Community Cinema: The Body and Moving Image

The selected films centre on the presence and agency of the body in moving image. As corporeal critique, the significance for film makers and film lovers is on how moving image can explicitly work from the body to refuse a body/mind split in conveying complex topics and identities. We warmly invite you to this compilation of films, presented for their sensuous and critical poetics, interconnected by claiming/reclaiming.

Age rating: 18+

Trigger warnings: 'Soma' makes reference to sexual assault.

UCL East Community Cinema

This screening is part of the UCL East Community Cinema, a series of free screenings on Wednesday evenings with films specially selected by our students, academics and community partners. Check out the other films we're screening.

The films

Lazarus

Tuixén Benet, United States, 2020, 9min

Through a dialogue between movement and landscape, Lazarus reflects on the objectification of the woman body in film. The famous quote by Edgar Allan Poe "the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world" triggers a succession of falls and recoveries that escape the poetic by trying too hard to find it.

Forest Floor

Robbie Synge and Julie Cleves, UK, 2020, 5min

Shot in Abernethy Forest, Cairngorms, close friends Julie and Robbie sit quietly together on the ground, a simple idea requiring a novel approach. In collaboration with Julie Cleves (London) our work together playfully investigates cooperative, embodied solutions to access problems, often Involving simple DIY-made objects.

This screening will be presented with Descriptive Subtitles.

Soma

Wency Lam, UK, 2022, 2min

SOMA is a short film about the trauma left in the body by sexual assault.

That's how I remember her

Naomi Midgelow, 2020, UK, 4 mins 38

A touching experimental film using family archive footage shaped through a choreographic edit. Reframed, the personal footage lingers between reality and distortion to reveal the imperfections of memory, highlighting a sense of loss and fragmentation. Layering, repeating and juxtaposing different moments in time, multiple possible stories unfold across three screens.

A drifting up

Jacob Lee, UK, 2022, 10 min

It takes 6 weeks to come off anti-depressants. A man tries to dance his way through it, armed only with a boombox and a sign inviting people to join him. From over 100 hours of footage shot on the streets of Bristol and London, this film documents a journey from isolation to connection and a montage of city life.

Biographies

Gitta Wigro

Gitta Wigro is an arts professional with over 20 years’ experience, specialising in dance film and dance.

She has worked as guest programmer, speaker and jury member for, among many others, Light Moves (Ireland), La Danza in 1 Minuto (Italy), BFI FLARE (UK), Big Dance Shorts (UK), and Choreoscope (Spain). Gitta leads a core unit on the Screendance MA at London Contemporary Dance School, and as part of that role facilitates the student-led dance film festival Frame Rush. She was course leader (maternity cover) from 2020-2021 and continues to work on the management of the course with current course leader Katrina McPherson. She is a programmer for the Screendance Competition at Leeds International Film Festival and co-director of Kinesthesia.

Website: https://gittawigro.com/

Ali Baybutt

Dr. Ali Baybutt is a movement artist, educator, and researcher working internationally since 2004.

She leads performance practice modules on the BA Creative Arts and Humanities in the department of Arts and Sciences. Current projects include Play As We Are, somatic sound practices for musicians of all kinds (Netherlands); a performance project with poet Mary Paterson; and ongoing teaching the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System in Italy and the Netherlands. Her first monograph 'Contemporary Dance Festivals in the Former Yugoslav Space' was published with Routledge in 2023.

Website: https://alexandrabaybutt.co.uk/

UCL Profile: https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/87148-ali-baybutt

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexandrabaybutt.movement/