Film Night

Join us for an exciting evening of films about art! Free to enter as always ❤️

// PROGRAM //

The Alchemist’s Dance by Arantxa Vela

Spain 2024

Feature Documentary

How does María Pagés’ thinking work? Where do her movements come from? What inspires her dancing? Starting with the staging of one of her latest shows, ‘De Scheherezade’, at the Roman Theatre of Mérida, we delve into her creative process, a process that she has shared for more than ten years with the poet, writer and dramaturg El Arbi El Harti. Both helps us to deconstruct scenes and draw a line that links with their previous works. By means of a fine sense of humour, the couple reveals to us the happiness and difficulties of living and working together. María Pagés shows herself to us as a woman whose life has its center on stage, in her way of understanding flamenco. Her dance seems to be something close to meditation and her creative process, a kind of trance.

Waters of Diversity by Louis-Robert Bouchard

Canada 2023

Video Installation

Waters of diversity is an interactive art installation resulting from a collaboration between six artists, three from Morocco and three from Quebec. Abdellah M. HASSAK (music), Youssef Barrada (video), and Ahlam El Morsli (contemporary dance) joined Josiane Roberge (video), Émilie Clepper (music), and Greg Selinger (contemporary dance) for the creation of this work.

The objective was to discover how such a varied team with completely different approaches and disciplines can combine, express, and question the multiplicity of each individual’s realities. Each person can have their own subjective understanding of the world around them based on their experiences, beliefs, values, and culture.

The work that emerged from this process explores the relationship between the artists and their territories through their connection to the most important natural resource: water. So abundant in Quebec, so precious in Morocco, this duality inspired the artists from the project’s inception and served as the guiding thread throughout the creation. The result is an intimate work where the territory meets the body to speak to the soul. Waters of diversity invites the viewer to poetically dive into a digital work evoking the body as a receptacle and guardian of this essential resource.  

This project highlighted the importance of empathy and mutual understanding in social interactions by bringing together artists from diverse backgrounds around the idea of a remote project where artistic constraint nourishes the group’s creativity and pushes them to cross limits often influenced by social, historical, cultural, and personal factors to dialogue and collaborate constructively.

El Tonelero: Creando El Alma Del Barril by Lou Guarneri and Maria T Luskay

Spain

Feature Documentary

La película PaceDocs de 2024 es una exploración del arte de la fabricación de barriles, también conocido como tonelería, que tiene una rica historia que se remonta a civilizaciones antiguas, con evidencia de contenedores de madera utilizados para almacenar y transportar líquidos encontrados en sitios arqueológicos que datan desde el año 2690 A.C. en Egipto. El tipo de barrica y el tipo de madera utilizada en la vinificacíon pueden influir significativamente en el sabor, el aroma y las características del vino en España, al igual que en otras regiones vitivinícolas del mundo.

Los vinos de la región de Montilla-Moriles son ampliamente conocidos desde hace siglos. La región vinícola se remonta al siglo octavo, convirtiéndose en uno de los vinos más antiguos de la región de Andalucía.

En este documental, producido por la Dra. Maria Luskay, el profesor Lou Guarneri y el equipo de cine documental de la Universidad Pace, los cineastas de PaceDocs hablaron con cooperadores y enólogos que han dedicado sus vidas a esta tradición.

En el proceso, aprendieron sobre el trabajo muy importante de la toneleríael—tonelero— y cómo las manos del tonelero contribuyen a la artesanía de la fabricación de barriles, con la alma de la barca en la esencia del sabor y la artesanía en el condimento del vino y los licores.