The best of London International Screendance Festival returns to Brighton Screendance Festival with a selection of the most inventive and curious independent short films from around the world. Be carried on a journey from 1920’s dance halls in the UK to the beaches of Greece, verdant fields in California to concrete cities in China – and many places in between.

Eight selected films from London International Screendance Festival are featured in one evening. Highlights include:

Walls by Dani Cobarrubias and Carmen Porras (Spain) a poignant and deeply personal dance film that explores the fractured relationship between father and son.

Give Up, Give Up by Nailong Song (China) a powerful choreographic and cinematic journey that spirals through Brutalist architectural landscapes in China.

Dancing with Dementia by Elaine Harvey (UK) a short dance film which aims to animate and reimagine the metaphorical discourse around dementia by asking people affected by the condition to conceive of it as a dance. Comprised entirely of archived footage of social dancing in early-mid twentieth century UK, the film has been cut and re-combined to create a rhythmic and gestural choreography which is reflective of dementia as a social, relational and embodied phenomenon.

Ioanna Paraskevopoulou (Greece) returns to Brighton Screendance Festival with the short film Battle of Fishes – a stop motion gravity defying assemblage of snapshots that creates the illusion of the six female dancer’s oscillation in the air just above the sea.

Bot Girl Gone (UK) by Birmingham artist Keisha Grant is a compelling dance film that unwraps the dehumanisation caused by trolling and online bullying. Focussing through an emotional lens, the portrayal explores our response to technological worlds, reality, illusions and money.

Ghostly Labor: A Dance Film (US) by John Jota Leaños and Vanessa Sanchez explores the history of labour in the US–Mexico borderlands through Tap Dance, Mexican Zapateado, Son Jarocho, Afro Caribbean movement, and music. This work brings together polyrhythmic movement and an original score to look at the (ongoing) years of systemic exploitation of labour, while highlighting the power and joy of collective resistance.