Forward Motion short Films

Forward motion creates a moving snapshot of Britain’s prolific screen dance output. A British Council project

co-produced with South East Dance and supported by Arts Council England; the collection has been curated by an expert committee comprised of representatives from these three organisations alongside artists, producers and academics.

Along side other students, as part of the photography class, I visited the Pavilion in bournemouth to view some short films that were entered into the Forward Motion Festival competition. Each of the videos were based on the subject of Dance. There were eight films, "Touched" by David Hinton and Wendy Houston,"The Incomplete autobiography" by Rajyashree Ramamurthi, "Sardinas" by Lea Anderson, "Basini" by Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie, "Tra La La" by Magali Charier and Viv Moore, "Line Dance" by Alex Reuben, "Gold" by Rachel Davies and Hanna Gilgren and "Motion Control" by David Anderson, Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie.

My Favourite of the Eight was by far "Touched". "Touched" (1995) is a short dance film created in collaboration with choreographer Wendy Houstoun, which is one of his experimental dance films created entirely from library footage, the latter in collaboration with choreographer Rosemary Lee. A romance for hands and faces - and the odd foot, this video is the choreography of close-ups set in a bar in north London. The characters talk, smoke, drink, dance, fight, laugh, and weep.               

                   

"I think making dance films are probably the most interesting films you could possibly make. On a very fundamental level, making a film and making a dance are a very similar kind of activity; they're both about giving structure to action. If you think of film as just a formal language, and you forget about the acting and the talking you can look at any film as a dance film. All films take images of action and try to put these images together in a rhythmic and expressive way. In this sense film and dance work along the same lines." – David Hinton

The reason Why i favoured the film "touched" is becasue of the use of a simple subject that is turned into a complex choreography and then a dramtic exagerated film. Each movement the dancers make is exagerated, for example in the film a man whispers to a lady and when he does so, her head sweeps back and travels with his lips. Another element i liked was the focus of the camera. it seems at first there are only two people in the bar but when the camera focuses and zooms it reveals more and more hands touching, lips speaking, fists fighting and people dancing. The film does not have any musical audio over it, but has the sounds of chatter and whispers, also some parts (where hand gestures and touching is exagerated) there are sounds of skin touching and hands tapping.