​​Let's think of consciousness as an extended hallucination, involving our senses, memories, anxieties, and dreams. Can a cinema that centers on human movement create a parallel hallucination that reflects the enormity of existence back to us, even if only for a fleeting moment? Well, Kaveh Nabatian thinks so.

In this masterclass, Kaveh presents his approach to filmmaking and how to create synergy between the camera and the dancer rather than simply capturing movement — looking at the camera as a dancer, not a spectator. He will present and discuss excerpts from various films, including his own, and focus on listening to silence and music, and feeling how editing can shift time. 

Kaveh Nabatian is an Iranian-Canadian director and musician whose evocative filmmaking has brought to life stories from the margins of society and across the world: Haiti, Nunavut, New York and beyond. With a restless creative spirit that transcends genre boundaries, Kaveh aspires to make films that have the immediacy of music and the energy and poetry of dance. His film work ranges from A Crack in Everything, a feature doc about Leonard Cohen, to the experimental anthology feature The Seven Last Words, to his Canadian Screen Award-nominated feature narrative debut, the Cuba-set and shot Sin La Habana. His cinematic collaborations with musicians and dancers include projects with Aurora, Arcade Fire, The Barr Brothers, Leif Vollebekk, Clara Furey, and Axelle Munezero. Kaveh is an IFP Narrative Lab fellow, and an alumnus of TIFF Writers Studio, Berlinale Talents, TIFF Talent Lab, and TIFF Pitch This.

His most recent film, the award-winning Kite Zo A: Leave the Bones, is a sensorial documentary feature shot in Haiti, made in collaboration with Haitian musicians, poets, Vodou priests, fishermen, and daredevil rollerbladers, and will be screened in this years’ Cinedans FEST on Friday 22nd at 20.15 in cinema 2 in Eye.