a virtual screening available for free on our website
As part of our efforts to move toward a more racially just and socially equitable landscape for dance cinema, SSF has celebrated heritage months for the last few years with screenings highlighting artists from communities underrepresented in the field, and from marginalized communities. These screenings have always been free of charge to our local community in Boulder, Colorado, USA, but since the pandemic began, we’ve taken them online to share with the wider dance cinema community. Sans Souci presents our first annual Hispanic Heritage Month Screening, a curated selection of films by Hispanic creators from 3 continents, and films celebrating the richness and diversity of Hispanic heritage through dance cinema.
program of films
This screening runs approximately 35 minutes.

Moving Barcelona
2021 / United Kingdom / 6 min
Moving Barcelona is a magical realist dance story about the Catalonian capital, an autonomous region in the Spanish State contending with an identity crisis. A city with everything going for it is still haunted by the ghosts of its past and despite much progress, it finds itself unearthing old wounds. Narrated by celebrated actor, Pep Munné, who appeals for calm, there is a sense of reassurance that all is okay. The movement of the city however tells a different story, and he is resigned to the fact that things inevitably, are the way they are. Barcelonians, in pursuit of happiness, find themselves on a treadmill to nowhere in a tale of modern day life. Moving Barcelona is the eighth film in an award-winning collection of works by the London-based film-maker, Jevan Chowdhury to capture the world as a stage. Life on the street in London, Paris, Brussels, Dallas, Prague, Yerevan and Athens have all been recorded in this growing canon.

Ixchel
2021 / Mexico / 8 min
Mother moon, liquid Nahuatl, salty skin…Among the steam your presence vanishes and clings to the roots. You embody the navel of the world, where life sprouts and ends…In an environment of surreal nature, an archetypal figure is revealed though a lyrical, visual painting in motion. Crafted by the superposition of opposites: water-land, dryness-blooming, grounded-volatile, IXCHEL invites the audience on a mysterious journey loaded with visual creativity and a sensual cinematic construction.

Mascara
2022 / Argentina / 3 min
A woman rebelling against her seemingly perfect life. An urgent need to escape. A transformation led by her alter egos: those women who co-exist inside of her and who guide her along a path of liberation.

A Body Is
2021 / Spain / 4 min
Antonio José Martínez Palacios was going to be the biggest Spanish musician of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, he was incarcerated and executed without a trial at the age of 33, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

What If?
2022 / Mexico / 1 min
It is a piece that arises from the bodily sensations that can generate anxiety in the human being. Anxiety to live, a failed love, a loss or everyday stress. The title of the work evokes finding multiple solutions to this condition that has manifested itself at least once in all of us.

Ghostly Labor: A Dance Film
2022 / United States / 13 min
Ghostly Labor: A Dance Film explores the history of labor in the US–Mexico borderlands through Tap Dance, Mexican Zapateado, Son Jarocho, Afro Caribbean movement, and live music. This work brings together polyrhythmic movement and an original score to look at the (ongoing) years of systemic exploitation of labor while highlighting the power and joy of collective resistance. Based on farmworker interviews in California, this excerpt honors the sacred hands that feed us and was filmed on a farm with support from Ayudando Latinos a Soñar (ALAS), a non-profit advocacy organization for farmworkers in Half Moon Bay, CA. A full-length dance theater production of Ghostly Labor will premiere in 2023.
That’s all, folks! We hope you enjoyed the screening. If you have a moment, please take our audience survey to VOTE for your favorite films for Audience Choice Awards.