Posts Tagged ‘Istanbul Dance on Camera Festival’

Maida Withers film was shown at Istanbul Dance on Camera. (Photo by Linda Lewett)

A film by Washington, DC dance artist and choreographer Maida Withers, Thresholds Crossed/Art Angar, was selected and screened at the Istanbul Dance on Camera Festival in Turkey in November as part of the “Amerika seckisi” (film selection from America).

Dance Camera Istanbul is an international dance film and photography festival founded by a group of independent artists and art explorers who seek to build a greater awareness of multicultural art forms in connection with the field of dance.

Thresholds Crossed/Art Angar is a political dance film, shot in Soviet-era architectural structures on Solovki Island. The film makes connection between Russia’s gulags (forced labor camps) and America’s Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the treatment of terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. One building shown was the hanger for a dirigible that delivered supplies to the gulag. It later temporarily housed the Art Angar Center for Contemporary Arts, which sponsored the dance residency on the island of Withers and fellow dancer Anthony Gongora.

The film can be viewed online at http://www.vimeo.com/8079530. For more information, visit www.dancecamera-istanbul.org.