Trailer
This film will be presented during the event La Nuit de la danse on March 21, 2024 at Théâtre Outremont.
Refuge, the final part of the “Migration Dance Film Project” series by choreographer Sandy Silva and director Marlene Millar, is born from collaborative choreography and the exchange of individual dance and vocal languages. Dancers and singers draw from their personal corporeal and vocal memories rooted in tango, haka, gigue, contemporary, and urban dance. They create unique expressions of home as a sanctuary, both individually and collectively. These sounds and movements harmonize in a nomadic, rhythmic chorus of bodies-as-archives, awakening a deep connection to a specific place etched into their body memory.
Refuge, the final part of the “Migration Dance Film Project” series by choreographer Sandy Silva and director Marlene Millar, is born from collaborative choreography and the exchange of individual dance and vocal languages. Dancers and singers draw from their personal corporeal and vocal memories rooted in tango, haka, gigue, contemporary, and urban dance. They create unique expressions of home as a sanctuary, both individually and collectively. These sounds and movements harmonize in a nomadic, rhythmic chorus of bodies-as-archives, awakening a deep connection to a specific place etched into their body memory.
| Director | Marlene Millar, Marlene Millar |
| Director of Photography | Kes Tagney |
| Production | Sandy Silva, Marlene Millar |
| Production Manager | Erika Zur Nedden |
| Editing | Jules De Niverville |
| Sound editing | Jean Fréchette |
| Choreography | Sandy Silva |
| Artist | Afia Douglas, Issac Endo, Hélène Lemay, Kimberly Robin, Sandy Silva, Bobby Thompson, Dominic Desrochers, David Cronkite, Sonia Clarke, Drew Bathory |
| Sound mixing | Félix Boisvert |
| Music | Jean Fréchette |
In Partnership with
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Production
Marlene Millar
For over 30 years filmmaker Marlene Millar has created screen dance, documentaries and experimental media productions. With a background in design, contemporary dance and filmmaking (BFA Concordia University, Montreal), Marlene pursued graduate filmmaking at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, before she received a Pew Dance Media Fellowship at the University of California (Los Angeles). Millar’s expansive career was honoured at her first solo exhibition, a retrospective of her 30-year practice at Threshold Artspace, UK (2019).
Since 2000, Millar has co-created a critically acclaimed collection of dance media work with Philip Szporer through their production company, MOUVEMENT PERPÉTUEL. Their award-winning films have been broadcast nationally and widely circulated at international festivals and influential exhibition spaces: the 2010 Cultural Olympics, World Exhibition in Shanghai, and a UNESCO tour of Latin America, throughout Germany as part of 1700 Years of Jewish Life and recently on tour throughout the UK with their documentary MABOUGOU — Being in the World. Founded in 2014, the MIGRATION DANCE FILM PROJECT series (LAY ME LOW, PILGRIMAGE, MOVE, TRAVERSE, NAVIGATION, REFUGE), produced/directed by Millar and produced/choreographed by Sandy Silva, has garnered over 30 awards internationally including Best Canadian Short Film at FIFA. This process-driven continuum comes to life as Millar transposes the choreography to the screen, creating a poignant visual language that reveals the intricacies of these issue-driven, performative stories centred on migration. Millar is a prolific educator teaching filmmaking workshops across continents at institutes such as Centre Imagine (Burkino Faso), Loikka (Helsinki) and has mentored documentary filmmakers in Iqaluit, Iglooklik, Cambridge Bay and Pangnirtung, Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic.
Biographical notes provided by the film production team
Since 2000, Millar has co-created a critically acclaimed collection of dance media work with Philip Szporer through their production company, MOUVEMENT PERPÉTUEL. Their award-winning films have been broadcast nationally and widely circulated at international festivals and influential exhibition spaces: the 2010 Cultural Olympics, World Exhibition in Shanghai, and a UNESCO tour of Latin America, throughout Germany as part of 1700 Years of Jewish Life and recently on tour throughout the UK with their documentary MABOUGOU — Being in the World. Founded in 2014, the MIGRATION DANCE FILM PROJECT series (LAY ME LOW, PILGRIMAGE, MOVE, TRAVERSE, NAVIGATION, REFUGE), produced/directed by Millar and produced/choreographed by Sandy Silva, has garnered over 30 awards internationally including Best Canadian Short Film at FIFA. This process-driven continuum comes to life as Millar transposes the choreography to the screen, creating a poignant visual language that reveals the intricacies of these issue-driven, performative stories centred on migration. Millar is a prolific educator teaching filmmaking workshops across continents at institutes such as Centre Imagine (Burkino Faso), Loikka (Helsinki) and has mentored documentary filmmakers in Iqaluit, Iglooklik, Cambridge Bay and Pangnirtung, Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic.
Biographical notes provided by the film production team
Selected films:
Devoilé l’invisible (2023)
Offering (2023)
Navigation (2020)
Traverse (2018)
Bhairava (2018)
Devoilé l’invisible (2023)
Offering (2023)
Navigation (2020)
Traverse (2018)
Bhairava (2018)
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