2018 Award Winners
Awards for the 9th annual San Francisco Dance Film Festival, chosen by a group of independent jury members, were announced at the end of the closing night program. Awards were given to the following films:

Best Documentary
Play Serious
(United States, 2018) 58 min
Director: T.M. Rives
Choreographer: Alexander Ekman
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Filmmaker T.M. Rives follows the trials and tribulations of Alexander Ekman’s process creating his ambitious new work, Play, for the Paris Opera Ballet.
HONORABLE MENTION
La Chana
(Spain, 2016) 72 minutes
Director: Lucija Stojevic
Choreographer: La Chana

Best Live Performance Capture
THE GREAT GHOSTS
(France, 2018) 52 minutes
Director: Louise Narboni
Choreographer: Yoann Bourgeois
Adapted from The Mechanics of History, this remarkable film is a live performance capture of an exhibition at the Pantheon. Fixed to the highest point of the Pantheon dome, Foucault’s famous pendulum provides the medium for a choreographic creation around movement and balance.

Best Art / Experimental
BOOKANIMA
(South Korea/United States, 2018) 7:31
Director: Shon Kim
Choreographer: Shon Kim
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BOOKANIMA, a compound word of ‘Book’ and ‘Anima’, is an experimental animated film using the technique of Chronophotography to bring a book to life.

Best Student Film
PALOMA
(USA, 2018) 16:14
Director: Sophia Conger
Choreographer: Elisabet Aguilera, Jose Moreno
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Paloma tells the story of a woman who has lost her creative self. But through a small transformative act, she recognizes that she is still a woman, dancer and mother.

Best Screendance Short Over 10 Min
Gatha
(China, 2018) 15:49
Director: Chenglong Tang
Choreographer: Chenglong Tang
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Gatha tells the story of two Tibetan brothers’ prostrating pilgrimage to Mount Kangrinboqe, or Mount Kailash, where the elder brother, unfortunately, died on the road.

Best Screendance Short Under 10 Min
Reach
(United Kingdom, 2018) 3:42
Director: Billy Boyd Cape
Choreographer: Botis Seva
Director Billy Boyd Cape collaborates with Botis Seva’s hip-hop theatre collective Far From The Norm to explore the themes of love, abandonment and fatherhood.