Special Events Archive
The following events were collaborations between the San Francisco Dance Film Festival/Dance Film SF and other organizations or partnerships. These screenings were one-off occasions, outside of the festival proper.
Friday, September 13, 2024
San Francisco Dance Film Festival presents a special screening of the iconic Y2K ballet movie CENTER STAGE, featuring a live Q&A with film star Amanda Schull and host Lady Camden.
Thursday, June 6, 2024
San Francisco Dance Film Festival honors four Bay Area choreographers – Ellen Bromberg, Joe Goode, Margaret Jenkins, and Brenda Way – and the filmmakers with whom they created historic dance films for national public television in 1989 and 1991.
Thursday, May 30, 2024
San Francisco Dance Film Festival and San Francisco Public Library continue the tradition of presenting the festival’s popular highlight reels. Experience a selection of ten short films, including documentary shorts, narratives, and experimental screendance works that represent a dynamic range of creativity with broad audience appeal.
Friday, March 13, 2020
Ballet for Life was a unique collaboration between three huge cultural brands: Queen, Versace, and the visionary choreographer Maurice Béjart. At its heart is the loss of two legendary performers, Freddie Mercury and dancer Jorge Donn, both of whom died of AIDS in the early 1990s.
Saturday, May 4, 2019
Dance Film SF is participating in the Merce Cunningham’s centenary celebration with a special event and screening of two groundbreaking films that represent Cunningham’s Past and Present.
Saturday, March 2; Saturday, March 9; Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Dance Film SF is pleased to present Mia: A Dancer’s Journey in participation with San Francisco Public Library’s celebration of Women’s History Month. One of the most celebrated ballerinas of the first half of the 20th century, Mia Slavenska was one of a small group of famous émigré dancers who changed the face of American dance by introducing Americans to ballet as an art form.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
SFDFF presents the U.S. premiere of Ingmar Bergman Through the Choreographer’s Eye, a film in which four of Sweden’s most innovative choreographers travel to Ingmar Bergman’s home on Fårö to explore and get inspired.
Thursday, October 12 & Saturday, October 14, 2017
San Francisco Dance Film Festival partners with UCSF/Reel Abilities and its Department of Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Science to present the documentary film Enter the Faun. An unlikely collaboration between a veteran choreographer and a young actor with cerebral palsy delivers astonishing proof that everyone is capable of transformation.
Sunday, July 23, 2017
SFDFF joins Diablo Ballet & the Lafayette Library and Learning Center in presenting their summer 2017 Dance on Film Series. Invited to present programming for the July 23rd screening at the library theater, SFDFF will offer highlights from the 2016 festival, including award-winning international screendance shorts and the documentary film Kick Ball Change, which offers a window into the creative, crazy, and inspiring mind of Maxim Kozhevnikov, five-time professional world champion in latin ballroom dance.
Saturday, April 29, 2017
n celebration of International Dance Day and Bay Area National Dance Week, SFDFF and San Francisco Public Library will again present highlights from the 2016 festival, including award-winning screendance shorts and the documentary film Kick Ball Change, which offers a window into the creative, crazy, and inspiring mind of Maxim Kozhevnikov, five-time professional world champion in latin ballroom dance.
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
San Francisco Dance Film Festival and Magnolia Pictures present a preview screening of Alive and Kicking, a feature-length documentary that takes an inside look into the culture of swing dancing and the characters who make it special. The film explores the culture surrounding Swing dance from the emergence of the Lindy Hop to the modern day international phenomenon. Following the growth of Swing dance from its purely American roots as an art form, to countries all over the world, Alive and Kicking looks at the lives of the Swing dancers themselves to find their personal stories and why this dance fills them with joy.
Thursday, August 4, 2016
SFDFF joins Diablo Ballet & the Lafayette Library and Learning Center in presenting their summer 2016 Dance on Film Series. Invited to present programming for the August 4th screening at the library theater, SFDFF will offer highlights from the 2015 festival, including award-winning screendance shorts and the documentary Rare Birds, about the epic undertaking of Alexander Ekman’s A Swan Lake at the Norwegian National Ballet.
Thursday, May 16, 2016
After transforming Madrid’s Compañía Nacional de Danza into one of the most successful dance companies in the world, Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato is fired. Soon after, Russian billionaire Vladimir Kekhman lures Duato to St. Petersburg and puts the international contemporary dance icon in charge of a major classical ballet company, making him the first foreigner in that role in over 100 years. In this revelatory documentary about an artist in transition, Duato accepts the challenge of modernizing the traditionalist Russian troupe, even as it plunges him into cultural and social isolation.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Join the Museum of Performance + Design, San Francisco Dance Film Festival and dancers from San Francisco Ballet for an evening of short dance films and reception to benefit MP+D and SFDFF, two organizations that help capture, promote and preserve dance. This special evening features short dance films, screened at SFDFF, that were created over the years with and by artists from San Francisco Ballet and salutes the creative spirit of a unique community of artists who have made a thrilling leap from the stage to the screen.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
In celebration of International Dance Day and Bay Area National Dance Week, SFDFF and San Francisco Public Library will present highlights from the 2015 festival, including award-winning screendance shorts and Let’s Get The Rhythm, a 53-minute documentary by Bay Area filmmaker Irene Chagall chronicling girls’ hand-clapping games on inner-city playgrounds and around the world, from every continent and many islands in between. Three eight-year-olds from diverse cultural backgrounds in the greater New York area charm viewers with their personal insights as they learn, share, and eventually outgrow the tradition.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
After 21 years, THE DANCER will have its San Francisco Premiere at the Brava Theater Center. The 1994 film follows the young and gifted Katja Björner through years of intensive training at the Royal Swedish Ballet School as she develops into an international ballet star. Filmed with an eye toward conveying the physical aspects of dancing — the pain, sweat, and tears, as well as the exquisite beauty — THE DANCER captures the fierce determination and struggle that goes into the desire to dance at the highest level.
Friday & Saturday, April 17 & 18, 2015
The award-winning film Capturing Grace tells the story of what happens when the legendary Mark Morris Dance Group joins forces with people with Parkinson’s disease to stage a unique performance. Followed by a discussion and Q&A with filmmaker Dave Iverson, Dr. Helen Bronte-Stewart, Director of Stanford Movement Disorders Center and David Leventhal, celebrated dancer and program director of Dance for PD®. Moderator, Dr. Maren Grainger-Monsen, Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
SFDFF in association with Alonzo King LINES Ballet presents Clips & Conversation with Frederick Wiseman and Alonzo King. After viewing excerpts from Wiseman’s four extraordinary documentaries, Ballet (1995), La Danse (2009) Crazy Horse (2011), and Boxing Gym (2010), audiences were treated to a captivating discussion of the unique relationship between dance and film, and the evolution of ballet.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Join San Francisco Dance Film Festival, in association with San Francisco Ballet and Ballet San Jose, in the West Coast premiere of Secundaria. This illuminating film, featuring one high-school class from Cuba’s world-famous National Ballet School, provides an intimate look at the political and social challenges in the lives of three talented students poised to move up onto the world stage.