🎥 BAZA Screens Dance Films in Sofia, Bulgaria
BAZA Screens Dance Films is a curated recurring screening series in Sofia, Bulgaria, dedicated to short dance films created for the screen.
The series focuses on dance films that are up to 15 minutes long, where movement is the central artistic material, and the camera actively participates in the choreographic process. We are interested in works in which movement is composed through the use of filming, framing, editing, rhythm, and proximity — rather than the documentation of stage performances.
BAZA Screens takes place 3 times per year, with each edition curated around a specific thematic or political focus. The series emphasizes experimental approaches, embodied research, and socially engaged perspectives, creating a space for dance films that think, question, and intervene through the moving body.
Venue
Screenings take place at BAZA Space, an international independent space for dance, choreographic research, and interdisciplinary practices in Sofia, Bulgaria.
The venue offers an intimate setting that prioritizes proximity, attention, and conversation between artists and audiences.
🎞️ EDITION 01: Political Bodies
Event date: May 8, 2026
Final deadline: April 25, 2026
Notification date: April 29, 2026
Political Bodies focuses on dance films in which the body appears as a site of resistance, vulnerability, negotiation, and agency.
This edition is interested in how political realities are articulated through movement — beyond illustration or narrative — and how the body on screen carries questions of power, labor, gender, migration, borders, care, exhaustion, and collective presence.
We are looking for dance films that approach politics embodied, subtle, personal, or confrontational; works that allow movement itself to speak, fracture, or refuse.
🎞️Edition 02: Choreographing the Frame
Event on Sept. 18, 2026
Final deadline: Aug.18, 2026
Notification date: Sept. 8, 2026
Choreographing the Frame focuses on the more experimental side of dance films in which the camera, framing, and editing actively shape the choreography.
This edition is interested in works where movement is composed through spatial decisions on screen — cropping, distance, perspective, rhythm, and montage — and where the camera functions as a choreographic partner rather than a neutral observer. In these dance films, it is possible that no dancing body is present.
We welcome films that explore how choreography emerges through the relationship between body/object and lens, and how cinematic choices reconfigure space, time, and attention. Sub-themes we are excited about within this frame are poetics, social and environmental issues, and body politics.
🎞️Edition 03: Movement & Voice
Event on Oct. 9, 2026
Final deadline: Sept.28, 2026
Notification Date: Oct. 1, 2026
This edition brings together works in which movement intersects with spoken word, voice/sound, on-screen text, archival material, testimony, or documentary strategies. We are interested in dance films that use the body as a site of witnessing — where personal, social, and political experiences are articulated through movement, voice, and language.
The edition welcomes experimental documentary approaches that remain grounded in dance practice, including works that blur the boundaries between choreography and documentation, fiction and lived experience.
We are particularly interested in films that address political and social realities through embodied narration — including questions of labor, gender, migration, violence, care, memory, and resistance — and in works where text and voice function as choreographic material rather than illustration. Artistic music videos are possible in this category.
