Once we were trees (2019)
Outstanding Achievement Award for Screendance Short and Sound Mixing - Los Angeles International Film Festival, Indie Short Festival
Nominated for Best Production Design - Los Angeles International Film Festival, Indie Short Festival
Awarded Best Experimental Short - South Film and Arts Academy Festival
Finalist for Best Experimental Short - Florence Film Awards
Nominated for Best Experimental Short - South Film and Arts Academy Festival
Nominated for Best Experimental Short - Five Continents International Film Festival
Selected and screened at The Hague Global Cinema Festival
Once we were trees is an unrelenting document of humans embodying grief. In this short film, dancer-bodies crack open under the weight of climate, ecological and extinction crises in which, sex and trees are commodity, economy and profit drive depletion; and all is lost in an unprecedented moral crisis. Through these live moving bodies and a haunting and destabilizing score, the audience is led through the coming apart of our natural and civilized worlds. Directed and created by St. John’s, Newfoundland dance artist and choreographer, Sarah Joy Stoker, Once we were trees is the product of four years of movement research and creation with seven dance artists. Through collaboration with these artists, Sarah sought to reveal a dystopian environment and reflect on the of madness of greed, brutality, dysfunction, grief and inhabited loss, eventually shaping the live dance production, Our heart breaks, premiered 2018, then adapting it to this film, 2019.
Created and directed by Sarah Joy Stoker
Edited by Christopher Darlington and Sarah Joy Stoker
Sound edit by Paul Steffler
Camera by Patrick Dunn
For original performance source, Our heart breaks (premiere 2018)
Creation/choreography - Sarah Joy Stoker
Performers - Jacinte Armstrong, Mark Bath, Karen Fennell, Tammy MacLeod, Susie Paulson, Peter Trotszmer, Andrea Tucker
Sound score- Tapehead International
with excerpts created by Neil Conway, Charles Quevillon and Lori Clarke
Dramaturge - Lois Brown, Light and video - Robert Gauthier
Production of Our heart breaks was supported/funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, ArtsNL, the City of St. John's and Neighbourhood Dance Works.