"Video of the Week" Archive
Our YouTube archive features everything from insightful Q&As with filmmakers to live dance performances, Co-Lab films, and trailers from past festivals.
Our YouTube channel combines SFDFF-produced content with that of past festival filmmakers, bringing you an abundance of videos to enjoy at your own pace.
Featured Videos Archive:
When two dancers are asked to partner at an audition in SFDFF Co-Laboratory film “I Just Wanna Dance”, each struggle with the flip sides of homophobia before finding common footing.
Rooted in hustle, the dancers move through its various influences such as mambo and lindy-hop while integrating elements of contemporary hip-hop.
Sean Dorsey Dance performed a mesmerizing excerpt from the life-affirming, internationally acclaimed show “The Lost Art of Dreaming” at our 2023 Bay Area Shorts screening.
Sean Dorsey is a San Francisco-based choreographer, dancer, writer, teaching artist and cultural activist. Long recognized as the U.S.’ first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer, Dorsey teaches with explicitly trans-positive pedagogy.
To celebrate Pride Month, we’re reflecting on this 2024 Q&A with Lorris Eichinger, Olivia Evans and Charmaine Butcher, creatives behind the SFDFF Co-Laboratory film, Intimité Révélée, a statement of queer love and intimacy.
The film premiered last April at our Spring Fling.
Leading lady of the iconic dance film Center Stage shares her experience filming over a summer with friends and heartthrobs alike!
Following SFDFF’s screening of Center Stage, San Francisco Chronicle’s Tony Bravo moderated an exclusive Q&A with CENTER STAGE star Amanda Schull and the evening’s host Lady Camden. Check out the full Q&A here.
Happy Pride Month!
Enjoy this performance by Ballet22 that followed the premiere screening of SFDFF and Ballet22’s Co-Lab film, “Intimité Révélée”.
Ballet22 presents classical and contemporary ballets and is dedicated to commissioning new works that amplify queer representation in the field while creating a space for dancers to freely express their authentic selves.
Throwing it back to our Q&A with the team behind the documentary feature film, Closer Than Yesterday, which documents two young SF dancers’ journey to the Helsinki International Ballet Competition.
Q&A features director Lisa Le Lievre, dancers Carmela Mayo and Alexis Francisco Valdes, and coach/producer of the film Tiit Helimets, moderated by Katja Björner.
Who doesn’t love a good shimmy??
Our 2017 festival’s Co-Laboratory Films + Local Shorts program opened with a special live performance by swing dancers from Shimmytown.
A magical journey from the streets of Mumbai to the stages of New York, “Call Me Dancer” is the story of perseverance, rebellion, passion, family, culture, and an unlikely friendship between Manish, an athletic street dancer from India, and Yehuda, a curmudgeonly 75-year-old ballet master.
Following our screening of Call Me Dancer in 2023, KT Nelson sat down with Manish Chauhan to discuss the journey portrayed in the film.
Our 2nd most watched video on YouTube – for good reason – is Ekman’s Concise Guide to Natural Movement.
Neither very concise nor totally natural, it’s pure Ekman.
Dr. Rashaad Newsome’s work Black Magic documents a live performance that explores trans women and their contributions to the vogue fem lexicon, and expands it with the use of motion tracking software.
Production Associate Clare Schweitzer spoke with Rashaad about the multi-layered journey of the film version of the work on our podcast, Dancing Through the Lens.
Josephine Lee (The Pointe Shop) gushed with Amanda Schull (star of the iconic dance film Center Stage) on Instagram Live over the film, and Amanda’s dance and acting history.
In this 2022 interview conducted by former SFDFF Executive Director Judy Flannery, Tamara Rojo emphasizes the importance of live performance and, simultaneously, of creating dance films to reach new audiences.
Our 2025 call for submissions closes in 1 month!
SFDFF is looking for dance films of all genres. Here’s a snippet of 2024 dance films in which the structure follows a storyline, whether it is fictional or non-fictional, using dance in various ways to move the story forward.
Throwing it back to the first trailer we posted to YouTube for our 4th Annual Festival!
We’ve come a long way, and we continue to look forward to the future of dance film.
Documentary “Pol Pot Dancing” interweaves the stories of classical Cambodian dance and the violent Khmer Rouge regime through the lineage and multigenerational legacy of star dancer Chea Samy.
Bay Area-based master dancer Charya Burt introduced the film during SFDFF’s in-person screening in October 2024. During her mesmerizing introduction, Charya demonstrated hand movements symbolizing the circle of life through gestures that symbolize the life stages of a tree.
Dancing Through the Lens Co-host Chris Ouellette discussed Irish Dance and the 2022 documentary “Steps of Freedom: The Story of Irish Dance” with Riverdance performer Morgan Bullock.
“Steps of Freedom” reveals how Irish dance was shaped over centuries through interactions with many cultures as it evolved from a simple folk dance to become a global phenomenon loved by millions around the world.
Happy Women’s History Month!
Choreographer Jane Comfort emerged in the late 1970s with experimental fusions of text, rhythm, and movement that spoke to the social issues of her day. We chatted with Jane and director Alexandra Nikolchev about their film on Jane’s expansive career, “Breaking Form”.
“I don’t think she was ahead of her time… she was her time.”
Check out our YouTube playlist “Women Making Moves” – featuring all films made by women.
Wild by Lindsay Gauthier and Fogbeast (Melecio Estrella and Andrew Ward) was a part of our Co-Laboratory program, which organizes a unique collaboration between choreographers and filmmakers, who then create a short dance film in a week.
Happy Black History Month! SFDFF Co-Lab film “Dear Black Girls” explores the following questions: How do we pay homage to black revolutionary women? How do we inspire people to take action? How do we know if people truly care to see real change?
SFDFF 2025 submissions are OPEN! The festival continues to seek groundbreaking work and welcomes submissions of all dance-based works. All forms of dance are welcome. Take a look at one of our most popular festival trailers on YouTube!
Submit your film today at FilmFreeway.com/SanFranciscoDanceFilmFestival!
To kick off Black History Month, we are sharing some valuable insight and knowledge from our 2024 Raising Voices filmmakers. Raising Voices is one of our annual programs, spotlighting the work of traditionally underrepresented artists and amplifying their powerful messages of social justice and belonging.
A true “time capsule from the past”, we flashed back to a time of Standard Definition, 4:3 screen formats, and 1” reel-to-reel videotape with our screening of the PBS series “Alive From Off Center”. Hear from Ellen Bromberg, Joe Goode, Margaret Jenkins, and Brenda Way on their historic dance films made for national public television in 1989 and 1991.
Embodiment Project serves to uplift the ancestral and primordial power of dance as an act of resistance, collective healing, and social transformation. The group performed at SFDFF’s Locals Night last fall!
Documentary feature “Obsessed with Light” by Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl chronicles the career and legacy of the early 20th-century artist. Fuller pioneered the ingenious use of electric light for the stage and immediately understood the importance of protecting her ownership of these innovations. With a strong will toward self-empowerment, her avant garde representations of the body resonate through history. After the screening of Obsessed with Light at SFDFF, Zeva Oelbaum discussed the process of making the film with us.