Mouvement Perpétuel is a Montreal-based, award-winning independent production company specializing in film, video, and new media with a focus on dance. Co-founded and co-directed by Marlene Millar and Philip Szporer in 2001,  the company is known for its impressionistic dance-media films, documentaries, and multi-channel installations that explore choreography and offer compelling portraits of contemporary dancers and choreographers across Canada, Québec, and internationally.

Over the past 25 years, they have cultivated a distinctive practice within the genre of screendance—also known as dance for camera—merging choreography, cinematography, and sound into unified, expressive works. Their projects often embrace hybrid forms and cross-cultural dialogue, exploring themes of identity, environment, and the poetics of the body in motion. Millar and Szporer continue to expand the possibilities of screendance through both independent and commissioned work, creating films that resonate with audiences around the world.

The Hunt

The intensity of an internal struggle manifests itself externally, as revealed through an intimate, fragmented view of dancer Peter Trosztmer, as choreographed by Sharon Moore.

Director / Marlene Millar and Philip Szporer
Canada / 2005 / 4’43 / 16mm

FIFA (Montreal, Canada): March 2007
VDance (Tel-Aviv, Israel): May 2007
Montreal Underground Film Festival (Montreal, Canada): May 2007
EDIT International Dance Film Festival (Budapest, Hungary): October 2007 and October 2008
First People’s Festival (Montreal, Canada): June 2007

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The Greater the Weight

In The Greater the Weight, dancer and choreographer Dana Michel assembles extremely physical movement—a remnant from her previous training in track and touch football — with mathematical precision and poetic improvisation. The result is an exploration of the body as an instrument in a symphony of rupture and flow. A reflection on the moment when one stumbles, whether by accident or on purpose. Sometimes one can recover quickly and get up again… sometimes it’s not that easy.

Director / Mouvement Perpétuel
Canada / 2008 / 5‘00

Yorkton Short Film and Video Festival (2007)
Festival Quartiers Danse in Montreal (2021)
American Indian Film Festival (San Francisco, USA) (2008)
American Dance Festival: Dancing for the Camera (Durham, North Carolina)
Dance and Media Japan International Video Dance Festival (Tokyo, Japan)
MADDANCE FESTIVAL (Toronto, Canada)
MIDOC ARTE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION (Milan, Italy)
Festival Internacional VideoDanza (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
St. John’s Women’s Film Festival (St. John’s, Canada)
FICAP (Lisbon, Portugal)
Moves Experimental Short Film and New Media Festival (Manchester, U.K.)
DANSCAMDANSE (Belgium)
INSHADOW International Festival of Video, Performance and Technology (Lisbon, Portugal)

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40

A man at a pivotal point in his life: 40-something, still vital and strong yet taking stock, unmasking, and exposing his hopes, passions, vulnerabilities, and regrets. This is the subject of 40, a homage to the late Ken Roy, that follows his journey of self-discovery.

Director / Marlene Millar 及 Philip Szporer
Canada / 2009 / 5’28

FIFA (Montreal, Canada): March 2010 (World Premiere), March 2011.
Agite y Sirva (Oaxaca, Mexico): May 2010.
Yorkton Short Film and Video Festival (Yorkton, Canada): May 2010.
ContainR 2010 Olympics Film Festival (Vancouver, Canada): February 2010.
Moves Experimental Short Film and New Media Festival (Manchester, U.K.): 2010.
Encontros Internacionais Inclusao Pela Arte (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil): 2010.
Danscamdanse (Belgium): 2010.
EDIT Dance Film Festival (Budapest, Hungary): 2010.
Wallpaper (Toronto, Canada): 2010.
Videodanza (Buenos Aires, Argentina): 2010.
Disability Film Festival (Shropshire, U.K.): October 2011.

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Lost Action : Trace

The 3D dance film is an adaptation of Crystal Pite’s stage production Lost Action. The film is couched in a war narrative, with soldiers who offer the ultimate physical sacrifice; equally, it is a moving homage to dance’s fleeting quality.

Director / Marlene Millar and Philip Szporer
Canada / 2011 / 3’55

Dance on Camera (New York, USA): February 2013.
International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) (Montreal, Canada): March 2013.
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (Becket, Massachusetts, USA): 2012

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Bhairava

Bhairava evokes facets of Shiva, the Lord of Dance, as both the destroyer of evil and the guardian of time.  In this work, carried by evocative musical score and the singular energy of the ancient site of Hampi, dancer and choreographer Shantala Shivalingappa embodies the presence and distinctive qualities of Bhairava.

Director / Marlene Millar and Philip Szporer
Canada / 2017 / 13‘45

POOL – MOVEMENT ART FILM Festival Berlin (Germany): August 2018.
Light Moves Festival of Screendance (Limerick, Ireland): November 2017.
Cinedans (Amsterdam, Netherlands): March 2018. 
Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA) (Montreal, Canada)
American Dance Festival (Durham, North Carolina, USA)
Dance on Camera (New York, USA)
Festival Quartiers Danses (Montreal, Canada)
Seoul International Media Festival (Seoul, South Korea)
Vancouver International South Asian Film Festival (Vancouver, Canada)

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Mercy

“The hands of the dancers are the hands of my mother and sister, the hands of our grandmother, the hands of their mothers.” These words of celebrated American poet Cornelius Eady serve as an anchor for the short film Mercy that weaves poetry and imagery, with gesture, movement and voice into an intricate meditation on black womanhood.

Director / Philip Szporer
Canada / 2025 / 15’00 / English

77th Cannes Film Festival (Cannes, France): 2024. 
UK Asian Film Festival (London, UK): 2025.
Indian Film Festival of Stuttgart (Germany): July 24, 2024