Shorts - Performance
Selections
Aber
Erin Garber-Pearson & Caroline Miller
USA
In February 2020, soprano Caroline Miller collaborated with aerialist and artist Erin Garber-Pearson to interweave classical music, vocal performance, and the aerial arts. They both wanted to tell a story about loss, grief and the redemptive power of love. Aber combines “Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit” from Ein deutsches Requiem by Brahms, newly arranged for soprano and guitar by Nathan Silar with aerial silks and film.
BIPP
Dana Baitz
Canada
Unrealistic standards of gender and beauty are explored in BIPP, the product of two trans women’s work: an aerialist and a musician. The words “I can make you feel better” promise a self-augmentation that is alluring to many, yet can be inescapable for trans people. To depict synthetic realities, the clips here are edited to be strictly virtual, unattainable, perfect. The viewer is invited into a displaced and confined space, but also a safe, breathing space that trans people often inhabit.
Note: Sophie passed away on January 30 2021, roughly 4 months after this video was completed. Sophie was known for combining a playful artifice with genuine humanity, and that carries through to this work. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to her for all she gave to her audience, her collaborators, and especially the queer and trans listeners who found a role model in her. Her music continues to enrich our lives.
Cellophane
Les 7 doigts de la main
Canada
Quenching our thirst to create we gathered a team of local artists to build a Covid friendly live performance . When Montreal went back into lock down, En Panne lost its potential audience and the show was transformed into a film. In this excerpt, twin sisters are searching for a lost proximity, contact and connection while divided by a thin veil of plastic. A paradoxical piece that uses a product that suffocates the planet to protect these humans from potentially contaminating each other.
CircofinaDos
Carolina León & Daniel Ramírez
Costa Rica
An eccentric couple coexisting during the lockdown, where creativity beats boredom and teamwork generates a healthy lifestyle and helps building good relationships.
Anvil
Jordie Campbell
USA
My goal with Anvil was to glitch and spin in and out of control embracing the dirty floor. I'm inspired by how beautiful gross dirty things can look when given a new context. Quote inspiration David Lynch "I like things like cuts and bruises, they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don't know what it is,
it can be very beautiful."
Breathe
Renee Granados
USA
Breath takes on forms that help and hinder us, whether it is shallow when our fight-or-flight response is triggered, or whether we breathe deeply to calm our brains and bodies. "Breathe" is an aerial dance piece featuring three performers moving to the sound of their own breath, chopped and looped to create rhythmic tension. This film was borne of many things: lifestyle changes during a pandemic, a heightened anxiety and depression, the need to move and create, and the need to breathe.
Chocolate Chip Muffin
Chase Levy
USA
Fueled by spirit of spontaneity and collaboration, 5 circus artists from the National Circus School in Montréal spend an afternoon creating a short film of hand to hand, Cyr wheel, and hand balance. As a filmmaker, I pushed myself with this project to experiment new styles of composition, typography, and musicality.
Clowndestino
Antonio Giarola
Italy
Being a clown is first of all a vocation that sometimes becomes art. Rarely a clown is also a poet, who continually questions himself about the meaning of his creation and on the state of grace received from destiny. This is the case of Jean-Pierre Bianco, aka Pass Pass. With this intense short film, which is his first cinematographic experience, the director Antonio Giarola, specialized in international circus