Shadow / Self is a film project that combines dance, fashion and music to explore the darker side of the feminine psyche. A story of human struggle told with movement, beauty and light.
Social & External
The people behind it
Geraldine Hakewill
Self
Elizabeth Blackmore
Shadow
The man, the hill, the shack.
Max isn't sure about his sexual orientation until he meets Leon at his new school. When Max is singing a song at a school concert something beautiful happens.
Best friends Beto and Daniel spend most of their time together. Daniel struggles with his gender identity just to hide his feelings for Beto. To be himself, he has to overcome his fear by showing Beto what he truly feels.
On what should be the most prestigious day of her 8 years on earth, Princess Mahakwe is humiliated in front of the whole school.
A shy Greenwich Village book clerk is discovered by a fashion photographer and whisked off to Paris where she becomes a reluctant model.
When a young man makes an unholy choice, God will test him.
Following the journey of Life as she meets the world for the first time.
Set in a small room, an adolescent woman experiences synesthesia. While she stares at half filled glasses on the table sound replaces her gaze. Harmonic tones exude and induce a trance like state over the woman. Her meditative harmonies are disrupted when an ominous character arrives with the intent to ingest the song. After consuming the beauty the dark character leaves. Left alone, the adolescent woman employs thaumaturgy to lure her song back to life again.
A sickly scrawny man in a striped uniform takes a shaving brush and foam, and with a sharp blade, he shaves the back of the head of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the Auschwitz camp himself. They will never speak with one another, and Joseph (we only learn his name during the credits) will never harm Höss, will not stop the flood of horrible murders with yet another murder. This short sketch about life of a death camp makes us feel pain and grief of millions of people who had passed beyond the walls of the shaving room during the imprisonment of Joseph, the man who outlived his torturer.
A former professional dancer volunteers to teach dance in the New York public school system and, while his background first clashes with his students' tastes, together they create a completely new style of dance. Based on the story of ballroom dancer, Pierre Dulane.
When you’re young, some of your strongest and most rewarding relationships are with your friends. The kind who support you to become who you really are. Inspired by U-turn and classic girl crew nostalgia, we want to celebrate those kinds of bonds with this short film from director Emma Higgins.
This is a story about the eternal miracle of life and death. The unfortunate death of a wild hare turns into a remarkable experience for children who find his body and bury it in a sand box. Now buried, the hare’s life fades away and dozens of magical creatures that lived inside him leave his body in search for a new home. The hare’s life ends by merging with nature, but is reborn in the plants and animals around it. This fairy-tale for children encourages us to think about what death is.
A gay man living with HIV must confront the guilt tormenting him after betraying and infecting his terminal ex-lover.
Tells the story of the last day in the life of a dictator who knows that this time he won't be victorious.
After the abandonment of their father, three sisters live asleep in their old house. Lucrecia, the older sister, becomes aware and begins a fight to free them.
Hao, a chubby gay man, works as a janitor at a gay spa. For him, romantic relationships are an unreachable dream. One day, an attractive customer, Kai, walks into the place, and Hao has the opportunity to massage him.
A teen raised in a southern home in the mid-1960s risks everything to cross-dress for the first time after receiving an invitation to an underground party.
Street dancer Skyler comes out of the shadow of her trained dancer sister, Tosha, & joins a dance competition with the Honey dance studio; the prize is a college scholarship.
A down-on-his-luck coach is hired to prepare a team of the best American dancers for an international tournament that attracts all the best crews from around the world, but the Americans haven't won in fifteen years.
At Mr. Rad's Warehouse, the best hip-hop crews in Los Angeles compete for money and respect. But when a suburban crew crashes the party, stealing their dancers — and their moves — two warring friends have to pull together to represent the street.
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
Mal emerges from the shadows of a mystical forest onto a dark coastline where she crosses paths with Dizzy.
XOXO follows six strangers whose lives collide in one frenetic, dream-chasing, hopelessly romantic night.
After the death of his younger brother, a troubled 19-year-old street dancer from Los Angeles is able to bypass juvenile hall by enrolling in the historically black, Truth University in Atlanta, Georgia. But his efforts to get an education and woo the girl he likes are sidelined when he is courted by the top two campus fraternities, both of which want and need his fierce street-style dance moves to win the highly coveted national step show competition.
A shy teenager living on the Isle of Wight dreams of pop stardom. With the help of an unlikely mentor, she enters a singing competition that will test her integrity, talent, and ambition.
Aspiring small-town musician Chito is determined to make it big. When a clip of him performing one of his songs goes viral, he seizes the opportunity and pushes to carve out a place for himself in the new wave of Mexican-American music... and ultimately gets caught in a game more dangerous than anticipated.
Talented but self-centered trumpeter Bleek Gilliam is obsessed with his music and indecisiveness about his girlfriends Indigo and Clarke. But when he is forced to come to the aid of his manager and childhood friend, Bleek finds his world more fragile than he ever imagined.
Ghost is an ideological musician and leader of a jazz band who would rather play his blues in the park to the birds than compromise himself. His peripatetic performances lead him to cross paths with a singer, while his masculinity is thrown into question following a violent brawl.
Davey Gordon, a New York City boxer at the end of his career, falls for dancer Gloria Price. However, their budding relationship is interrupted by Gloria's violent boss, Vincent Rapallo, who has eyes for Gloria. The two decide to skip town, but before they can, Vincent and his thugs abduct Gloria, and Davey is forced to search for her among the most squalid corners of the city, with his enemy hiding in the shadows.
Coming of age tale told through the eyes of 'Tu', an ambitious young man from Auckland who dreams of being a professional hip-hop dancer.
When a law student accidentally kills the son of a mob boss in a fight, he finds himself relentlessly pursued by the mob and the police.
A young alcoholic ambient musician locks himself in his apartment on a dangerous seven day bender as he attempts to finish his upcoming album.
A famous pianist at the twilight of his career meets a free-spirited music critic who soon becomes his rock as his mental state deteriorates.
A talented young singer and aspiring songwriter’s Christian faith and family ties are tested when she defies her worship-pastor father and pursues pop-music stardom in GRACE UNPLUGGED, a moving and inspiring new film that explores the true meaning of success.
When a change of circumstances leaves Miriam unable to pay her college tuition, she makes a surprising decision: to start performing in adult films, using the pseudonym Belle Knox. Miriam lies to her family and her friends at school, keeping her double life a secret. But soon rumours spread and Miriam becomes the subject of vicious online attacks and unwanted attention. Miriam fights back: she talks to the media, saying her new line of work empowers her as a feminist. But her confident stand has unintended consequences. Miriam is shunned by her conservative family and her colleagues in the adult film world. One impulsive decision has quickly spiralled out of control - and Miriam's problems are just beginning.
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.