Ecoperformance Festival

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Ecoperformance International Film Festival from Brazil in Bucharest

For the first time in Europe, the 4th edition of the festival will take place in Bucharest from 11-14 June 2024

The National Dance Centre Bucharest will host the 4th edition of the Ecoperformance International Film Festival together with its initiators, Taanteatro and the organizers of the Romanian edition, PLASTIC Art Performance Collective/ Macaia Association.

Inaugurated in 2021 in São Paulo, Brazil, as an artistic response to the eco-political challenges of the 21st century, the festival brings together films by interdisciplinary artists working at the intersection of cinematic art, performing arts and ecology, and investigates the tensions between environment, body and ancestry, in natural urban and virtual landscapes.

The festival is organized and curated by Taanteatro, the company where ecoperformance has been theorized and developed as a performative art practice since the 1990s. Ecoperformance, in the vision of the initiators, as well as of the international collectives that have joined the artistic movement in the last 4 years (including the organizers of the Romanian edition, PLASTIC Art Performance Collective), understands the environment and the body as inseparable dimensions of life and performative creation. The body is itself a medium. Furthermore, ecoperformance conceptualizes itself as an environmental process and views environmental interactions as performative.

For this year’s edition, 760 films from 80 countries and 6 continents were entered.

The 4th edition is part of the festival’s initiative to expand beyond Brazil. The festival also runs in parallel in other countries, with the help of partners: Queensland University of Technology (Australia), Brown Institute of the Arts (USA) and selected cultural spaces in Buenos Aires and Córdoba, Argentina.

Over four days, between 50 and 60 international short films will be screened, ranging from 3 to 25 minutes each, including award-winning films in the Best Ecoperformance, Honourable Mention and Environmental Dance Award categories.

Alongside the films to be screened, the programme includes an ecoperformance workshop (12-14 June, 10:00-14:00) led by festival directors, Brazilian choreographer Maura Baiocchi and theatre director Wolfgang Pannek from Germany. There will also be artist-talks with artists and academics from Bucharest, presentations and ecoperformative interventions.

The Romanian edition of the festival is organized by artist Alina Tofan (co-founder of PLASTIC Art Performance Collective), member of the festival jury.

PLASTIC Art Performance Collective, initiated within Macaia Association by Georgiana Vlahbei (program director, anthropologist, visual artist) and Alina Tofan (concept director, project manager, actress/performer), introduces this concept in Romania since 2020. The collective is the only group working nationally developing this artistic practice through its own theoretical framework and methodology, in direct connection with the founders of the artistic movement.