F-O-R-M 2020 September 12-19
22 short films from 7 countries around the world
6 world premieres from 9 commissioned artists
FORMations filmmaking jam, artist talks + more
We went all-digital for the 2020 Festival of Recorded Movement—reaching more than 2,700 viewers across 17 countries. The festival featured innovative films created by youth and emerging filmmakers from around the world.
Audiences voted in three categories, awarding F-O-R-M 2020 Awards to Where We Meet (Most Memorable Youth Film), Lunacy (Audience Choice Film), and Rhizophora (Most Moving Film). F-O-R-M 2020 was co-presented with SFU Woodward’s Cultural & Community Programs.
F-O-R-M 2020 Official Trailer | Edited by Sophia Wolfe | Music by Gonu Kim (xxiv / Chimerik 似不像)
a compilation from the formations filmmaking jam on instagram stories | edited by tamar tabori
Commissioned Artists
Youth Category
Karmella Cen Benedito De Barros & Lexi Mellish Mingo
Where We Meet is an experimental film exploring the Black femme body and its relationship to space through conscious movement on the unceded and unsurrendered territories of the Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, and Musqueam people.
The story follows our protagonist as they navigate isolation and seek a sense of belonging in a conflicting and new environment. Drawing on themes of double consciousness and experimental embodiment, this story explores the relationship between Blackness and the environment in which this concept exists.
Drawing from community dialogue to address the filmmakers own subjective relationship to public space as mixed race Black identifying people, this film intends to hold space for diverse experiences of Blackness in so called "Vancouver". In times where racial politics exist in every crevice of society, the filmmakers escape temporal confines by decolonizing our situated experience, delving into the untold past, dreamy memories and future imaginings.
Kendra Epik
Sunglow Gecko is an exploration of introspection and an attempt to piece together fleeting moments of uncertainty. It is trying to understand what it feels like to learn something new for the first time. To make our own conclusions about objects that have already been claimed. As we search to find a shade of a colour that perfectly fits, what else will we discover? Does a conclusion reveal everything about yourself that you need to know? Maybe we already know what this is supposed to be like, but maybe we can decide for ourselves. Colour, shape, light, and texture tell a story that has been told many times, but it will be new. Nothing is certain, everything is certain. If we start again from the beginning, will everything pan out the same?
Corinne Langmuir & Erin Lum
Zi Ji [zìjǐ, 自己], meaning ‘Self’ in Mandarin, is an introspective dance short depicting the ambiguous beauty of solitude. The film follows our protagonist as she navigates an intimately distant relationship with numbness. She is pushed into a period of self-reflection felt as bleak, lonely, and permanent, yet through emotional exploration the feeling of permanence wavers. This harrowing journey demands more of her than she has to offer. Surrendering, she comes to find loneliness is natural and solitude is man-made.
She is purely nowhere.
Simran Sachar
A movement film about sexual abuse and rape and the haunting aftermath that take place inside and outside of a woman’s body. LUNACY explores the expectations, and image placed upon young women and their innocence versus what society really wants from this innocence. The aftermath contains how this experience shaped Simran's movement. From Simran's experiences, she brings you LUNACY from the very depth of the most honest corner of her heart.
Talia Woodland & Germain Carter
INTIMATE AGGRESSION is the process of revealing your true self in a world where conformity is best. By way of natural movement, a story of understanding, freedom, and evolution is unveiled
Emerging Category
Sasha J. Langford
Looking upon Science World from Habitat Island brings together an intersection of Vancouver's two defining mega-events from a single location. While both Expo 86 and the 2010 Olympics are popularly remembered for their contributions such as the Skytrain and Olympic Village, fundamental to the new visual environments produced by these events were the imposition of coercive mass evictions of low-income residents. Intervening within the conventions of tourist photography--a visual form produced for and by such mega-events--and with a tone between performative satire and realist documentary, Habitat 86 reflects upon Vancouver's legacies of urban displacement at the level of intimate embodiment.
“First and foremost, this experience enabled us to see our own potential as artists and filmmakers. We learned about our own creative process, and what that looks like when collaborating. We were able to create a story our own way, learning from and through each other and those we worked with and interviewed. Being paid to make a movement film was definitely a new experience for the both of us, and it gave us the confidence to believe our creativity is worth pursuing. We are proud of ourselves for trusting our own creative process, and challenging the idea that our work must meet someone else’s standards. F-O-R-M gave us the opportunity to explore the kind of media we would like to make! ”
Film Screenings
Before each screening, the commissioned film Territory welcomed us into our Bodies, Breath and Spirits. Created by Cree/Métis dance artist Jeanette Kotowich, Territory is a short film that embodies territory and acknowledges land with the intention that those witnessing will be inspired to do the same.
Filmed on the unceded, ancestral territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Watuth) First Nations.
Come To Your Senses
Reality Check
Out of Mind
Past Tense
Telling Tales
Commissioned Artists’ World Premieres
Events
Thanks to our 2020 commissioning film partners: Charles Street Video, Cineworks, and Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers.
F-O-R-M 2020 graphic design by Flory Huang, featuring dancers Juolin Lee, James Amzin-Nahirnick and Tamar Tabori.