It's about the dance film sharqi produced by the Riurau Film Festival, the film festival of the Marina Alta. The short has been selected by the Dance On Camera Festival out of nearly three hundred papers from thirty-five countries.
In this way, it becomes the only Spanish short film chosen by the festival that will be screened on February 13 at the Francesca Beale Theater of the avant-garde Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center. That's four minutes and twelve seconds of exceptionally bold work.
The Dansa Film Lab of the Escola de Cinema Riurau Association accepted the challenge of its director, Joan Bernat Pineda, choreographer, dancer and filmmaker, to push the cinematographic principles of Dance Film to the limit.
Conceived as a multi-author creation based on a frenetic and groundbreaking choreography that evokes the solos of oriental Dabke, six directors accompany the dancer, camera in hand, capturing his movements up to seventy-two complete repetitions, moving for or against his route.
The direction has been in charge of all its participants and for the production 'off-screen' have been used, recording in turn the sound generated in the film scene. In turn responsible for editing, Marta Lorenzi, Isabel De Piero, Yolanda Medina, Cristina Lozano, Carmen Zaragoza and Isabel Bilbao have made extreme use of fragmentation and multi-perspective while preserving the continuity of the choreographic movement intact.
The mystique of overhead light over the dark atmosphere of sharqi, shot under the tutelage of cinematographer José María Hortelano, are completed with the composition and voice of the musicologist and also dancer and filmmaker Rafel Arnal. An Allahu Akbar and a Te Deum on a background of a staff offer the rhythmic counterpoint to the incessant flow of the image and symbolize the coexistence between different cultures, peoples and religions that converged in the eastern peninsula for centuries.
The Riurau Film Festival has the collaboration of the Valencian Institute of Culture (IVC) and the town councils of Dénia, Xàbia, Jesús Pobre and La Xara. For his part, the Dance On Camera, which this year marks over half a century of existence, presents documentary and narrative feature films, creative and innovative short films, filmmakers meetups and special events, cutting-edge and visual art installations, as well as engaging community and student programs.
