Join Miami Light Project for ScreenDance Miami Festival 2026 at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)! Held each January at venues across Miami, ScreenDance Miami offers film screenings, artist panels, and skill-building workshops that support both professionals working in the field and the continued development of dance created for the camera. The 2026 program features 17 short films and three feature-length films, showcasing a wide range of choreographic voices and cinematic approaches to movement.
ScreenDance programming at PAMM will showcase the “Open Call Official Selections” featuring two programs of films selected by the ScreenDance Miami Festival curator and panelists. The panel includes Amadeus McCaskill, Florencia Portieri, Vivian Marthell, Lisa Kusanagi, and Pioneer Winter. A brief conversation with the filmmakers will follow the second program.
Program 1
12pm
Muses, Simon Vermeulen (2025, 12 min, Canada)
A dancer struggles to break free from the hold of his choreographer now attracted to another. This silent film explores the complex dynamics of inspiration, power, and replacement within the LGBTQ+ dance community through body language and music.
SANKALPA, Tarik Hakim Morgan & Ruslan Aksenov (2022, 8 min, UK)
Sankalpa follows a dancer’s journey through loss, darkness, and rebirth. After a tragic accident takes his mother and cripples his path, he confronts despair and silence. Through movement, he reclaims identity, transforms grief into art, and rises as a choreographer, passing on his craft with resilience and grace.
Lives Beyond Motion, Bill T. Jones, Lar Lubovitch, Alvin Ailey, David Rousseve, Stephen Petronio, Douglas Dunn, Sean Curren, Donald Byrd, Lawrence Goldhuber, Doug Varone, Jeff Slayton, Viola Farber, Stephanie Skura, May O’Donnell, Della Davidson, Charlie Moulton, Trisha Brown & Keith Glassman (2024, 1 hr 11 min, USA)
Lives Beyond Motion is an award-winning feature documentary about an intergenerational group of men who’ve devoted their lives to contemporary dance. Interspersed with archival footage of the artists performing, they discuss their beginnings, the challenges they face(d) pursuing this career, the support they did/didn’t get and why they dance.
Program 2
3pm
On my way to you, Andreia Rodrigues, Miroslav Kochánek, Astrid De Haes, Brecht Van Vliet, Jonathan Van Hemelrijck (2025, 8 min, Belgium)
Two individuals explore closeness through movement, and from this endeavor emerges a game that involves risk and physical effort, but the pursuit of a shared rhythm motivates them to persevere.
Crossing, Osmani Tellez (2025, 3 min, USA)
Crossing is a wordless passage through wonder, fear, and transformation, a meditation on stepping beyond the known into the unseen. Through movement and silence, it traces the fragile threshold between dream and waking, shadow and light, innocence and discovery. The journey lingers in crossing itself, the trembling beauty of becoming.
Chair Deconstruction, Nicole Klaymoon / Embodiment Project & Amanda Beane (2024, 9 min, FL Premiere)
Chair Deconstruction is a two-part dance piece exploring the drama and comedy of communal healing, pairs filmmaker Amanda Beane with the San Francisco Bay Area street dance ensemble Embodiment Project.
DYAD, Allysen Hooks & Katherine Helen Fisher (2024, 6 min, USA)
DYAD poetically explores the resilience and fragility of the human form against the stark beauty of the American West. Directed by Katherine Helen Fisher with choreography by Allysen Hooks, and danced by Camille Wiltz and Aidan Rodgers, Sinziana Velicescu’s cinematography reflects emptiness, ephemerality, and humanity’s impact in the Anthropocene.
La Superstición del Huevo, Cecilia Benitez & Darmyn Calderon (2025, 12 min,USA)
Through an egg cleansing ritual, a mother’s love and superstition intertwine. As she rubs an egg across her child’s body, she opens a passage to the spirit world, where the egg’s essence appears as a dancer—her presence revealed only to one.
IMAMOU: Hotô to Shore… Agbé | Agwe, Portsha Terae Jefferson (2021, 9 min, USA)
Honoring water deities as they manifest in Haiti and Benin. Through chants, sacred drumming, and powerful choreography, the film illuminates the shared spiritual legacies of Vodou and West African traditions, revealing how the waters that separate these lands also serve as a bridge uniting their histories, cultures, and beliefs.
Yo Quiero Bailar (I Want to Dance), Ana Sanchez Colberg (2024, 8 min, Puerto Rico)
A first of its kind in Puerto Rico, a short film essay capturing the life experiences of individuals with intellectual and diverse disabilities through the words and acts of dancing.
Hidden , Yvonne Meier (2025, 10 min, USA)
Hidden offers a layered twist on “boy meets girl,” unfolding into a tense, emotional confrontation between violence and vulnerability. Set against the backdrop of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, it explores fear, empathy, and the fragile hope for unity, revealing that even in moments of threat, connection and redemption remain possible.
