Spectrums #3 : Fiver Dance Film Festival (Spain)

This program offers a personal perspective on the richness and diversity of dance cinema produced in Spain over the past 15 years. Each of the selected works explores the relationship between the moving image and the body from radically different angles, and yet they resonate deeply with one another — building a shared space of tension, rhythm, and narrative curiosity.

I’m particularly drawn to curating selections that confront the aesthetic fatigue and formal limitations that too often plague the videodance field. This program is an attempt to open up space for works that operate freely across genres, contexts and traditions. From horror and narrative drama to site-specific experimentation and poetic documentary, these films have screened in major film festivals of all kinds: from conventional to experimental, even horror.

Take Timecode, for instance — a choreographic gem that not only won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but was also nominated for an Oscar. That alone says a lot about how far the dialogue between dance and cinema can reach when it embraces complexity and risk. I hope this selection offers an inspiring and unexpected window into how bodies and images can meet — not as illustration or ornament, but as co-authors of the screen.

—Alex PACHÓN