A celebration of movement, color and texture, Color Theory blends dance, animation, and visual art to create a joyous burst of energy on the screen.
Directed by Cara Hagan with animations by Oshini Wanigasekera.
The film has been accepted into the following festivals:
Beeston Film Festival (Nottingham, UK)
CREATE: Flash Film Fest (NY)
Joburg Underground Film Festival (Johannesburg, SA)
Bizarrya Short Film Festival (Porto, Portugal)
Ribalta Experimental Film Festival (Modena, Italy)
Frame x Frame Film Fest (TX)
Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (CO)
Museum Talkies International Film Festival (Kerala, India, Winner, Best Experimental Short Film)
Spark Micro-Short Film Festival (NY, Finalist)
London Rocks International Film Festival (UK, Honorable Mention)
SPLICE FIlm Fest (NYC, Honorable Mention)
Cygnus is a short screendance filmed on location on Battle Lake, MN. Cygnus invites us to revel in the beauty of the sunrise over calm waters as the moon slips behind the horizon. A celebration of the earth, the body, and their kinship.
Co-Direction by Cara Hagan and Robert Uehlin.
Music by Mike wall.
The film has been accepted into the following festivals:
40 North Dance Film Festival (CA)
Tiny Dance Film Festival (CA)
Screendance Miami (FL)
Outlet Dance Project (NJ)
Guiar Screendance Festival (Brazil)
Greensboro Dance Film Festival (NC)
ViDEOSKin (Canada)
Third Coast Dance Film Festival (NV)
Oklahoma Dance Film Festival (OK)
Utah Dance Film Festival (UT)
Third Eye Film Fest (NYC)
Frame Rush (UK)
MarDel Dance Presents: Dance on Film Festival (NJ, Nominated for Best Cinematography Award)
EnCore: Dance on Film (GA and TX)
Kadoma International Film Festival (Osaka, Japan, Nominated for Best Dance Film Award)
Festival Internacional VideoDanzaBA (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (CO)
Portland Dance Film Fest (OR)
SPLICE Film Fest (NYC, Experimental Category Finalist)
Barents Ecology Film Festival (Petrozavodsk, Russia)
Mirror Mountain Film Festival (Ottawa, Canada, Nominated for Best Performance Award)
Northwest Screendance Exposition (OR)
Central States Indie Fan Film Fest (IL)
Cucalorus Festival (NC)
Stockholm Dansfilmfestival (Stockholm, Sweden)
Quinzena de Dança de Almada – International Dance Festival (Almada, Portugal)
Artist Clayton Bailey left a collection of works behind after his death that invite us to imagine the world through the eyes of robots and mythical creatures. The Curated Storefront project in Akron, Ohio brings this work to downtown Akron in the fall of 2021. A group of UAkron dancers move in and around the exhibit in the film, Holocene Dreams. A fantastic journey leads the dancers to explore their relationship to reality and the role we play in creating the world we know.
The film won Best Dance Film at the International Mobile Film Festival in San Diego, CA.
Experience is a detonator. Sometimes when things explode, they cease to be. You are indestructible. Sometimes, remembering that is hard. 40 Gestures To Remind You, You're Still Here, is an experimental performance art piece and a reminder that holding the precious particles of you in proximity to one another is made easier by holding onto something that has taken shape in the world — something that has mass, texture, color, and other such properties.
This work was created as part of a larger installation project called, Essential Parts: A Guide to Moving through Crisis and Unbridled Joy at Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, NC in 2021. It remains in installation through 2022.
The film has been accepted in to the following festivals:
New York Flash Film Festival (NYC)
Alder International Short Film Festival (IL)
MicroActs • Artist Film Screening (UK)
The Film Collective Film Festival (PA)
Monster News Feed follows a central character who, when overwhelmed and attacked by the media they consume (literally and figuratively) through analogue and digital means, decides to fight back to reclaim sound body and mind. A hostile encounter with the continuous flow of information ensues. Does our character triumph? Born of the director's research on device use, information addiction, and the effects of a constant stream of news on the body, this piece weaves aspects of science, shared cultural experiences and magical realism to make commentary on our ever-changing relationship to media and our wellbeing.
Directed by Cara Hagan, Photography by Ben Erlandson.
The film has been accepted into the following festivals:
Experimental Film Fest Tulsa (OK)
Tri Rivers Film Festival (North Ireland)
Experimental Film Fest (NC)
Splice Film Fest (NYC)
Cinematic Panic (TN)
Midnight Film Festival (NY)
Scumdance (NV)
Le Femmes Underground Festival (CA)
KinoDrome Motion Picture and Screenplay Festival (OH)
MicroMania Film Festival (NY, Nominated for Best Mico-Animation)
Cat Fly Film Fest (NC)
Mosaic Film Festival (GA)
RAGFF New York City (NY)
RAGFF Venezia (Venice, Italy, Best Experimental Film Award)
Mosaic Film Festival (GA)
Le MUP (Montreal, CAN)
First Friday Film Festival Kansas City (KS)
Canada's Yes! Let's Make a Film Festival (Toronto, CAN Best Experimental Film Award)
Frostbite International Film Festival (CO, Best Experimental Film Award)
Magically Ordinary from A Minute of Your Time, Please.
(1 of 6 films)
A Minute of Your Time, Please is a collection of short, digital self-portraits that explore the site of my brown, femme body as place. In this exploration of place, I reclaim and declare the site of my body and its contents as sacred and magical, while owning anger, sadness, and all the questions that come from being a human being in relationship to other human beings. Made between fall 2017 and fall 2018 (the collection may continue to grow in 2019), the films are made in the midst of, an in reaction to personal and societal struggles with injustice. Those watching the films would glean commentary on race and racism, sexism, feminism, gender fluidity, generational trauma, and other forays into the exploration of identity and injustice.
These films have been featured at the 2018 National Women's Studies Association Annual Conference, at Keene State College in Keene, NH in 2019, at the Art Produce Gallery in San Diego, CA in 2019, and the Visual Art Exchange in Raleigh, NC in 2022.
Sound and Sole is a short documentary on Boone native and clog and buck dancer Arthur Grimes. Arthur is the only professionally working, black clog and buck dancer in Boone. The film captures Arthur's story of teaching himself to dance as a young person and his trajectory to a satisfying and significant career. Film available for rent or purchase on Vimeo.
This film was awarded "Best Southern States Documentary" at the 2018 Southern States Indie Fan Film Fest in Biloxi, MS.
The film was named a finalist for the Peter C. Rollins Award for Best Documentary at the 2019 Popular Culture Conference in Washington, DC.
Sound and Sole appeared on East Tennessee PBS as part of the "Black in Appalachia Series" in November, 2019. It is now being distributed among PNS stations across the United States.
The film has also been accepted to the following festivals:
Screendance Miami (FL)
Versatility Dance Film Festival (CO)
Boone Film Festival (NC)
Utah Dance Film Festival (UT)
Indie Grits Film Festival (SC)
Jacksonville Dance-Film Festival (FL)
SDC Film Festival (CA)
Longleaf Film Festival (NC)
EnCore: Dance on Film (GA and TX)
CineOdessey Film Festival (NC)
Doc Sunback Film Festival (KS)
Thin Line Festival (TX, Nominated for Best Short Documentary Award)
Door Kinetic Arts Festival (WI)
Georgia Documentary Film Festival (GA)
Dance on Camera Festival (NYC)
Northwest Screendance Exposition (OR)
CASCADIA Dance and Cinema Festival (Vancouver, BC)
San Francisco Dance Film Festival (CA)
Flicker's Rhode Island International Film Festival (RI)
Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (CO)
Chagrin Documentary Film Festival (OH)
Knoxville Film Festival (TN)
Northeast Ohio, on the cusp of spring. In Sun Comes This Way, two University of Akron dancers move in and around the public artworks at True North, a project of the Curated Storefront in Akron. A burst of color signals warmer days to come.
This film is featured on the TrueNorth XR App featuring the Outside the Box Project. The app is live on the Google Play Store.