The Festival International de Vidéo Danse de Bourgogne (France) is an annual screendance platform that promotes dance films, works of video art, and other forms of experimental cinema that explore movement through bodies, animation, objects and a wide range of compositional methods. We are currently seeking submissions for our 8th season that resonate with the theme Les Danses Macabres: Death and the Moving Image. This theme is inspired by the medieval illustrated texts of dancing skeletons (dance of death) that functioned as an allegory regarding the universality of death. Fascinated by how the stillness or immobility of death is represented through movement, the festival is interested in exploring concepts surrounding death that have occupied a central role in film, dance and other art forms across diverse historic periods and styles.
“Cinema opens onto death like a window opens into a courtyard” – André Bazin
This theme may be interpreted broadly. Beyond explorations of death through movement, we are also interested in works of screendance that explore mortality through rituals, analogies, and related subjects, including but not limited to: requiems, architectural ruins, ghosts and memory, the Gothic, Romanticism, Butoh, André Bazin’s “mummy complex”, absence/presence, death as new beginning or transformation, etc.
Films selected for screening will be shown at one of several events during the festival in late April 2016, including cinema screenings in a theatre or on monitors in installation format. Festival venues include the National Theatre, the Médiathèque of Le Creusot, and the theatre of the Château de la Verrerie.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 15 February 2016. We are only accepting submissions related to the theme noted above. All lengths and formats are welcome, although short films are preferred due to limited screening time. We do not screen documentaries or recordings of live performances. The submission process is electronic and films must be available to view on Vimeo or YouTube (private videos are fine—don’t forget to include the password in your form!). Please complete the submission form found or contact us at:
Submission information and form are also available on our website: