Join us for an afternoon of films from international artists which engages with the things that aren’t necessarily visible in the landscapes and environments in which we live and move. This might be histories which may or may not leave behind physical traces and ruins, laws that determine what is and what isn’t allowed or ideas and stories that have formed over long periods of time, including cultural traditions, rituals and norms.

We invite featured Iranian film artist Tanin Torabi for a live (remote) in-conversation where we’ll explore her film Until, a single-take video which was captured using only the switch between the front and back cameras of an iPhone by the performers, filmed in Tehran, Iran.

The Programme

The programme begins with a seminal film of the 1970s, Element by American filmmaker Amy Greenfield, who moved from dance to working with film and in nature in search of a raw and beguiling female physicality that was freed from all cultural conventions.

This is followed by the film DUST, a first Screendance commission from South East Dance from 1999, in which Brighton performer Miriam King struggles through a dusty landscape in search of water in a foreboding vision that is already reality.

The third film Strange Objects by London-based Miranda Pennell zooms out and takes us to Middle Eastern landscapes, looking from above to explore remnants of histories and relations that become evident when we change perspective.

The last two films are by Iranian filmmakers, Ali Ettehad and Tanin Torabi. In Ettehad’s film, Seven Journeys of Initiation, several figures represents aspects of a female seeker in a mystical journey through the landscape of the self. In Torabi’s film, Until, a group of young people enact a type of hide and seek, a game with high stakes in contemporary Tehran.

Each of these films deploys its own choreocinematic form to speak to the profound synergy between individuals, communities and the diverse environments in which we live.