Studying motion through cinema

A collaboration with Noa Prempeh

May 12, 2025

Last November, I attended a mental well-being workshop for black men, which specifically targeted that social group. I liked this, so I went, albeit fashionably late. A key organiser, Nzinga, was shocked to see my face. “It’s so nice to see you here again,” she said, her eyes wide and mouth cheek to cheek. “It’s crazy, actually, because you signed up last night, and we only told you about the event the other day when you randomly walked in.”

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I met my collaborator, Noa, in these conditions. We were painting paper hats, playing with no real objective. More often than not, black men are not given the space or the time to play. Stuart Hall talks about the historicisation of the black man “constructed historically, culturally, and politically,” - this is what defines ‘ethnicity’ (Hall, 1988, 27-31). In this way, we can understand that the colonial history of blackness has played a key role in the contemporary condition of its subjects. Instead of play, the black man today must work. They must commit to professionalism and maintain a clean criminal record. But during that workshop back in November, the weight of the world washed away from us all, as we, together, painted paper hats. Through this cathartic gathering, bonds strengthened. Noa shared a story about his mum, and I too about mine. In this way, through a shared affinity, he welcomed my offer to explore movement through dance with open arms.

Because of this, play is an important part of this project. My role was to be a curator of the cinematic space, in which Noa may manoeuvre with manifold free-form. From a technical standpoint, it was important to explore montage in movement. I subscribed to Eisenstein’s method in cinema some time back, “regard[ing] cinema as a factor for exercising emotional influence over the masses” (Eisenstein 1974, 74). My films, in this way, are designed to evoke a feeling. These feelings are guided by techniques in editing that demand jarring movements to stimulate a cognitive response. Though still training my eye, the developments in technology have supercharged these tools, giving the creator an immense arsenal of engineering tools to manufacture audiovisuals.

I was committed to filming the same performance over and over again, allowing more freedom in the edit through excess footage. The goal was to produce a filmic offering for dance, an art form that already stood high up tall. I built a small team, summoning the much-needed assistance from my cohort, after one of Noa’s takes, someone asked, “Are you sure we can do another take? It’s a lot of energy, and he’s done 5 already”. This approach I picked up from Terence Malick’s general cinematic philosophy. By shooting multiple scenes, you open yourself up to discovery. Discovery of the cinematic image, where the body has been stretched and caught in the act of dance. Maya Deren’s thoughts here are relevant too, as for her, “it is shocking to realise how little the camera, as an instrument of discovery, has been exploited outside of scientific investigation” (Deren, 1947, 46-47).

Deren’s A Study in Choreography for the Camera (1945) played a lead role in its inspiration for my works. I had hoped to traverse space through cinema by shooting the dance scene both in UCL’s Black Box and Noa’s voguing ball. Unfortunately, schedules couldn’t align, and I ended up only using footage from the former. Limitations produce magic, making us more resourceful in tight situations. I recall Robert Bresson’s musings in Notes on the Cinematographer, 1975, where I paraphrase ‘the more equipment you acquire, the less efficient you become at using each’. I think misaligned schedules here created an opportunity to maximise the ‘Black Box’ footage in the edit. In a way, Noa helped me play. Because of his consistent and determined performance, I was able to explore various techniques in editing. Specifically, sound design, slow-motion, and motion tracking. Our collaboration was therefore reciprocal. Together, we created a synthesis of play, creating something that became greater than the sum of its parts.

The first shoot was a workshop. I had anticipated running one the day before - a workshop for the Photography Society at UCL. This was cancelled due to renovations in the cloisters impacting access to the studio. I think because of the need to fulfil this expectation, perhaps the Idea of running a workshop was front of mind, but I also wanted to connect with Noa Prempreh, the dancer-collaborator. I wanted to tap into our common experience of meeting each other at the Mental Wellbeing for Black Men event at East London Dance Studio in Bow. I wanted to strengthen the common ground between two worlds that were so different. As a Professional Dancer, he is deeply involved in the global vogue scene. I recall him casting aside the UK scene as daywalkers, closing their doors at around midnight. In America, it was known to end the next day at 8 in the morning.

Working with humans moves you in different ways. Having now reengaged with institutions, after many years, in the form of this master's, I no longer consider the alienation felt when entering its four walls. Welcoming Noa to UCL revealed this in an instant, where a dodgy look from the reception overshadowed his entrance. The oppressive atmosphere of the Institution dwarfs the un-institutionalised, for Noa was not. The need to induce play, therefore, relied entirely on the comfort created in these conditions. A man who has amassed a community of support, made to feel small and insignificant. Because a black man has been made to feel small and insignificant his whole life, he has a hardened outer shell and bodily mastery. How do we empower each other? How do we challenge childhood experiences? Noa is a dancer from Ghana who spent time in Paris, eventually moving to London. His time in the school system was hard. His time with his family was hard. He eventually found dance. Started winning awards, performing in Wicked, and at Pineapple Dance Studios. He has had to challenge stereotypes as a Black Homosexual Dancer. To put it simply, he has no time for nonsense.

I wanted Noa to lead a stretch before dancing. This would mean following his instructions as we both moved our bodies. A breakdown of power dynamics between the filmmaker and contributor. A physical break, as I am now instructed to move by the contributor, who would normally be directed by the filmmaker. Before this, we spoke back to back, a setup using chairs, allowing our eyes to be subverted. Another tool breaking down power. I didn’t want Noa to think of me, or how I stand to him. Instead, I wanted a self-reflexive space of non-judgment. I wanted him to feel at peace with His space. I wanted a loss of self, a forgetting of things like the room.

I tried to balance the desire to please Noa with my creative instincts. There’s a tension there—between the filmmaker and the contributor. I had asked him to bring a routine and a song. I respect his process. I have been in situations where I had no time to prepare. It is a misconception to think creatives thrive on spontaneity. Noa’s art is a way of life. It deserves time. But that respect sometimes hindered my flow. I was so focused on representing his practice truthfully that I neglected the joy of intuitive creation. I believe that fun and flow are intertwined. Fun is a playful, purposeless interaction. Flow is immersion, the evasion of doubt. In cinema, the contributor doesn’t always have the same privilege of flow. Their agency often depends on the filmmaker’s willingness to co-create. When representing another art form through film, a tension arises between flow and realism. I now believe in prioritising flow.

I had originally conceived this film as a silent, black-and-white experience. I wanted to place movement inside a minimal, poetic frame. But Noa needed something he could share with his community. The silent concept clashed with his reality: he’d danced ten times to Frank Ocean. Sound was part of the expression. Still, I felt silence might better reveal the emotional core of the movement. Every dancer moves with and through music, but It is a collaboration. Removing the sound would produce an art object transcending dance, creating an output unique to the properties of this collaboration: cinema and dance. Eventually, I returned to the contributor’s need—honouring the importance of the song he danced to. But I maintained the development of the film with a silent version, rewatching the edits in silence, until the right sound started ringing. At that point, I had already begun exploring visual effects: motion tracking with Python to create ghostly outlines; particle emissions enhanced from the studio’s dusty air, catching the spotlight with every turn. I had veered into effect for effect’s sake, but I stayed conscious of the mantra: less is more.

I eventually stripped things back—dialled down the analogue effects, and kept the desaturation of colour. I wanted rawness. And then, I brought it full circle by booking Noa in for one more shoot. Sadly, on this day, he ghosted my calls, leaving our communication channels hanging out to dry. Had I made a fatal flaw in the collaborative conquest by overasserting my needs, I thought my concessions would count for something. Yet, after the seventh digital holla, it was clear that Noa was a no-show. I had hopes of heightening the silence through diegetic sound relevant to the scene, like grunts, and a squeaky floor. Something made nearly impossible without a live recording of the performance. Instead, I turned to the wisdom of a sound designer friend. He created a composition that encompassed the mood of the silent movie: a cacophony of wind, atmospheric horns, and stark alarms accompanying the relentless expression of a black man.

Through audiovisual manipulation, there is an attempt to tie Noa’s identity to the world. This is a form of knowledge production which shows meaning in the world. For Heidegger, Dasein encounters a meaningful understanding of the environment, an understanding that opposes the propositional logic of words - logos. Logos, from the Greek λόγος, has come to have manifold meanings. Standing for reason, judgment, and words; thought, speech, or principle. Scholars from Aristotle to Kant have written on how this foundation grounds epistemology. In this way, knowledge of ethical issues or issues of identity can be solved through the investigation of propositional affairs. The Socratic method is an example of logos in application. By way of highlighting the properties of entities, a system of knowledge is built, developing a worldview. “Logos as a discourse means to make manifest what one is talking about in one’s discourse” (Heidegger, 1927, 56). These tools birthed language. The fruits of this collaboration stand in contrast to this way of thinking. It subverts the foundations of propositional knowledge, presenting a worldview that reckons with identity phenomenally. This worldview becomes “that which is given and explicable in the way the phenomenon is encountered” (Ibid.,56). In this way, words could not truly describe the properties of this phenomenon that are identifiable as Noa’s experiences. Filmmaking as a knowledge-based practice gives us the tools to communicate this phenomenon.

As the modes of production advanced through montage and active spectatorship, cinema birthed unique properties to produce new knowledge that challenged time. Being in time is characterised by temporalising the temporal. Through cinema, the video sequencer is a tool to flatten the material. Framing the subject in media res. Noa’s excess becomes mediacache. In reality, Heidegger asserts that “temporality temporalizes as a future which makes present in the process of having been”. By describing a new way of looking at time, we see that time as an entity itself is encountered by the conscious being. It becomes a parameter in our modes of production. Cinema grants this tool through the graphic user interface of the video sequencer. Through knowledge of this mechanism, we can shoot the subject in a way to heighten this break in propositional logic of linear reality. History and Future become moulded, guided by identity, by Being. In the case of Noa, we see a Black man express himself through a jarring array of hypnotic shots. In our interview, words failed our protagonist. He often spoke of his inaffection for the spoken word, to logos. I further extend this by cutting his words short in his futile attempts to represent himself propositionally. In speech, logos takes on a mode of immediacy; what is spoken has more authority than what is written. Take the word ‘there’, an actor might say ‘go there’ - the meaning of this takes on more weight from a seen actor, compared to the actor’s intended meaning from a reader's perspective. Through cinema, Noa was given the means to manifest the message, his will to self-determination.

I think this film was successful in its goals, though it had its challenges. It produced a montage of dance. More importantly, Noa was pleased with the final result, too. After all, this film was more about the collaboration than anything else.

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