Choreo Cinema is set to launch as Nigeria’s first dance film festival, creating a dedicated platform for filmmakers, dancers and choreographers working at the intersection of movement and cinema.
The festival is curated by filmmaker Temi Ami-Williams alongside Femi Adebajo, who serves as convener, and Faith Okoh, the festival director. The trio hopes to contribute to the development of dance film practice in Nigeria while creating opportunities for the form to grow across Africa and internationally.
Speaking exclusively with The Nollywood Reporter, the organizers discussed the motivation behind Choreo Cinema, the challenges of developing an audience for dance film in Nigeria, and their plans for the festival beyond its first edition.
For Adebajo, the idea grew from watching dance film develop internationally while observing the absence of a dedicated platform for the practice in Nigeria.
“I’ve always been interested in what happens when dance moves beyond the traditional stage, how the camera can transform movement, the body, space, and storytelling,” he said. “I began to see dance film as its own artistic language, not simply a recording of a performance.”
He believes Nigeria already has a strong foundation for the form through its culture of movement, performance, and visual storytelling. “I felt there was a space waiting to be filled,” Adebajo said.
The timing, he added, reflects the way Nigerian artists are increasingly working across disciplines.
“Nigerian artists are already experimenting across disciplines, as the creativity is already there,” he said. “What we needed was more platforms, visibility, and opportunities to build an ecosystem around this kind of work.”
Introducing the concept to Nigerian audiences has been one of the organizers’ early challenges.
“The biggest challenge was creating an understanding of dance film in a context where there wasn’t really a local precedent for it,” Adebajo said.
The team initially organized smaller events and screenings to familiarize audiences with dance film before developing the festival. These events also allowed them to explore broader ideas about movement and its role in storytelling.
“We also wanted to challenge the idea of what Nigerian dance and movement could be,” he said, adding that movement can serve as “a tool for storytelling, expression, and engaging with contemporary issues.”
The festival’s program will bring together different forms of movement-based cinema. Okoh said audiences can expect dance documentaries, cultural essays, experimental dance films, movement-based performance films, live dance performance recordings, narrative films, and choreography-led music videos.
The program will also extend beyond film screenings to include workshops, performances, and conversations focused on the relationship between movement and cinema.
For Ami-Williams, the festival also responds to the way dance has often been positioned within Nigeria’s creative industries: “Dance has powered the visual culture of Afrobeats and brand advertising, and Nollywood is gradually catching up,” she said.
However, she noted that dance has often functioned as an element supporting a larger production rather than as a central form of storytelling: “It’s been treated as texture; something that supports the narrative rather than something that can drive one,” Ami-Williams said.
Choreo Cinema aims to shift that relationship by moving dance “from spectacle to an authored work of art on screen, beyond the stage.”
“We want to create a space where dancers, choreographers, filmmakers, and other creatives can see the moving body and the camera as tools for storytelling, while also creating stronger pathways for dance to be documented, developed, and preserved,” she said.
The organizers’ ambitions extend beyond the first edition. For Adebajo, the festival’s success will not be measured solely by attendance but by whether it changes how artists and audiences understand the possibilities of dance on screen.
“I want someone to leave the festival thinking differently about what dance can be,” he said. “I want a dancer to realize that film is another space for their practice, I want a filmmaker to become curious about movement, and I want an artist who has never considered a dance film to think, ‘Maybe I can make something like this.'”
Over the next five years, the team hopes to establish Choreo Cinema as a recognized platform for dance film in Nigeria, across Africa, and internationally. Their plans include expanding beyond screenings into commissions, residencies, workshops, performances, collaborations, and archives, while creating opportunities for emerging artists to develop new work.
“In five years, I want Choreo Cinema to be a place where dance, cinema, and contemporary artistic practice can meet, experiment, and create something that didn’t exist before,” the organizers said.
