Dance:Film 09. didn’t have awards, but what were the highlights? And will the EIFF have you dancing in the aisles next month?
A surprise audience hit was the sell-out Perhaps Love, a Chinese song and dance extravaganza that proved a popular bridge to distant exotic worlds. While Pictures On Wax struck gold for the local Edinburgh community. Several others deserve special mention.
For dance simply portrayed on film, Helioscope was celluloid perfection. Ravishing to watch, technically brilliant and using just enough cinematic lessons from the past to climb to even greater heights.
Bohemios is a risky film but it certainly worked for this reviewer. Dance and cinema lock in a clever embrace – which turns out to be an unpretentious meditation on life and death. The cinematography takes us back in time to the salons of Buenos Aires and a rather lovable gentleman who dances with his partner even if she dies on him in the process. Everything turns into dance not in a daft, phantasmagorical way, but with a focus that suggests shared love of (in this case) tango might live on as eternal inspiration.
The highest accolade goes to Thursday’s Fictions. It has the feeling of an impossibly long shot that turns out brilliantly, and it is a crying shame that the screening was not better attended. At a time when fantasy is generally dumbed-down for Hollywood, it raises the genre back to the inspirational heights of its birthright. Describing the storyline (people incarnated as days of the week) would be enough to put most people off. But the company has proved they could make it work first on stage. The film is a triumph.
With this year’s Dance:Film Festival coming to a close, it’s good to know we don’t have to wait too long before feet and cameras dance the next pas de deux. Edinburgh’s International Film Festival kicks off on June 17 with some terpsichorean treats worth looking forward to.
Only When I Dance follows two teenagers as they try to leave the bloody, poverty-afflicted favelas of Rio de Janeiro to enter the world stage of professional ballet. Billy Elliot it’s not - but you do get to see outstanding and dramatically divergent examples of ballet. And in time slots which won’t stretch the patience of non-dance aficionados. Screening June 21 at Cineworld, and June 25 at Filmhouse.
Breakdance is one of the most enduring of modern dance forms. Turn It Loose, rather than being yet another cheesy boy-meets-cinderella dance movie, turns a documentary eye to competing and dancing internationally on your head. Giving up is not an option. Probably more energy in 90 minutes than Simon Cowell has experienced his whole life. Screening June 19 and 20 at Cineworld.
If you’re fed up of dance films following a pattern, get a ticket to Fish Tank while you still can. Director Andrea Arnold, Academy Award winner and darling of Cannes, continues her reputation for edgy, gritty drama, this time on a bleak Essex housing estate. A 15-year-old wannabe dancer has her world turned upside-down by mum’s new boyfriend. Expect the unexpected. Screening June 21 and 24 at Cameo.
