The Jury for DFA’s 37th annual Dance On Camera Festival announces its nominations for the 2009 Dance on Camera Prize DFA’s 2009 Festival Jury – Tere O’Connor, Caterina Bartha, Lois Greenfield, and Madeleine Shapiro – met in the first week of December to deliberate as to what titles will be the winners from the 14 programs of the Dance on Camera Festival. Their unanimous decision is to nominate 5 shorts, including two that were commissioned by EMPAC: Kino-Eye Joby Emmons, USA, 2008; 8m Choreographed by Elena Demyanenko, Kino-Eye shadows a dancer through contemporary Moscow. Immersed in an aesthetic of video surveillance, the dancer shifts in and out of glitches and static as video playback manipulates her image. Propiedad Horizontal David Fariás, Carla Schillagi & Maria Fernanda Vallejos, Argentina, 2008, 10m Dancers in a narrow passageway create an elegant, abstract, and lively piece of pure movement and form. Of The Heart Douglas Rosenberg/Allan Kaeja, USA, 2008; 6m A dance camera trio set in a windblown field with heartfelt performances by David Dorfman and Lisa Race. Bardo Richard Move, 2007, USA; 4.52m A hypnotic ‘Lamentation Variation 2’, choreographed by Richard Move and commissioned by the Martha Graham Dance Company as performed by Katherine Crockett. Mysteries of Nature Dahci Ma, 2008, South Korea;10m “Torn into bits and gone with the wind.” The Jury statements are as follows “Joby Emmon’s film Kino-Eye, with choreography by Elena Demyanenko, masterfully weaves the body, technology, film editing, temporality and the psychological effects of surveillance, into a potent essay on public and private domains. “Dahci Ma’s Mysteries of Nature is a visually stunning film exhibiting exceptional artistry in all its aspects. At once contemporary and primordial, the alien nature of this work transports us into a reverie from which we can see clearly the seeds of humanness and engage in a secular meditation for the future.” “Of the Heart is a sensitive and moving glimpse into an intimate moment between a couple.” “Propriedad Horizontal offers a uniquely cinematic perspective of pedestrian movement manoeuvered in a narrow alley.” “True to its name, Bardo captures a woman on the precipice of two worlds. Ethereal with hints of magic realism, this black and white short has a duality throughout that is provocative and dreamlike, contemporary and yet classic.” The winner will be announced in the free Awards Ceremony to be held January 10, 7pm in the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery of the Walter Reade Theatre, Lincoln Center Plaza. The Awards Ceremony will also, for the first time, recognize innovative uses of dance on-line. Among those recognized will be The Science Dance Contest , created under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is open to anyone who has (or is pursuing) a Ph.D. in any scientific or related field. Participants “dance their Ph.D.’s” and submit their entries by video. Videos are posted to the website, and winners are paired with professional choreographers to further develop their dance. See more. MANCC, a dance and choreographic research center housed on the Florida State University (FSU) campus in Tallahassee, will also be recognized for its contribution to dance on the web. Their website lets visitors garner a glimpse into the choreographers’ creative processes through video, audio and mixed-media, most of which has been shot and edited by Shoko Letton. A third project, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s project52 is a year-long documentary, released in one- minute segments online each week. Featuring the dancers and collaborators at the company, project52 creates intimate vignettes of the lives of performers and artists. See more. DFA’s 37th Dance On Camera Festival will be largely held at the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center Plaza, New York City with 14 repeating programs. Co-sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center since 1996, DOCF celebrates the immediacy, energy, and mystery of dance as combined with the intimacy of film. This year’s festival features 5 documentaries and 26 short, innovative works filmed in India, Africa, Spain, France, Australia, Netherlands, New Zealand, as well as retrospectives, Meet the Artist sessions, receptions, a Town Meeting, and a festival Awards Ceremony. DFA’s Festival is the oldest dance film festival in the world that sparked a global explosion of activity. The 2009 Festival is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Experimental Television Center, as well as support from the members of DFA, The Susan Braun Trust, Capezio Ballet-Makers Foundation, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, French Consulate, Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC), Showbiz Software, plus the in-kind support of Gotham Wine and Liquors, and Ariston Florist. Bodies – Movies by Claudia Rosiny A naked woman turns and walks upstairs; the same woman walks downstairs or picks up a skirt. Photographer Eadward Muybridge captured these simple body movements between 1877 and 1885. Best known for his photographic series that proved all four hooves of a horse leave the ground for a moment during a gallop, he invented the zoopraxiscope, a rotating glass disc transmitting the impression of movement. This inspired, in part, Thomas Edison’s kinematoscope, the first commercial film exhibition system. All these early photographic and filmic experiments focus on one fascination: making subtle movements visible. The early films of Thomas Edison (1847-1931) are predominantly simple documents of daily life. He and his employee photographer, William Dickson, invented a kinetograph (a motion picture camera) and the kinetoscope (a peephole motion picture viewer), with which people could watch such short films. In 1891, Edison and Dickson exhibited these inventions to the public. Edison used film as a medium to preserve other art forms, primarily theater and dance acts of that time. The films were less than a minute in length, and done in one shot with a single static camera– the installation of these first apparatuses wouldn’t allow camera movement, and a movement montage was not possible. Only the movement of the body conveyed the attraction of the new medium. Notably