Dance of the Sylphs

Filmed in 1983, during the presentation of Peter Weiss' play at the Fred Barry theater at UQAM. This document exposes us to a play dealing with the Shoah, and its intention to present the medium of video as a specific language.

A Thousand Encores tells the surprising and little known story of how, over 70 years ago, an extraordinary company of dancers made a deep impact on our cultural heritage. In 1936, the celebrated Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo stepped off a boat into the bright Australian sunlight.

Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.

Rhythmic composition of moving photographs of cyclists in Amsterdam, ‘set’ to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

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Mostly dark, rejecting images which are repeated. A stone wall, the chamber of a revolver which is, at first not recognizable, a close-up of a cactus. The duration of the takes emphasises the photographic character of the pictures, simultaneously with a crackling, brutal sound. (Hans Scheugl)

Cinéma vérité celebrating Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, a drag ballet company founded in the wake of the Stonewall Riots.

When Jacques d'Amboise took a group of dancers and members of his teaching staff to China, they worked with acclaimed dancer Dou Dou Huang and more than a hundred Chinese children. Their goal: to create a special performance using a variety of dance styles - including hip-hop, freestyle jazz and traditional Chinese folk dance - that would premiere at the Shanghai Grand Theatre in honor of the 2007 Shanghai Special Olympics World Games. Part of a month-long cultural exchange between d'Amboise's National Dance Institute and several Chinese troupes, featuring some of that country's most talented young dancers, the collaboration underscored the power of dance to transcend obstacles of culture and language.

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

A documentary from Erkki Karu, one of the earliest pioneers of Finnish cinema: This government-produced propaganda film introduces the nature, sports, military, agriculture and capital of Finland.

A medium-length film that takes the central place in the video installation "The Lady of Corinth". In both the medium-length film and the installation, Guerin delves into the relationship between cinema and painting based on Pliny the Elder's account of the invention of painting.

This 10-minute short documentary exploring the shifting state of the American poultry industry was preserved in 2015 from an original nitrate print. More information is available on the film's page in the National Film Preservation Foundation's website, where this version can be found featuring original music by Michael D. Mortilla.

During his thirty-year career, Walter Hus, a Belgian composer and pianist, has taken a thousand musical faces. While he wanted to compose a new work, a crisis blocked his creation. During an exchange with his therapist, he comes to an existential question: "Who am I musically? » Through the portrait of this composer, as abundant as it is fascinating, the film aims to give access to his creative process and thus to the endurance and beauty of creation.

Giulia Tonelli, principal dancer at the Zurich Opera House, returns from maternity leave. She has to fight to find her place and a new balance, between the competitive and extremely demanding world of an elite ballet company and her new family life.

Bubble is a short film performed by Zeena Parkins and the Plastic Girls, Eleanor Hullihan and Erin Cornell in a public park in Brooklyn, NY.

From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.

The world appears black on black until it separates from itself, looks at itself, includes itself, and sees colour.

An immersive look at São Paulo Dance Company

A documentary film that highlights two street derived dance styles, Clowning and Krumping, that came out of the low income neighborhoods of L.A.. Director David LaChapelle interviews each dance crew about how their unique dances evolved. A new and positive activity away from the drugs, guns, and gangs that ruled their neighborhood. A raw film about a growing sub-culture movements in America.

A film in three parts after Oskar Schlemmer's Triadische Ballett (Triadic Ballet).