kNOwBOX dance Film Festival

The kNOwBOX dance organization is dedicated to creating a more equitable and inclusive dance field for all by fostering trans-geographical networking, highlighting diverse and underrepresented voices (e.g. black, indigenous, people of color, and women), creating opportunities for artists, and engaging audiences both on and offline via their programming, including the kNOwBOX dance Film Festival.

In its 3rd year as an independent film festival, the mission for the NBFF is to curate dance films that explore an innovative approach to collaboration, mixed media, and interdisciplinary filmmaking. These films are selected based on challenging the possibilities of what dance can look like in video form. The NBFF values experimental, multicultural, multigenre, and technological dance films. The NB team believes experiencing art– and more specifically experiencing art via dance and film– creates opportunities for understanding other perspectives.

In this day and age, it is imperative to address the topic of equality in dance in the digital space as it is both relevant and a pressing issue in the current social and political climate. The digital space is charged with a multitude of positive and negative forces including political and monetary power, media prowess, misinformation, matters of accessibility, collaboration, tools and platforms for artistic creation, sharing, networking, sexism, racism, cultural appropriation, and misrepresentation.

NB finds it important to acknowledge concepts of power, access, inclusion, and race in order to not reinforce some of the same structures of oppression (i.e. the male gaze, objectification of womxn/womyn, ableism, the primitivism of people of color, etc.); thus writing a more equitable future history.

Cover image courtesy of kNOwBOX dance Film Festival 2020 "Spectre" by Sebastien de Buyl.