Program 2025 -- Dance. Documentary. Experimental.

Dance

0:04:37

Italy

Andrew Margetson,

Director, Producer.

Carmen Aviles,

Key Cast "Carmen".

Joselito Acedo, Music

Nemanja Mosurovic, Music

A young woman, dressed in a tracksuit, walks through the backstreets of Sevilla into a housing project. This is Carmen Aviles - the young street superstar of flamenco. 

Director Biography - 

Andrew Margetson is a director of short films and commercials specialising in movement and dance.
He made the hugely successful 'Lil Buck with icons of modern art' for The Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris, as well as 'Reborn' with The Royal Ballet's Lauren Cuthbertson. His narrative short Help Point (10 festival awards) is streaming on Disney +.
www.margetson.com @andymargetsonFounded in 2012.

Dance

0:05:10

USA

Emilie Slvestri, Director.

Wes Sterrs. Producer.

Annie Kloppenberg, Choreographer.

Original Music, Albert Mathias

Opting to Be Pulled was developed from a longer stage ballet inspired by the 1983 large scale painting, Pas De Deux, by Alex Katz, which is in the permanent collection of the Colby Museum of Art, Maine. The piece translates the static image of five couples into five distinct, but related duets. Opting to be Pulled premiered in 2023 at the Guggenheim Museum in a symposium in conjunction with the exhibition Alex Katz: Gathering.

Dance

0:08:00

USA

Christina Hughes, Director.

Irvine Valley College 

Dance Department,

Producer.

Matthew Mason, Original Score

Un-Contained is a meditative dance short that confronts the silent rules shaping our identities. Shot amidst the awe-inspiring wilderness of Ketchikan, Alaska, the film captures the visceral beauty of self-liberation through movement.

Through a shift from synchronized choreography to raw, individual expressions, "Un-Contained" invites viewers to witness what happens when we relinquish societal expectations and lean into wonder. It’s a cinematic reflection on presence, freedom, and how our environments shape who we become.

DANCE

0:02:57

USA

Dean Alexander, Director. Karen Lam, 

Erin Winebrenner, 

Jake Lefebure, Producers. 

Pum Lefebure, Creative Director.

Simon Lister, Jesse Watt,

Squeak E. Clean,

Music Composers. 

At “Tutu Academy”, the viewer discovers a school where students learn the vocabulary of ballet and the tutu is the centerpiece of their culture. Like any school, there are a variety of personalities represented by our characters. When an alien unexpectedly visits this magical place, communication through movement ensues. The true miracle happens with the gift of the almighty tutu. He returns to his own planet with this powerful offering to spread the gift of dance.
For this film, we used over 50 dancers, all original wardrobe, hair and makeup, music, custom spaceship, and other props. Our locations ranged from Tai Kwun, in Central Hong Kong, to Hong Kong University, to the High Island Reservoir, which sits on the South China Sea.

Dean Alexander is a USA based film director and still photographer. His work has taken him to over 60 countries.
He is an EMMY Award winning director. His films have won fashion film festivals in Berlin, Milan, London, Madrid, Barcelona, New York, LA, Miami, among others. His Films have also won Clio Entertainment Award, Cannes Lion, ONE Show, New York Cinematography Awards, Paris Art & Entertainment Awards, among others.
His still photography has won over 150 International Awards

Documentary

0:10:46

USA

Kevin Heath Richey, Director.

Jim Ruberto, Composer.

Monte Nickles, Sound Design & Mixing.

A Wayward Feeling joins sculptor Patrick Dougherty in the midst of creating one of his final pieces before retirement as he muses on his process and motivations and the importance of art as work.

Born in Oklahoma in 1945, Patrick Dougherty was raised and educated in University of North Carolina. He earned a B.A. in English 1969. Later, he returned to the University to study art history and sculpture. Combining his carpentry skills with his love of nature, Patrick began to learn more about primitive techniques of building and to experiment with tree saplings as construction material. In 1982 his first work, Maple Body Wrap.
His work quickly evolved from single pieces on conventional pedestals to monumental scale environmental works, which required saplings by the truckloads. Over the last forty-some years, he has built over 330 of these large-scale works, and become internationally acclaimed. His sculpture has been seen worldwide---from Scotland to Japan to Brussels, and all over the United States.

A cinematographer first, filmmaker Kevin Richey has pursued purposeful and thoughtful compositions and expressive lighting for over twenty-five years.  His work has been recognized by the American Society of Cinematographers and Camerimage and includes the Irish feature Run & Jump, starring Maxine Peake and Will Forte, and Being Bebe, starring Bebe Zahara Benet.

Jim Ruberto is a Colorado-based composer, musician, audio engineer and producer with four decades of experience creating and sculpting sounds across genres and media.  He has collaborated with Pulitzer Prize-winning composers and Grammy-winning artists at Tippet Rise Art Center, he rocks the bass in Where There's Smoke, and crafts ambient and experimental works that blur the line between music and atmosphere.

Documentary

0:10:35

USA

Adam J Benavides, Director.

Matthew Kasper, 

Maria Simonetti, Producers.

The School of Ballet Arizona and the Phoenix Youth Symphony Orchestra unite to bring a groundbreaking performance to life. It follows the journey of these extraordinary young dancers and musicians as they prepare for the world premiere of Peter and the Wolf. With breathtaking talent and unwavering dedication, they showcase the transformative power of youth arts education, the profound impact of artistic collaboration, and the enduring importance of the arts in our world. A testament to passion and creativity, this film captures a moment unlike anything happening in the state—or perhaps the nation.

Adam Benavides, is a seasoned filmmaker, director, and editor with a passion for storytelling that highlights diverse voices and artistic collaboration. As the founder of Adam Joel Creative, he has led a wide range of projects, from commercials and social media campaigns to documentary films and theatrical productions.

His work has been featured in collaborations with Ballet Arizona, Arizona Opera, Smithsonian Magazine, and the Phoenix Art Museum, reflecting his dedication to impactful and visually compelling storytelling.

Documentary 

0:08:02

USA

Cheri Gaulke, Director, Producer, Writer.

Sue Maberry, Writer.

Susan Rennie, 

KeyCast, "self"

Kirsten Grimstad, 

Key Cast, "self"

C. Lily Ericsson, Animation

Feminist scholar, Susan Rennie, seizes her iPhone and sneaks her queer, octogenarian body into master works of art, disrupting the narrative of the male gaze.

This 8-minute film focuses on a gallery showcase of Susan Rennie's delightful art with unfiltered commentary from the artist, as well as words from exhibition curator Kirsten Grimstad.*

When Rennie retired from academia, she returned to her first love – photography. With humor and wit, Rennie’s photographic interventions offer a feminist critique of the conventional canon of art history, and an unabashed embrace of her elder, queer identity. The results are juicy, eye-opening, and often hilarious.

Cheri Gaulke, director, writer is a pioneer in the feminist art movement in Los Angeles and an award-winning filmmaker whose films have screened in national and international film festivals. Gaulke’s work has been presented at the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Museum of Contemporary Art (LA), in a Smithsonian-touring exhibition, and in settings all over the world including buses, churches, and prehistoric temples. Gaulke has received artist fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, City of Los Angeles, California Community Foundation, and California Humanities. Recent films: Gloria's Call about women and surrealism (40 film festivals; Best Documentary, Ann Arbor Film Festival; 20222 Venice Biennale); Miss Alma Thomas: A Life in Color about this under-recognized African-American artist (for a museum retrospective); and Inside the Beauty Bubble about a gay hair salon owner (50 festivals; Audience Awards at San Luis Obispo Film Festival and Dances with Films). She is currently in post-production on her first feature documentary, Acting Like Women, about feminist performance art and the Woman's Building in 1970s-80s Los Angeles.

Documentary

0:11:27 

USA

Samantha Schutz, Director,

Susan Sommer, painter, Director

Quiet Rhythm is a short film by filmmaker Samantha Schutz, created in collaboration with painter Susan Sommer. The film intimately traces Sommer’s lifelong creative journey — tracing her development from early inspiration through decades of artistic exploration grounded in both classical training and natural observation.

As brush meets canvas, Quiet Rhythm reveals the deep, intuitive cadence between artist and environment, thought and movement, rhythm and expression. A portrait of process as much as of the artist herself, the film offers a rare, contemplative glimpse into the transformation of plein air into bold, abstract art.

Samantha Schutz is a Digital Content Creator working across independent and commercial projects, from documentaries to network shows, web series, and children’s television. Recent projects include directing and shooting her first documentary feature Land, Sea & Sky: The Fight for Keystone Species and filming Bill Gates at the Library of Congress for The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Additional credits include her shooting her documentary short Abundance about agricultural farmers trying to survive living in the affluent Hamptons, shooting a special for ABC Nightline News titled Death with Dignity, and shooting for Biz Kid$, a public television series about financial education and entrepreneurship for a pre-teen audience. Samantha was Senior Producer and Director of Photography for the Martha Stewart brand’s Everyday Food YouTube Channel.

Susan Sommer's statement: My creative life has been shaped by rhythm, of light across a landscape and of the seasons unfolding around me. Painting has always been my language, my way of listening and responding to the world. With Quiet Rhythm, I wanted to extend that language into film, offering viewers not only the finished work, but the often unseen process and the intuitive dialogue between observation, memory, and movement that fuels my art.

Collaborating with filmmaker Samantha Schutz allowed me to step outside of my own medium and reflect on my journey in a new way. Together we sought to capture the pulse of creation itself, the cadence that arises when inner vision meets outer form. This film is less about explaining art than it is about embodying its flow: the transformation of plein air into abstraction and the quiet rhythms that guide a lifetime of work. 

Documentary 

0:9:11

USA

Ann Deborah Levy, Director

In 2022, Canadian photographer Scott Walden, trained his camera on what is usually overlooked in Venice: the stones paving the four bridges that cross the Grand Canal. The photographs show hand-crafted stones on the older bridges as well as ceramic and glass tiles and machined lumber and metal plates on more recent surfaces. In debris and artifacts left on the bridges, the images reveal the presence of the pedestrians who cross. Inspired by John Ruskin's "The Stones of Venice" Walden created a photo-installation on the floor of The Emily Harvey Foundation's gallery in New York and invited viewers to take part in a participatory event that this video documents.

Director Statement: My films and videos, usually shot outdoors, explore different realities. They may examine how visual perception of the landscape is mediated as it is reflected on a pond, “painted” by raindrops hitting a car window, even changed by where the camera focuses to create another version of what lies beyond; or they may show how reality is filtered and transformed in the human mind as it is observed, recorded, imagined, or remembered individually or through collective historical memory. SCOTT WALDEN'S THE (PAVING) STONES OF VENICE is my first foray into documentary filmmaking.

In documenting Canadian photographer Scott Walden's photographic installation of the stones of the bridges on Venice's Grand Canal and the participatory event at the end of the exhibition, I tried to give viewers a sense of what it was like to experience the huge rectangle made up his photographs dominating the floor of the empty gallery and later at the closing event. In addition to the footage, the sound track gives presence to the distinctly different sounds of these two separate experiences. To provide viewers with space to contemplate and the installation at the end of the video, I reconstructed the, by then, dismantled piece and provided sounds of Venice to inspire their thoughts.

Levy's work is discussed in the recently published book "Lost Highways, Embodied Travels; the Road Movie in American Experimental Film and Video," by Kornelia Boczkowska. Levy comes to filmmaking by way of painting and photography and has been a recipient of both Yaddo and MacDowell fellowships.

Documentary

0:12:21

Canada

 Sydney Worden, 

Director, Producer. 

Cheryl Passmorem, 

Sandra Scott, Ted Dut,

Pamela James, Key Casts.

In the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (RWB)’s adult recreational dance program, the studio provides
a sanctuary outside home and work where personal expression thrives. For the adult dancers,
dance serves as a refuge—a meditative escape from daily chaos, fostering connections across
generations. Emphasizing the joy and camaraderie found in dance classes and rehearsals, they
discuss how dance not only provides a unique physical workout, but also cultivates a unique bond
among diverse participants. Through the art of dance, they discover empowerment and community,
overcoming personal challenges that come with adulthood while thoroughly embracing the
opportunity to perform for an audience.

Sydney Worden, Director,  is an emerging filmmaker with a passion for storytelling through visual media. After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies and attending various film workshops, Sydney was honored to win a mentorship through a competitive jury process with DOC and FTM for her project Variations, which led to invaluable guidance from renowned filmmaker Danielle Sturk.

Outside of the Royal 

Winnipeg Ballet’s adult recreational program, many adults remain
unaware of the dance opportunities available to them. Conversations with RWB dancers often
reveal that friends and family are surprised to learn that they still engage in dance. Motivated by the
chance to perform, Worden joined the RWB program six years ago and decided to create this film to
challenge the notion that dance is solely for the young.

Documentary

0:12:15

USA

Bob Sacha, Director, Producer.

Lisa Lee Freeman, Producer.

Kate Emerson, Editor.

Irwin Fisch, Composer. 

What happens if you turn the page in the book of your life and it's blank?
The journey of two artists who learn to navigate from here to there in an uncertain world through loss, change and art.

Bob Sacha is a NYC- based director, cinematographer, editor and teacher. He was the cinematographer for “NSA Files: Decoded,” which won a Pulitzer, an Emmy and a Webby. His first documentary short, “Blind Sight,” about a group of blind photographers, had its world premiere at DOCNYC. He directed, shot and produced it.

Director Statement

My journey to Wayfinding 

Like many people, I thought I had my life pretty well planned out. Until my world came crashing down.

In the past I had carefully figured out my next steps, the details of what I was going to do every time I changed jobs or careers. For some reason, when I left my last job, I turned the page in the book that was my life and it was blank. I was completely and utterly lost, unsure where to go next. I started to panic.

You might be hearing this from your friends, too. The month I finished this film we learned that the United States has fallen out of the top 20 happiest countries for the first time since a global ranking began in 2012. Among the 143 countries surveyed, the U.S. ranked 62nd for people under 30. Similar findings have emerged in Britain and Canada.

One of the things I love about nonfiction work is that you never know what will happen during filming. It challenges you to turn mistakes and near-disasters into successes.

I hope viewers can take away some ideas of how Lisa continually returns to being lost —starting each piece with a random pour of ink that it’s impossible to predict—as she creates her work. From making this film, I hope I learned to “navigate lostness,” as Lisa calls it. I still get lost in the Ramble, but I’m learning to enjoy it a bit more each time

Experimental/ Music

0:05:54

USA

David Glass, Director Pianist.

"Music is an emotional and spiritual journey that transcends my everyday existence. I can't imagine doing any other kind of work that doesn't involve music."

"Breaking Out" is a visually and emotionally intense short film set to a turbulent piano improvisation, blending raw emotion, nature's forces, and synchronized imagery in a mesmerizing psychological journey.

As of January 17, 2024, "Breaking Out" has been awarded 83 wins in 56 festivals, 7 finalist, 44 Semi-Finalist, and 5 Honorable Mentions!

Versatile in many forms of music making, David has performed regularly as a solo pianist, He received his undergraduate degree in Piano Performance from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and did his graduate work in composition, film scoring and electronic music at both San Jose State University and DVC in Concord, CA. David has performed throughout the country and Europe. David has released several recordings which include “Beginning The Journey” featuring all of his own original piano compositions and improvisations, Liszt’s piano transcription of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, “The Pastoral” , and has collaborated with pianist Justin Levitt to produce a four hand piano improvisation film: “BOOTLEG THE MOVIE” and “4 four hand piano improvisation albums with Francis Martineau, (OnCourse, Trans Ference, Game Changer and Windfall). David is a versatile musician and has performed with various rock and jazz ensembles over the years. For the past 30+ years, David has been teaching piano privately in the cities of Piedmont, Oakland and Berkeley.