Emilia Izquierdo

Ghost Dance

5 min

#film

United Kingdom

Ghost Dance draws on archival footage of a Sioux dance filmed by Thomas Edison in 1894, placing it in dialogue with more recent images of protest through dance. Hand-drawn animation intertwines with historical footage and scenes of dances of resistance from Gaza, South Africa, Peru, Jerusalem and Armenia. Dance emerges as a form of expression that goes beyond words—as an act of protest, resistance and persistence in the face of injustice and the imposition of foreign rule.

Emilia Izquierdo reworks the past through a distinctly handmade, almost tactile form of animation that merges with digital archival material. Bodies from old footage flicker, dissolve and reassemble into a new choreography. In this encounter between the historical and the contemporary, the analogue and the digital, politics, technology, ancestry and something almost magical come together. Ghost Dance explores dance as a space of resistance, where different times and places meet through a shared physical language.

5 minutes of beautifully hopeless movement.

Screenshot 2026 09 21 at 20 48 09
Screenshot 2026 09 21 at 20 48 17
Screenshot 2026 09 21 at 20 48 23
Screenshot 2026 09 21 at 20 48 33
Screenshot 2026 09 21 at 20 48 44
Screenshot 2026 09 21 at 20 49 09
←
→
←
→

bio

Emilia Izquierdo is an artist and filmmaker based in London whose practice focuses on experimental video art. She works with hand-drawn animation and archival film footage, exploring the relationship between image, history, the body and politics. She holds an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, and an MA in Art and Art & Politics/Film & Screen Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Her work has been presented at international festivals, exhibitions, conferences and artist residencies, including Berlinale Talents in Berlin, Kinoskop in Belgrade, the /SI:N/ Biennale in Marseille, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Experimenta at BFI London Film Festival, and experimental film festivals in Mexico, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Germany and Spain. Her films include The Big Swallow (2014), BlindLight/WhiteNoise (2016), Crack (2018), Cave (2018) and Ghost Dance (2019).

credits

Author Emilia Izquierdo

Guest screening production En–Knap Productions