International Student Competition 1

Since 2015, Cinedans has been awarding the International Student Award to up-and-coming dance film talents from the international dance, film and art academies. This year, twelve films out of 87 entries from 28 countries compete for the coveted award. The Student Award is sponsored by Canon.

The programme is accompanied by a Q&A with the makers.

Team Spirit

FR | 2022 | 11' [Dutch premiere]

Director: Clara Lemercier Gemptel | Choreographer: Morgan D'Orazio

A sports team trains in a dim and vast space. Bodies collide, support each other or collapse collectively. The sound of them screaming, moving, breathing, falling - everything merges into one and the same organism. This plural body is frail and shapeless, disciplined and supportive altogether.

Aren't we going to Moscow?

BR | 2021 | 19’ [Dutch premiere]

Director & Choreographer: Augusto Trainotti

A couple dances at the ruins of an abandoned station in the industrial city of Campinas, Brazil. Aren't we going to Moscow? is a dance of an in-between time, shot in VHS. Inspired by Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters, the dancer's research vocabulary creates a delirium, an implosion, and a gesture of escape.

Silk Paper and Bruises

GB | 2021 | 3' [Dutch premiere]

Director & Choreographer: Gabriella Engdahl

Silk Paper and Bruises explores the norms and expectations in the dance world, where traditional stereotypes still resonate. A group of barbie dolls take us through a poetic journey of hungry dressing rooms, self-doubt and cracking bones.

Lemniscate

NL | 2021 | 6'

Director & Choreographer: Djamila Ploeg

As they move through the dunes, a group of dancers fall and then get up again. Lemniscate is an exploration of the inevitability and necessity of falling and standing up again in everyday life.

Shells

CZ | 2022 | 9' [Dutch premiere]

Director: Marie-Magdalena Kochová | Choreographer: Jarek Lambor

The elevator of a nursing home turns into a stage, as an old dancer explores the limits of his body, memory and the passage of time. Trapped between four walls, he must face the helplessness of his own languish shell. Starring Jan Minařík, one of the long standing dancers of Pina Bausch Company, and one of the greatest Czech dancers of the 20th century.

The Divine Flower

NL | 2022 | 28' [World premiere]

Director: Tessa van der Riet | Choreographer: Thu Hang Pham

The documentary The Divine Flower investigates how young women can break free from (imposed) patterns of guilt and shame around body image and sexuality, and learn to put their own physical pleasure and self-image first. Using both documentary scenes and symbol-driven images, the film sheds light on the current status of female pleasure.