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Come early to take some photos at the Portland Dance Film Festival Step and Repeat! 

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THE EXPERIENCE

Portland Dance Film Fest (PDFF) is back for its 9th year! This year’s three-day festival will include 25 film shorts showcasing a diverse range of films that use movement to tell stories. PDFF endeavors to foster the appreciation and creation of dance film in Portland and to connect us all more to the language of our bodies. Join us for 25 spectacular PDFF Picks, curated from 14 different countries.

We begin our festival with a cohort of nine earnest, light-soaked offerings of dance and film. Picks 1 opens with a solo poem that glides across the skin, celebrating the body as earth (Brown Boys, Australia), and closes with an ensemble of women throwing wide their rage (Maldonne, France).

In between, we’re invited into stories of round repetition and soft fatigue (Corralling of Circles, China), and into layered digital elements laid over bodies seeking passage (SLUGS, USA/Oregon). We meet Carmen (Spain), a young street flamenco superstar, and are held in the precise and fierce tension of a daughter’s plea for freedom (Spoken Movement Family Honour, United Kingdom).

The second half of Picks 1 begins with I’m Here (United Kingdom), a collaborative exploration of grief danced by former and current members of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. From there, we move into the cultural crossroads of the Silk Road in the goddess-inspired Kucha (China), and finally to the sweet, colorful pas de deux Passing By (United States), which sails us into the coiled fury of Maldonne, where we end the night in defiance and sisterhood. 

9 Films  |   Run Time w/Intermission: ~1 hour 20 minutes

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ON SCREEN: Portland Dance Film Festival 2025 Picks 1

Brown Boys | Directed by Cass Mortimer Eipper & Daniel Mateo  | 6:11 | Australia

Co-directed by Daniel Mateo and Cass Mortimer Eipper, Brown Boys is a film inspired by a collection of poems that explore a sense of home and comfortability in our own bodies. For Daniel, telling this story is very important. It’s a dance film about connection and highlighting the beauty of this unspoken vibration between land and body. It carries the holistic and physical nourishment needed to heal us as Indigenous people.

Corralling of Circles | Directed & Choreographed by Siye Tao | 4:07 | China

This short film is a far cry of the impulses to escape from a suffocating but all-too-familiar setting, which erodes our souls. The circular shapes, repetitive tasks, swirling movements seem to carry the woman into a sinking hole. Can she finally break free and find her way out?

SLUGS | Directed by Marli Hughes, Brenton Salo, & Everett Nate Yockey, Choreography by Franco Nieto, Charles Roy Jr., & Casey Holzman | 6:19 | Local Artist

SLUGS is an exploration of movement, resistance, and environment. It reimagines form through a distorted lens of layered digital elements, creating a language that exists outside the physical world. In SLUGS, bodies seek passage, yet meet unseen barriers. Environments oscillate between organic and artificial, where the performers, like slugs, navigate pathways of tension and release. An otherworldly tone and sense of cyclical entrapment amplify the film’s central question: What lies just beyond reach?

Carmen | Director: Andrew Margetson & Choreography by Carmen Aviles | 4:37 | United Kingdom/Spain

A young woman, dressed in a tracksuit, walks through the backstreets of Sevilla into a housing project. This is Carmen Aviles – the young street superstar of flamenco.

Spoken Movement Family Honour | Directed by Daniel Gurton & Choreography by Kwame Asafo-Adjei | 11:40 | United Kingdom

In a British-Ghanaian household bound by tradition and religion, a young girl lives under the oppressive control of her abusive father. At the family dinner table, heated arguments reveal the deep rift between them as they confront the scars of their shared history.

-intermission-

I’m Here | Directed by Samantha Shay | 6:20 | United Kingdom

I’m Here is a short film that emerges from rehearsals for the dance theater piece Life in this House is Over by director Samantha Shay. Exploring the social awkwardness of grief, and inspired by the writing of Anton Chekhov, the project gathers current and former artists of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, as well as the Grotowski Institute-based physical theater company Teatr ZAR, as a reflection on the lineages of Polish Jerzy Grotowski and German Pina Bausch, their relationship and how their work resonates today.

Kucha | Directed by Chenglong TANG & Choreography by Gulmira Mamat | 9:35

Kucha, an ancient oasis city dating back to the 3rd century BCE in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang, China, was a significant cultural crossroad of the Silk Road, renowned for its Buddhist heritage and distinctive music and dance. Looking back at Kucha, the short film reveals a mysterious dream, a curious exploration, or, maybe a philosophical conversation that transcends time and space.

Passing By | Choreographed and Directed by: Terez Dean Orr | 2:42 | United States

“Passing By” is a playful exploration of the human “body” and memory. With time, the idea of “home” becomes deeply rooted; the comfort of what we know, a physical environment that settles, and the simple pleasure of discoveries. “Passing By” brings a snapshot into focus without the constraints of linear time. Past, present, and future blend, as they do in our physical space with human emotions and memories. Our two characters play in these worlds, whether in dreams or reality. As concrete as the geography they inhabit, or ephemeral as a passing dream, their shared experience conjures the notion of “home”.

Maldonne | Directed by Leïla Ka & Josselin Carré, Choreography by Leïla Ka | 15:00

Eleven women and their gaze, each wearing a flowery dress and a buried sorrow linked to her condition as a woman. Together, and without words, they take up the challenge of freeing themselves. A collective revolt begins. With positive rage.

 

ON STAGE: Kailee McMurran, Tia Palomino, Jess Evans

Kailee McMurran / Festival Director
Kailee McMurran is an award-winning dance filmmaker, performer, and founder/director of Portland Dance Film Fest. A former principal with Rainbow Dance Theatre, she co-founded SubRosa Dance Collective and has performed with Do Jump! Extremely Physical Theater since 2011. She also runs Selkie Stationery, a stationery and watercolor studio.

Tia Palomino / Director of Operations
Tia Palomino is a performer, teacher, and co-founder of Portland Dance Film Fest. She has performed and taught with Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Do Jump! Extremely Physical Theater, Polaris Dance Theatre, POV Dance, SubRosa Dance Collective, and A-WOL Dance Collective. She runs Trampoline Town, a circus studio in SW Portland, where she teaches aerial arts, trampoline, and acrobatics.

Jess Evans  / Director of Communication
Jess Evans is a dancer, choreographer, somatic healer, and co-founder of Portland Dance Film Fest. She has created and performed work as a principal with Rainbow Dance Theater, SubRosa Dance Collective, push/FOLD, and as a solo artist. She is a Licensed Massage Therapist and Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher.