A still from The Kitchen, an award-winning short dance film directed and choreographed by Vishwakiran Nambi.
| Photo Credit: Courtesy: Radhika G.
The first edition of the LURU Screendance Festival 2026 will be held from September 12 to 19 in Bengaluru. Presented by Vishwakiran Nambi Dance Company, in collaboration with Choreoscope Barcelona Dance Film Festival, the festival is conceived and curated by dancer-choreographer Vishwakiran Nambi. The aim, he says, is to explore “what happens when choreography begins to exist through cinema. When a body enters a film, it does not merely carry dance from the stage to the screen. The camera alters space, the edit reshapes time, and framing, sound, light and movement operate as parts of a single choreographic language.”The festival opens at Suchitra Cinema and Cultural Academy with the screening of 12 short films (four to 15 minutes) by independent dance-filmmakers from the U.S., Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Czechia to name a few. “While most films are on contemporary dance, we do have one film on Indian classical dance,” says Vishwakiran, noting that “there is no particular theme this year as it is LURU’s debut.” The evening will also feature the inaugural LURU awards. This is a public event.
