMPOSSIBLE IMAGE | Australia - Karen Pearlman, Professional Filmmaker The past and the present coming together to challenge gender performance and shake down the patriarchy, while dancing in the streets.

WHEN SNOW FALLS | USA - Anthony Morigerato, Professional Filmmaker The holiday season, loss, memory, and gratitude expressed in dance. The best things happen while you are dancing!

CROW | CANADA - Louis-Martin Charest, Professional Filmmaker The innate intelligence of the crow reveals our true nature and the transparency of our interconnectedness.

LUCE | CANADA - Valeria Galluccio, Emerging Artist A mysterious creature with aquatic, alien and human traits lands on planet Earth and must learn to live in a wooded area near a lake.

PARADISE| USA - Madeleine Scott, Emerging Artist Behind the façade of living a life in paradise, lies a sinister side of the esteemed mountain lifestyle known as the “Paradise Paradox”.

CATS. WHY DO WE NEED THEM? | Russian Federation - Liudmila Komrakova, Professional Filmmaker A bankrupt businessman tries to commit suicide and a cat appears.



DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHIES COMING SOON!

 




Recognizing the need for more digital dance exposure, Dallas Dance Film Festival was created in 2018 to
promote and support local and international emerging and professional dance filmmakers to provide an affordable platform
for them to share their work. The festival also offers the community at large a new way to observe and experience dance.

SPONSORED BY

Dance Council of North Texas | Oak Cliff Society of Fine Arts Turner House | The Dallas Public Library | 




FILM SUBMISSIONS

Submissions will be evaluated based on demonstrated use of the camera and/or mobile devices that highlight dance differently from live performance,
such that the dance cannot be viewed in the same way outside of the film. Selected works will also demonstrate inventiveness and originality,

cohesiveness and clarity of artistic intention, quality of choreography, performance, cinematography, and editing in relationship to the stated artistic intent.
Artists are responsible for holding copyright permission for any elements used in the film that require permission such as music, text, images.
The following resource may be of assistance for information on music copyright:
opensourcemusic.com.

Requirements
Length: 5 - 10 minutes max

Must incorporate Dance

Must pay fee per submission

2 submissions per artist

Categories + Submission Fees

Early Bird Deadline: August 1, 2022

$15 emerging: description

$25 professional filmmaker: description

Later Gator Deadline:
September 15, 2022

$20 emerging

$30 professional filmmaker



AWARDS + CERTIFICATES

"Best of Fest"

$500 CASH PRIZE
Archival of film in Dallas Public Library
Winner serves on the following year's
selection committee if is not a contestant


"DDFF Creative"

$250 CASH PRIZE
Archival of film in Dallas Public Library



And the 2019 Winners Are...
hatch laurel

Hatch – Filmmaker: Jeff Schick
Synopsis: HATCH is a short film that features experimental dance as a metaphor to the awakening of the self. The film is a creative partnership with the Alan Watts Organization, featuring the spoken word of the late British-American philosopher. With its sci-fi undertones, the film features Italian-American movement artist Lavinia Vago as she explores her newly hatched, human body upon emerging from her chrysalis. Set to a symbolic backdrop of a womb, HATCH showcases visuals of a human’s transformation from birth to becoming a fully-functioning, fully-aware organism.

Bio: Jeff Schick is a Seattle-based writer, director and filmmaker whose work explores the intersectionality of technology and its utilization by humanity.

With two decades of experience working alongside The Fortune 100, Schick served in branding, digital, social and content production capacities for Apple, adidas, AT&T, T-Mobile and others. Schick began producing and directing films in 2012, ultimately creating film production company, Audio Video Room, where he currently serves as a creative director. His recent work includes HALO, SWIPE and HATCH is Schick’s dance-directorial debut.

boat laurel
BOAT – Director: Stephanie Nugent (Artistic Direction/Choreography), Charles Borowicz (Cinematography/Editing/Sound Design)
Synopsis: BOAT (screen-dance), Directed by Stephanie Nugent, with Cinematography, Sound Design and Editing by Charles Borowicz, and collaborating performance by Nugent and Savannah Cox, explores a mother’s timely and timeless relationship with her tween daughter, kinesthetically drawing viewers in to experience an unique bond charged by love, burden, support, empathy, and a shared passion for independence.
Bio: Stephanie Nugent, lives in Indianapolis, IN, USA where she creates dance theater, teaches, improvises, and generally does her best at becoming a good human. She holds a BFA in Modern Dance from North Carolina School of the Arts and an MFA in Choreography and Performance from California State University, Long Beach. Ms. Nugent has had the good fortune to collaborate, perform, and tour internationally with esteemed dance artists such as Victoria Marks, Keith Johnson, Kim Epifano, Della Davidson, The Ririe Woodbury Dance Company, Malashock Dance and Company, and Nugent Dance, presenting works in theaters, black-boxes, museums, sidewalks, a pier, a tent, a creek, and an old military base. In her most recent project BOAT, a screen-dance exploring a mother’s timely and timeless relationship with her tween daughter, Nugent and Savannah Cox offer a kinesthetic and metaphoric vision into their unique bond, charged by love, burden, support, empathy, and a shared passion for independence.

With more than 25 years working in the field of dance, Stephanie has received critical acclaim in publications including The Los Angeles Times, NY Times, exploredance.com and Dance Magazine, for whom she was also recently interviewed in Get Into Contact: Demystifying the basics of contact improvisation. Nugent’s academic/teaching posts have included earning the rank of Tenured Associate Professor at University of California Santa Barbara, Full-Time Faculty in the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts, Visiting Full-Time Faculty at The Ohio State University, Director of Dance at the North Carolina Governors School, Director of the Indiana University High School Summer Dance Intensive, Teaching Team Coordinator for the Great Lakes Area Contact Improv Enthusiasts Retreat, and workshops/residencies throughout the US and in Italy.


etch laurel

Etch – Filmmaker: Abby Warrilow & Lewis Gourlay

Synopsis: A girl hikes across remote moorland. On a hill in the distance, stands a lone building, which she discovers is a long abandoned school hall. A little sun penetrates the dirty glass. An upright piano sits in the far corner.

She takes off her muddy boots and with confidence in her gait, strides across to the piano and pulls it by one corner. The rusted wheels are jammed and it pivots, creating an arc. A line is carved in layers of compacted dust and the ancient wooden floor splinters with the weight of the instrument.

In the centre of the room, hinged on one foot, she extends her leg and rotates swiftly and with graceful power. Her feet trace, etch and carve in circular movements, creating marks in the layers of dirt. Her body contorts. She throws herself in controlled but frenetic choreography. The movements increase in size and vigour as a pattern emerges. Finally she stands back to witness the impression her dance has etched on the floor.
Bio:
Abby Warrilow and Lewis Gourlay have been an international co-directing team ‘ Cagoule’ since 2001, making screen dance, cinematic TV commercials, edgy music videos and exclusive online content. Their combined skills merge live action, movement and motion graphics to create fresh, quirky and imaginative films.

Dance-film maker and Director/Choreographer, Abby works primarily in feature films, commercials and music video. Abby's directing talent has flourished while her choreography career has seen her work on the sets of major feature films such as ‘The Wicker Tree’, ‘Alfie’ and ‘Happy Lands’, theatrical productions ‘Take a Stand’ and ‘Kismet’ , high-end commercials for The Scottish Government and ‘Trivago’, music videos for ‘Young Fathers’, ‘The Magic Numbers’ and ‘The Proclaimers’, and television dramas such as ‘Clique’ and ‘Heartless.’ Her client list has an impressive read and includes the likes of Paramount Pictures, Universal, EMI and Scottish Opera. Abby studied dance and film in parallel and has used her academic experiences in New York, Brighton and London to great effect in her work. Abby adds a creative flare and dramatic energy to any project she works on. Abby has independently produced dance films throughout her career and in the process developed long standing creative collaborations. Her dance theatre and film production ‘Inhabitants’ screened with live performance at Cryptic Nights and Mapping Festival in Geneva, one of the world’s most notable projection mapping festivals.

Lewis has a reputation both as respected and creative editor, and a talented video graphic artist, enabling him to work in each separate discipline or, as is increasingly required, in both simultaneously. He is a graduate of Duncan Jordanstone College of Art, where he gravitated towards the use of video in fine art practice. Later he learnt his trade as a staff editor at various postproduction facilities around the world. Now working primarily out of his own company Cagoule Productions, Lewis describes himself as a motion graphic artist and creative editor and director.







bestof
Title: Laws of Motion Filmmaker: Jeppe Lange City, Country of Residence: Copenhagen, Denmark

Synopsis: Two girls have created a world beyond time and space, dancing through the eery halls of an abandoned monastery.

Bio: Jeppe Lange is a filmmaker studying at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.His work covers the field between documentary and experimental film; reality seen through a conceptual lens.
During the last four years he’s had several films on festivals in Denmark, USA, Germany, Italy, Croatia etc. Jeppe Lange was born 1987. He lives and works in Copenhagen.

creative
Title: 9241 Filmmaker: Marta Romero Coll City, Country of Residence: Barcelona, Spain

Synopsis: The figure of the indigenous and the conqueror are reunited in an island of the future to change history through the recognition of the other and the value of joint creation.

Bio: Barcelona hold a degree in Audiovisual Communication from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. It is linked to the image and its surroundings with projects related to the processes.
She has always liked the documentary genre and video dance, and he feels comfortable working in both genres.


innovator
Title: Digital Afterlives Filmmakers: Richard James Allen + Karen Pearlman, The Physical TV Company City, Country of Residence: Sydney, Australia

Synopsis: A man in white-winged angel shoes awakes in infinite black to the strains of Liszt’s “Dance of the Dead”.

Bio: Richard James Allen and Karen Pearlman are the directors of the critically acclaimed Physical TV Company (www.physicaltv.com.au), based in Sydney, Australia, where they create award-winning dancefilms, dramas,
and documentaries. Their work has screened at hundreds of film festivals around the world, including most of the leading dance film festivals, been broadcast on television and collected by major international film archives.




SPONSORED BY

Dance Council of North Texas + The Dallas Public Library