Art Project as short film: AERIAL
Artist: Writer. Director. Producer. Editor. Colourist.
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Paus Premieres Festival UK 2022
Lift-Off UK 2022
21 Islands International Short Film Fest USA, NYC Brooklin 2023
A young woman has a chance encounter with aerial acrobatic dancers. Enchanted, she imagines herself as a solo aerial silks performer, dancing in the air, defying the gravity of her fears as she starts the symbolic journey of overcoming her struggles.
— AERIAL is a narrative aerial dance art film as art project. It explores relationships between aerialists and operators (silks, static trapeze, cube, lyra) through spatiality, emotion, and tactility. Through the time-based media of film, the work addresses the phenomenological experience of presence during aerial dance, with a personal and intimate approach to movement as genesis, as being in the world, as ownership of biographical journey. The work is inspired by the artist's own experiences, philosophy, and feelings towards challenges, persistence, and shared humanity; during the overcoming of trauma, the progress of narratives, and the love for one another and the self that culminates in community, in art, and in persistent hope. The artist is German and lives and works in Singapore.
Writer-Director, Producer, Editor, Colourist: Sarah-Tabea Sammel
Distributed by Biome Entertainment
Director of Photography: Feng Lee. Original score composer; cello conductor: KokJun Phang. Sound designer: Xander Toh.
Sarah-Tabea Sammel © 2020, all rights reserved.
Set stills by Alison Li.