A feature-length trilogy of films by filmmaker-choreographer Sarah Friedland, Movement Exercises deconstructs and revises the choreographic vocabularies of exercises practiced across home, work, and school spaces. The trilogy consists of three short films: Home Exercises (2017), Drills (2020), and Trust Exercises (2022). Movement Exercises examines the premise and promise of the exercise: that by moving together, repeatedly, we both create and recreate the social body.
| # | Title | Artists | Run Time | Year | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |
Home Exercises | Sarah Friedland | 00:22:02 | 2017 | United States |
| 2 |  |
Drills | Sarah Friedland | 00:16:44 | 2020 | United States |
| 3 |  |
Trust Exercises | Sarah Friedland | 00:25:03 | 2022 | United States |
Home Exercises is a short dancefilm and hybrid documentary investigating the gestural habits and choreographies of aging individuals in their homes.
This title is also available as part the Movement Exercises trilogy.
Drills is a film about the choreography of preparing for the future. A hybrid documentary and experimental dance film reimagining the form of the Cold War-era, US government-produced social guidance film, Drills asks what futures we are preparing for through the exercises embodying present anxieties. Weaving in between multiple forms of choreography and documentation, Drills restages lockdown and active shooter drills, frames corporate and tech start-up office meditation, and reperforms Boy Scout drills from the 1917 Boy Scout manual.
This title is also available as part the Movement Exercises trilogy.
The final film in Friedland’s Movement Exercises trilogy, Trust Exercises is a hybrid experimental dance film which explores the tension between the poetics of group movement and its instrumentalization for capitalist management. Amending the choreography of team-building and the visual grammars of corporate video, Trust Exercises braids together movement from three work spaces: a fictional start-up retreat, a body work session as interview, and a dance rehearsal. Movements transmit between performers across scenes, complicating the discrete goals of their choreographies and examining their portability across spheres. Dislocating the movement of the retreat to the space of rehearsal, professional dancers transform stock exercises into intimate social dances. A body work session reconfigures the office environment. Lingering after hours, movement facilitators transmute team-building games into a playful duet. Trust Exercises examines the premise and promise of the exercise: that by moving together, repeatedly, we both create and recreate the social body.
This title is also available as part the Movement Exercises trilogy.