Filmmaking Masterclasses | 2026 SF Dance Film Festival

Lineup

• More details about About "SO CLOSE"

  About "SO CLOSE"

  SO CLOSE tells the story of two prisoners divided by a series of walls, in a world where voices are silenced and laughter is forbidden. Originally commissioned by San Diego’s The Rosin Box Project as a stage ballet, the film was conceived in playful defiance of Chechnya’s law banning music below 80 and above 116 BPM, with its score composed exclusively in 79 and 117 BPM. Choreographer Emily Adams and composer Katy Jarzebowski reimagine silent film for a new generation, drawing as much from Stravinsky and The Nutcracker as from Charlie Chaplin, Silly Symphony, and Michel Gondry’s 1990s music videos. Every detail of the original ballet has been reframed through a cinematic lens, blurring the line between dance and film. Produced in collaboration with Skywalker Sound, alongside foley artist Shelley Roden and mixer Pete Horner, the film’s story-driven score fuses music and sound design into a single expressive language. Playful, inventive, and quietly rebellious, SO CLOSE is a modern fable about finding courage inside the walls that confine us.

• More details about About Jacob Jonas

  About Jacob Jonas

  Raised by concrete and the Pacific Ocean. A product of divorce. An outlier in academia, displaced and repositioned into special education. Forced away from the traditional path. Movement became identity. A company, a family for belonging. A blank canvas, home. Overcoming illness, understanding health. The work is medicine. Nature, a necessity. Born in Santa Monica, Jacob Jonas began his journey as a street performer, skateboarding along the Venice Beach Boardwalk. At 13, he joined The Calypso Tumblers, legends of acrobatics and street theater, under the directorship of Raymond Bartlett from Saint Kitts. Touring internationally to busker festivals, Jonas absorbed the discipline of the streets and the art of performance. At 21, Jonas co-founded Jacob Jonas The Company with partner Jill Wilson and lighting designer Will Adashek, a nonprofit rooted in the intersection of dance, science, and community. By 24, he became the youngest artist to present work at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. His career has since traversed institutions and landmarks, including Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, The Getty Museum, The Music Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and more. To date, Jacob has created over 50 original works. Jonas’s work challenges boundaries, living at the confluence of somatic innovation, architecture, and environmental consciousness. His technique, The System, is a fusion of movement, therapy, and creation, designed as a pathway for healing and expression. As a stage four cancer survivor, Jonas draws on personal resilience to explore the body as both a site of conflict and renewal. A disruptor by nature, Jonas has collaborated with a spectrum of visionary artists and brands, from Kanye West to Elton John, Rosalía, SZA, SIA, Vanessa Beecroft, and Alejandro Iñárritu. His projects include the globally acclaimed films.dance, a series of over 45 short films uniting artists from 25 countries, and #CamerasandDancers, a monthly Instameet bridging dance, photography, and architecture with institutions like The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Zaha Hadid Architects. Jacob Jonas’s art exists in dualities: rooted in rebellion and disruption, yet celebrated in the canon of contemporary culture. His work is raw yet refined, intimate yet universal, a testament to the transformative power of movement, nature, and collaboration.