If It Were Love (Si c’était de l’amour), dir. Patric Chiha, France 2020, 82 min., English, French and Swedish with English subtitles
Winner of the Teddy Queer Film Award for documentary filmmaking at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival, the latest longform work from Vienna-born, Paris-based director Patric Chiha explores intimacy and isolation through the prism of
Crowd, choreographer Gisèle Vienne’s epic dance piece exploring the 90s rave scene. As Vienne’s work travels from theatre to theatre, the relationships between its company of 15 young dancers mutate and grow, their charged and intimate performances on stage bleeding into their increasingly close-knit lives away from it. Chiha’s transformative fourth work follows
Brothers of the Night (2016) – also screening in Cinema 3 – in offering a compelling exploration of hyper-sensuality, body awareness and queer sexuality.