Founded by dance artist Elysa Wendi and film producer Jeremy Chua, Cinemovement proposes to be a platform that aims to create opportunities for disruption and re-organisation in dance and film practices. It is not just about the collaborative process between two different mediums, but the idea that the form of each medium is challenged and transformed to create a new system of communication in an equal way that shifts or evolves the way we encounter each art form. Our objective is not set out to identity or classify a largely unexplored genre, but almost to erase reliance on conventional form and attempt to reimagine it completely instead. The platform is initiated based on the philosophy that our own contemporariness or pertinence in the dance and film scene is about disrupting a prevailing status status quo or expectation of what a dance film could be and re-organise them. We are interested in how we can make a spectator see the potentiality of “future”; to explore the unknown in the context of now.
About
Elysa Wendi is a Singaporean artist based in Hong Kong.
In 2008, she departed her 10 years dance career and started embarking an exciting journey experimenting on choreographic ideas with the medium of film, task based performances and curatorial possibilities.
Encountering the predicament of her frozen and ageing body, Wendi started looking at preservation and observation of performance with the tool of digital media. In 2009, she began collaborating with different filmmakers and debut her first directorial commission by Singapore Arts Festival, Dance/Film 2011. She continues working on film medium consecutively and and screened her films in different festivals such as Romania Digital Art Festival, Pool-Dock-11 Berlin, International Video Dance Festival of Burgundy , Cinedans, Turkey International Dance Film Festival, Light Moves festival of screen dance Ireland, 16th International Festival Signs of the Night Paris and the most recently International Dance Film Japan.
In between choreographic practice and film study, Wendi assimilates and formulating her own methodology in creation which most often not in the clear category of both art forms. Preoccupied with the abstraction of memory from place, time and biographical traces, Wendi continues her exploration on different manifestations of live and filmic works. She often considers the notion of cinematic presence in her performative works and vice versa. One of her notable film work “1958 Delivery” which juxtaposes photography , historical reference and performative ritual gained her the best experimental film award in South Taiwan Film Festival 2018.
Since 2018, she has been invited as guest curator for Jumping Frame International Video Dance Festival Hong Kong and Rollout International Dance Film Festival Macau.
Jeremy Chua is a Singaporean producer/writer based in Singapore and Paris. He frequently collaborates with Akanga Film Asia and Lowave Paris on their film projects. Since 2014, he started his own company, Potocol, which has co-produced A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery by Lav Diaz (Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize, Berlinale Competition 2016), A Yellow Bird by K. Rajagopal (Cannes Critics Week 2016) and Brotherhood by Pepe Diokno (Karlovy Vary IFF 2016). Potocol is also developing Tomorrow is a long time by Jow Zhi Wei (Jerusalem Film Lab 2016), You are there by Nicole Woodford (SEAFIC 2017), I see waves by Abdullah Mohammad Saad (ACF Script Development Fund) and in post-production for Family Events by Ying Liang. In 2017, he was selected as one of Berlinale Talents and was a finalist for the VFF Talent Highlight Award. He is also a delegate at the Pingyao International Film Festival.
Cinemovement Ltd is supported by the
National Arts Council under the Seed
Grant Scheme for the period 1 April
2017 to 31 March 2020.
