The 15th San Francisco Dance Film Festival (SFDFF) runs October 16 – October 20, 2024 featuring International and locally produced dance films in various San Francisco theaters and streamed online on Marquee TV from October 21 to November 4.
The festival will open with a fundraiser featuring the world premiere of Closer Than Yesterday, directed by Bay Area filmmaker Lisa Le Lievre. Closer Than Yesterday is an intimate documentary about the journey of two young San Francisco Ballet dancers as they prepare for the Helsinki International Ballet Competition.
Other feature films at the festival include Enrique Sánchez Lansch’s “Pol Pot Dancing”; Benoit Swan Pouffer’s “Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby”; Louise Narboni’s “L(oo)ping”; Alexandra Nikolchev’s “Breaking Form” and Sabine Krayenbühl & Zeva Oelbaum’s “Obsessed With Light”.
2024 San Francisco Dance Film Festival In-Theater Programs – Feature Films
CLOSER THAN YESTERDAY (USA, 2024) 81 min. World Premiere
Director: Lisa Le Lievre
“Closer Than Yesterday” follows two young San Francisco Ballet dancers behind the scenes as they compete on the world stage at the Helsinki International Ballet Competition. As they navigate setbacks and comebacks, their rigorous preparations and passionate commitment steel them for a journey of unexpected twists and turns. Intimate dialogue, studio rehearsals, and thrilling performances showcase their daily hard work and sacrifices alongside their anxieties, frustrations, and exhilaration in an environment where tensions run as high as their spirits.
POL POT DANCING (GERMANY, 2023) 99 min. US Premiere
Director: Enrique Sánchez Lansch
“Pol Pot Dancing” frames the long reach and heavy weight of history through the multigenerational lineage of classical Cambodian dance. Chea Samy, a star dancer at the Cambodian royal court, lovingly raises her husband’s little brother as her own son, who she later discovers has become the Khmer Rouge’s violent leader, Pol Pot. As one of the only dancers to survive the regime’s brutal genocide, Samy returns to Phnom Penh determined to preserve the knowledge of traditional dance. One of her first pupils, Sophiline Cheam, continues to bear this lineage by teaching and choreographing historically relevant, site specific dances for a classical Cambodian dance ensemble. Archival and contemporary footage trace the transformative resilience of these culture bearers as they channel embodied memory toward historical redemption.
PEAKY BLINDERS: THE REDEMPTION OF THOMAS SHELBY (UK, 2023) 106 min. US Premiere
Director: Benoit Swan Pouffer
In this immersive film experience of the stage adaptation of the hit BBC series, “Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby,” writer Steven Knight and choreographer and director Benoit Swan Pouffer present a thrilling fusion of dance theater and rock concert. The elaborate performance uses dramatic imagery to portray the social and psychological effects of World War I in postwar industrial Birmingham. A continually shifting stage space sets soldiers, gangsters, workers, lovers, and fantastic visions reeling through sensual encounters and fatal confrontations. The dynamic performers of London’s Rambert dance company and an onstage band tell the story of Tommy as he navigates violence, intrigue, and heartbreak to find peace.
L(OO)PING (FRANCE, 2023) 62 min. World Premiere
Director: Louise Narboni
Grounded in reality and departing into daydreams, “L(oo)ping” centers on a sweeping orchestral-electronic performance in Lyon’s grand concert hall led by French electronic music artist Rone. Dancers portray a playful usher, a wistful musician, and a handful of audience members who are each transported by the performance into the inner worlds of their psyches, just as Rone himself journeys from creative spark to full scale performance. As the pulsating score builds, subsides, and surges, each character receives the music and reflects through unique explorations of nature, architecture, and human connection in a range of contemporary dance vocabularies.
BREAKING FORM (USA, 2023) 58 min. West Coast Premiere
Director: Alexandra Nikolchev
In an intimate and wide-ranging portrait of maverick choreographer Jane Comfort, “Breaking Form” explores a creatively rich chapter in New York City’s downtown dance scene and its legacy today. Beginning in the late 1970s and spanning her 40-year career, Comfort fused text, rhythm, and movement to craft experimental works of bold political satire and irreverent social commentary. Archival footage and contemporary interviews with Comfort, her collaborators, and dance historians shed light on an artist who defied expectations and engaged audiences through socially relevant, issue-oriented movement theater.
OBSESSED WITH LIGHT (United States, 2023) 89 min. Bay Area Premiere
Directors: Sabine Krayenbühl, Zeva Oelbaum
“Obsessed with Light” is a meditation on groundbreaking artist Loïe Fuller’s fascination with light and her enduring drive to create. The film pulls back the curtain on Fuller, a wildly original performer who revolutionized the visual culture of the early 20th century by inventing a spectacle that combined dance, fabric and movement. She pioneered the ingenious use of electric light for the stage and immediately understood the importance of protecting her ownership of these innovations. With a strong will toward self-empowerment, her avant garde representations of the body resonate through history. In a dialogue between past and present, the documentary delves into the astonishing influence of Fuller’s work on contemporary artists and uncovers the commonalities that connect these creative luminaries to Fuller and to each other.
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