Bay Area Dance on Film: A Drive-In

KQED and San Francisco Dance Film Festival invite you to a night of dance film at Fort Mason! This night of shorts features top selections from the SF Dance Film Festival, alongside KQED Arts’ award-winning video series If Cities Could Dance, which features dancers across the country who represent their city's signature moves.

The drive-in will conclude with an exclusive preview screening of Mud Water, directed by local filmmaker My-Linh Le. Weaving together myth, movement, and snapshots of real life, Mud Water follows a crew of Oakland turfers preparing for an upcoming dance battle and a man in search of his own shadow.

Join us for a night that expands what dance on film can be, where you can see every move up close.

THE LINEUP:

About Face - directed by Yoram Savion, co-production of YAK Films and Sozo Impact

About Face is the first of a 3-part short film series that puts a different spin on the school to prison pipeline and the role of fathers of black and brown children in the disruption of that paradigm. Based on original spoken word poetry by Marc Bamuthi Joseph and directed by YAK Films, About Face features choreographer, dancer and actor Drew Dollaz and musical score by Daniel Bernard Roumain.

The Wind Telephone - created by Jody Stillwater & The Embodiment Project

The Wind Telephone is a journey into the imaginal world of a child and the profound longing and love she has for her mother. Employing a modular and sliding narrative, the film playfully uses movement, crushing rhythm and dream logic to examine the ways that a child replaces a lost parent.

A production of the SF Dance Film Festival

If Cities Could Dance - KQED Arts

This award-winning dance docuseries from KQED Arts travels the country to experience each U.S. city through the moves and voices of its dancers. The Bay Area Dance Drive-In features local dancers, spotlighting:

San Francisco: Tap and Zapateado 
Oakland: Boogaloo
Richmond: Hip-Hop
Fremont: Bollywood Reinvented
Dear Dancer - a video chain letter and special pandemic release

Mud Water - by My-Linh Le (a preview screening)

Primarily set in Oakland, Mud Water blurs the line between narrative documentary and screen dance, as two stories connecting a crew of street dancers unfold simultaneously. Mud Water began as a dance/theater performance project with a predominantly Black and Brown cast of turfers and contemporary ballet dancers. No matter the medium in which it is presented, the project has been and forever remains a love letter to the people and culture that it revolves around.

Director My-Linh Le is a Vietnamese American dancer, choreographer, storyteller, and former environmental attorney whose work revolves around the intersecting socio-political themes of environmental crises, racial inequality and oppression, colonialism, capitalism, and intergenerational trauma. As a competitive freestyle and street dancer, My-Linh is the first woman to represent the legendary popping crew, Playboyz Inc. in nearly 40 years since its establishment in 1981 in San Jose, the city in which My-Linh was born and raised. She has danced for artists ranging from Sanford Biggers to Kendrick Lamar.