IN THIS LIFE Comes to Rhode Island Film Festival

Bat-Sheva Guez's short film In This Life will screen at the Rhode Island International Film Festival on Wednesday, August 7, 2019 at 6pm. The short will screen at The Vets Cinematheque, Providence, RI, as part of the 23rd year of New England's largest and most prestigious film festival. Tickets are $10 and are available online at https://bpt.me/4299473. For more details on the festival, visit http://www.film-festival.org/.

In five acts, In This Life explores the language of loss, conveying the complexity of grief in the often-wordless way it impacts our lives. The film is a leap of faith for former New York City Ballet principal and Broadway star Robbie Fairchild as he embarks on an ambitious collaboration with the director, choreographers, and dancers. Sharing the roles of writer and producer with Bat-Sheva Guez, Fairchild imbues this odyssey with the very personal experience of one man going through this rite of passage, which is as universal as it is unique.

"When there are no words to speak, you sing; when there is no song to sing, you dance," said Fairchild. "I'm fascinated by the concept of dance having the ability to convey our humanity when words fail and what part of our humanity is more powerfully complex than loss?" Fairchild continued, "I wanted to take my own grief and put it on film with the hope that we could all feel less alone in our very universal struggle."

The work stands outside the boundaries of genre: part narrative film, part dance film, and part video art. Each act illustrates a different phase of the grieving process, as choreographed by a different choreographer: James Alsop, Warren Craft, Robbie Fairchild, Andrea Miller, and Christopher Wheeldon.

"I've always been incredibly passionate about dance filmmaking. To this day, many of the master choreographers of our day can't reach audiences beyond those that can afford tickets to their performances. So much of the world's most beautiful choreography remains trapped on a stage, unavailable to the masses of people who would most want to see it. My drive as a dance filmmaker is liberate dance from the confines of the theater and to re-imagine it in the world, to create a work of art in and of itself, a piece that goes far beyond a flat documentation of a performance. I strive to touch viewers beyond the normal reach of a company, building new audiences for dance that will sustain the art for the future," said Bat-Sheva Guez.

IN THIS LIFE won Best Experimental Film at the Brooklyn Film Festival and screened prominently at the Dance on Camera Festival through the Film at Lincoln Center in New York.