Bucharest International Dance Film Festival to start on Thursday

The four-day sixth edition of the Bucharest International Dance Film Festival (BIDFF), which begins on Thursday, will be offering screenings, workshops, short film competitions and conferences featuring renowned guests.

According to a press statement from the organisers released on Tuesday, the theme of the sixth edition of the festival - utopia/dystopia - calls for a reflection on the present and exploration of a possible future.

"Ema," the latest film by Chilean director Pablo Larrain, will run for the national premiere at the opening of the festival, on Thursday at 20:30hrs at Mercato Kultur and at 21:00hrs, at Elvire Popesco Cinema Hall, in the open air.

The film, which ran in the 2019 Venice Film Festival competition, stars Mariana Di Girolamo and Gael Garcia Bernal; the soundtrack is provided by the famous electronic music producer Nicolas Jaar.

In addition to 32 short films from 14 countries form around the world that have entered the three competitions - international, national and musicals - a series of events dedicated to the film and dance industry will be offered as part of the festival:

* Maria Tanjala, co-founder of FilmChain and a film producer will hold a conference on Friday, at 16:00hrs, to offer an overview of the filmmaking process and the importance of collaborative work.

* Jassem Hindi, an artist who explores the physical relationship between poetry and performance, will hold an online conference on Saturday, an online conference on editing techniques related to the texture of utopias and dystopias that have the power to manipulate time.

* On Sunday, at 16:00hrs, online, Pavle Heidler will tell the story of dystopia at a conference based on Descartes' theory of the mind-body dualism, which has influenced the standards of values that the West has established and promoted so much.

* Independent choreographer Chrysanthi Badeka will hold a dance film workshop on Thursday, Friday and Saturday that will explore, for three days, with selected participants, the art of dance film as a practice for interdisciplinary artistic development.

In addition, the Saturday night will see the national debut of the film "Being Jerome Bel," a 2019 French documentary directed by Aldo Lee and Sima Khatami, which will run at 21:00hrs, at the Elvire Popesco Cinema Hall, outdoor.

The festival ends on Sunday, at 20:30hrs, at the Cinema Hall of the Museum of the Romanian Peasant, with the screening supported by Conceptual Lab by Theo Nissim of Hungarian documentary "The Euphoria of Being," directed by Reka Szabo.

The screenings of the festival will take place outdoors, at Mercato Kultur, the Elvira Popesco Cinema Hall and the Cinema Hall of the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. Tickets are available on Eventbook.