Katrina is a director, cinematographer and award-winning screendance artist whose creative, scholarly and educational practice is at the forefront of the international field. Having trained as a dancer and choreographer, a desire to explore the creative possibilities of dance and the moving image led Katrina to complete a postgraduate degree in video art, laying the foundations of what would become a lifelong, multi-faceted and influential engagement with dance on screen. Over the past 35 years, Katrina’s collaborative films, installations and online works have been presented at venues and festivals worldwide. For 15 years, Katrina worked as a director of arts programmes for UK television. A much sought-after lecturer and mentor, Katrina teaches screendance worldwide and has initiated and facilitated numerous workshops, courses and symposia. Katrina is the Course Leader of the MA Screendance at London Contemporary Dance School.

Pace

A collaboration with choreographer Marisa Zanotti and composer Philip Jeck,  Pace was generated through improvised scores for dancer and camera and shaped by montage editing, an approach which draws on McPherson’s background in postmodern dance, video art and television directing.

Director / Katrina MCPHERSON
UK / 1995 / 4‘40

Oberhausen Short Film Festival: The film screened at this German festival.
IMZ Dance Screen
Rotation ’03 (2003)
Scottish Academy + Visual Arts Scotland Exhibition: (December 2019 and February 2020)

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There Is a Place

There is a Place is a collaboration between Tibetan Chinese choreographer Sang Jijia and film-makers Katrina McPherson and Simon Fildes. The film combines the exquisite movement of Sang Jijia, with the stunning landscapes of the Scottish Highlands and a soundtrack based on the hypnotic music of Philip Jeck.

Directors / Katrina MCPHERSON / Simon FLIDES / Sang Jijia
UK / 2010 / 7‘25

San Francisco Dance Film Festival (2011)
DanceLive 2021

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Paysages Mixtes/ Mixed Landscapes

The possible last woman and man on earth move through many nuanced versions of their relationship. Full of history, longing and fragments of stories, their journey is at times quite unworldly, unnerving and a touch frightening through the unseen and the unspoken. Performed and co-directed by McPherson and Quebec choreographer Harold Rheaume.

Directors / Katrina MCPHERSON / Simon FLIDES
UK / 2019 / 13’09

RISE Festival in Findhorn, Scotland (2019)
Screen.dance Festival in Perth, Scotland (2019)
Festival de Cinéma de la Ville de Québec, Canada (2019)
IMZ Dance Screen Festival, Germany (2019)
Dance Camera West Festival in Los Angeles, USA (2020)
American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers in Durham, North Carolina, USA (2020)

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The times It Takes

Inspired by stories told by the landscapes of South Uist in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides,  The Time It Takes is a collaborative work where dance and camera are entirely improvised, the relationships, narratives and emotional arc of the work being created through the intricate interaction of on-screen performance, mise-en-scene, camera framing, editing and soundtrack.

Directors/ Katrina MCPHERSON / Natalie BARUA / Owa BARUA / Simon ELLIS
UK / 2012 / 11‘01

San Francisco Dance Film Festival (2013)
Stockholm Dance Film Festival (2019)
DanceLive (2021)
Light Moves (2014)

We record ourselves

A response to the life and work of the dancer Margaret Morris’s archive, the film employs mixed-format materials, screens, bodies, texts and soundtrack to create a collection of moving images that reveal ideas and experiences to do with memory and disappearance, the performance and recording of human lives, and the ghosts of our influences. 

Directors / Katrina MCPHERSON / Harold RHEAUME
UK / 2016 / 8‘25

Threshold artspace (Perth, Scotland) (October 2016, to January 2017)
Bath Spa University (UK) ( 2017)
Centre for Contemporary Art (Glasgow) 
Light Moves Festival of Screen Dance (Ireland)
Quebec City Film Festival (Canada)
Opine Dance Film Festival (Philadelphia, USA)

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Water & Man

Drawing inspiration from the Irish myth of Am Brollachan, Water & Man is a screendance ritual for the presence and absence of water.  Made with choreographer Rob Heaslip, the work’s filmic approach returns to McPherson’s earlier fascination with screendance montage, evolving through layers of (re)contextualisation, inviting further interpretations beyond the viewing’s end.

Directors / Katrina MCPHERSON / Rob HEASLIP
UK / 2022 / 7‘48

Dance Camera West International Dance Film Festival (2022) in Los Angeles, USA
American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers in Durham, North Carolina, USA (2022)
Screendance Festival (Dansmuseet, Stockholm) (2022)
Choreoscope (Barcelona Dance Film Festival) (2022)