Host
of Filmmakers to Hit London
Constellation Change is
delighted to welcome a host of filmmakers and guests to
this years 7th Screen Dance Festival, which takes place
in London 19th-23rd March 2007.
Above -Director - Catherine
Maximoff - Voyage
From Left -Directors - Karina
Epperlein (Phoenix Dance),Neeta Mittal(Wings Of Legacy)
, Phil Bertelsen(Beyond The Steps & Film Seminar)
Clockwise from Left Directors
- Heather Lyn MacDonald (Been Rich
All My Life), Nadia Roden (Aquarium) Preservationist Lou
DiCrescenzo (Film Seminar), Producer Patrice Nezan (Voyage)...
and
many more..
http://www.constellation-change.co.uk/
WEST
SIDE STORY (1961) Leaving aside the pliés
and pirouettes, West Side Story is a street tuff take on
Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet that feels as contemporary
now as it did on its initial release in 1961. Natalie Wood
and Richard Beymer are star-crossed lovers on opposite sides
of a New York turf war in what remains one of the boldest
and most breathlessly dynamic musicals ever made. It went
on to score ten Oscars, including Best Directing for Robert
Wise and Jerome Robbins. Manhattan is the battleground for
rival street gangs: The Jets, a bunch of second generation
immigrants headed by Riff (Russ Tamblyn), and The Sharks,
a group of Puerto Ricans fresh off the boat and fronted
by Bernardo (a brooding George Chakiris). Their violent
run-ins are staged in creeping, cat-like dance that builds
to a thumping crescendo as Bernardo's sister Maria (Wood)
becomes entangled with Riff's old cohort Tony (Beymer).
Amid vibrant set pieces, a shadow of portent looms large.
West
Side Story
Monday 19th March 2007
Digitally
Remastered 35mm print
Doors 6.00pm
/Film 6.20pm
83 Upper Street
Islington N1 0NP, London
Box Office Tel: 020 7226 3520
Price: £9.00 / £8.00 Conc
Screen
cinemas Website
|
Mirror Dance (2005)
documentary about twin sisters
who danced with the Cuban National Ballet before one
of the women defected to the U.S. and left her sister
in Cuba.. |
Frances
McElroy (Director/Producer)
McElroy began her career as an independent filmmaker in
1991, when she founded Shirley Road productions, an award-winning
nonprofit independent production company in Philadelphia.
Director credits include INPUT (1988), Ballycastle (2003),
An Angel in the Village (1999) which received a regional
Emmy Award, First Prize for Documentary Excellence from
the Society of Professional Journalists.
María Teresa Rodríguez
(Director/Producer)
Rodríguez
is an award-winning producer/director whose work has screened
both nationally and internationally. Her previous work includes
Under New Management, which was commissioned by WYBE's Philadelphia
Stories. Rodríguez
also directed six half-hour programs on literature and the
arts for GED Connection.
Susanne Fosse: Mirror Dance is a
fascinating story about two ballerina twins who have been
living separate lives. What intrigued you both about the
project?
Frances
McElroy & María Teresa Rodríguez:
Back in 2000, we read an article in a Philadelphia
newspaper about Margarita de Saa White, who runs the Pennsylvania
Academy of Ballet in Narberth – a Philadelphia suburb
where Frances lives. We were particularly struck by how
the sisters' lives and experiences seemed to mirror each
other, despite their having been estranged for nearly 40
years. Both have maintained their great love of ballet;
both are devoted to training future dancers through their
respective ballet schools in the US and Cuba. An interest
in Cuba, ballet, the immigrant experience and twins further
appealed to us..
INTERVIEW
CONTINUED >>>
MIRROR DANCE
Friday 23rd March
6:30pm
Curzon Soho
93-107 Shaftesbury Avenue
London W1D 5DY
Box Office – 0870 756 4620
Tickets: £9.00 / Conc £8.
www.curzoncinemas.com
Watch
Mirror Dance Movie Clip 
Media
Player 
Quicktime
In our Women in Film Special - Dance On Film News salutes
four women directors (three of which are also choreographers)
who are in the film industry.
Director/Choreographer - Anne
Fletcher
Anne Fletcher, one of the contemporary film world’s
leading choreographers who made her debut with the hit
“Bring It On” and has gone on to choreograph
key sequences for some two dozen film and television projects.
When Anne Fletcher read the script, she knew STEP UP would
be a tremendous opportunity for her directorial debut.
"I knew I could do it because I really understand
the world of dance and young artists because that's the
world I grew up in," she says. "I loved the
script and I felt that it was a chance to tell a very
truthful story. But I also knew that the first priority
was to hire really good people, because a director is
only ever as good as her team."
Video Interview
Link - at IFILM.
Actor/Director/Producer/Choreographer
- Debbie Allen
Debbie Allen found fame as the demanding dance teacher
Lydia Grant in the film Fame (1980), a role she reprised
for the successful NBC TV series, which she also choreographed.
Allen is the sister of actor Phylicia Rashad, best known
as Claire Huxtable on NBC's The Cosby Show. Allen joined
the already popular Cosby Show spin-off, A Different World
(1987–1993), during its second season as producer
and primary director. Along with Cosby, Allen became one
of contemporary television's leading proponents of African
American bourgeois values as a director of such family-oriented
sitcoms as The Cosby Show, Family Ties, and The Sinbad
Show. She also helmed the 1990 NBC pilot for the hit sitcom
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. She has been choreographer
of the Academy Awards presentations since 1991, her feature
acting credits include Milos Forman's Ragtime (1981),
Richard Pryor's Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986),
and Disney's Blank Check (1994). She choreographed Billy
Crystal's Forget Paris (1995). She also directed the television
movies, Cool Women (2000), The Old Settler (2001), and
Life is Not a Fairytale: The Fantasia Barrino Story (2006),
and in 2001 appeared in the films The Painting and All
About You. She also has been keeping busy directing episodes
of TV shows such as That's So Raven, Girlfriends, All
of Us, and Everybody Hates Chris.
Debbie
Allen - Interview Interview at work.
WOMEN IN FILM CONTINUED
or Visit the website to
receive the brochure by post
http://www.constellation-change.co.uk
London
- Tuesday 20th March 2007
4:30pm
- 6:30pm
Film
Seminar with Phil
Bertelsen, and
Lou
DiCrescenzo
New York based filmmaker,
Phil Bertelsen will conduct
a seminar that provides a brief step-by-step overview
of the filmmaking process, with particular insight into
the pleasures and demands of shooting dance for the
camera. His most recent work, Beyond The Steps is a
documentary featuring Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
and is screening at this year’s festival. Students
will leave the seminar with creative and practical tips
which are invaluable to aspiring filmmakers of all genres.
Philadelphia based film
Historian and film Preservationist,
Lou DiCrescenzo,
a Bucks County native,
has been collecting out-of-print film and film memorabilia
for the past several decades. DiCrescenzo’s collection,
which dates back to film’s infancy in the late
nineteenth century and his personal collection includes
over 400 films. Some of the highlights of his collection
are: OLIVER, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, FUNNY GIRL, Natalie
Woods’ own 35mm print of WEST SIDE STORY, the
only know surviving 35mm print of Ed Wood’s BRIDE
OF THE MONSTER. In today’s session, Lou will be
imparting stories and anecdotes about the treasure of
genre film and TV that today’s audiences may be
overlooking.
Everyman
Cinema
5 Hollybush Vale, Hampstead,
London, NW3 6TX
BOOK
ON-LINE
Film Seminar £8.00/
Conc £7.00
Box Office 087 00 664777
