Stir Cheat Sheet: 3 screenings and installations to catch at F-O-R-M Festival of Recorded Movement
Offerings this year span stop-motion animation and immersive video environments, and topics from Indigenous belief systems to melting glaciers
Marisa Gold in the closing night’s “Nothing Can Stay”.
DANCE, AND THE BODY in motion, meet film and video in the annual F-O-R-M event—the Festival of Recorded Movement. From November 4 to 18, screenings, workshops, and installations, all focused on youth and emerging dance-and-movement filmmakers, hit venues around town.
The fest encompasses 42 shorts from 10 countries, with some compelling new entries from local choreographers and videographers. Offerings this year span stop-motion animation and immersive video environments, and topics as far-flung as Indigenous belief systems to melting glaciers. Here are three public events to check out. And keep your eyes on @formvancouver on Instagram, where, from November 6 to 16, the fest will post new one-to-two-minute mini-commissions each day at noon.
Andreas Antonopoulos and choreographer Deboleena Paul’s Trinidad and Tobago-set “FRAGMENTS”.
Frames in Motion
November 4, 6:30 to 9:30 pm at SFU Woodwards’ Djavad Mowafaghian Theatre
The fest’s opening event features an array of shorts by emerging and youth filmmakers, exploring choreography onscreen, but also pushing into some heavy emotional territory. Experiments include “opaqueREFUSALS”, Canadian artist danielle Mackenzie Long’s mix of gaming and 3-D software to capture data from a nonbinary performer’s movement, then translating it into imagery that suggests a dancing ribcage that won’t be constrained by bubble wrap. Elsewhere, “FRAGMENTS”, a collaboration between filmmaker Andreas Antonopoulos and choreographer Deboleena Paul, explores movement amid the architecture of Trinidad and Tobago—and its history. Chiara Lucchetta facilitates a talkback afterward.
Calling Tidal, by Jasmine Liaw
November 5 to 10 at On Main in the Sun Wah Centre (268 Keefer Street)
This immersive, multisensory, interdisciplinary installation explores the movement of glaciers—and the potential loss if they melt. Liaw (F-O-R-M’s 2022-23 Technology and Interaction Artist in Residence) uses interactive audio-visual tech to allow viewers to become a part of the animated space and meditate on their relationships with the natural world, while web-found sound recordings of glaciers crashing worldwide create a soundscape that evokes cries and breath.
Closing Night
Commissioned artists’ world premieres, 6:30 pm at SFU Woodward’s
F-O-R-M’s Commissioning Fund Program acts as a catalyst for youth and emerging artists to explore and play at the intersection of movement and film. This year, participants attended workshops led by Nancy Lee, Josh Lam, and SCOPE on topics like collaborative care, film production, editing, and sound for film. The results are diverse, with creators from across Canada, and across its Indigenous nations. Selections include young B.C. artist Raven Grenier’s “SPANOCHNONGA”, a look at mental health diagnoses through an Indigenous lens—specifically, the artist’s personal experience with schizophrenia and seeing and hearing supernatural beings (nochnonga). Elsewhere, local dancer Marisa Gold and Vancouver video artist Darryl Ahye explore the relentless cycle of growth, disintegration, death, and regrowth, in “Nothing Can Stay”, while “4, 6, 2, 0” is Aerial Sunday-Cardinal’s documentary of dance at the Whitefish Lake First Nation #128 and Saddle Lake Cree Nation, capturing Nehiyawak traditions and values.
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