I've always thought the real art of filmmaking is in editing, filming being a necessary
step to provide material for the editor. Now, here are hundreds of hours of dance footage
available to editors in a "Creative Commons license (with attribution)," the question
being how to find what's there. On Vimeo, I have made a channel for edited pieces, a
channel for oral histories, and a channel for at least a few of the collections's camera
tapes and archival footage. Ile Ife Films can continue to tinker with Vimeo, but
the real question is how the Special Collections Research Center will make
the Arthur Hall Collection easily accessible and broadly available
in the future.

I also think the art of dance films is very complex. Arthur Hall always told me that the
highest art was the interaction of dancers and musicians before a live audience. At best,
the camera can capture just one of an infinite number of variations on a dance, a sliver
of that ancient art form, and once it is presented back, it has lost the spontaneity - the
spark - of live dancers and live musicians playing off one another. Is film, then, just a
pale shadow of the dance? A documentation that once there was art there?

... I ponder such questions.
I beat them on clay tablets
and fling them to the ground.
Over these and a few others
I am fallen into madness ...

That's a bit of a poem by my friend, the late Walter Easton, who made movies with my
friend Abbott Meader, a member of the Ile Ife Films board of directors, whose film
Isolation, as noted at the outset, was the most viewed video of 2021 among our several
Vimeo channels, no doubt because of a global sense of isolation during the pandemic.
Abbott's channel on Vimeo is here. The second most viewed was my film Lake Dynamics
and Human Impacts, no doubt because of global warming. My channel is here. The third
most viewed in 2021 is Arthur Hall Obatala. It is the most viewed all-time over the past
many years. I worked hard on Arthur Hall Obatala, beginning in 1978. It has gone through
several iterations, all of them available in the Arthur Hall Collections, but the one now
posted on Vimeo is my best effort. Note that it is not a document of a single dance, but a
melding of many, to make an experience only possible through the magic of cinema,
a completely different experience than the experience of the high art of live dancers
and live musicians in live conversation.

Among the other Ile Ife videos, in order of popularity during 2021:

Ione Nash Interview - may she dance in the heavens

Ray Hartung's ILE IFE House of Love - the classic potrait of the
Afro-American Dance Ensemble in its first full bloom.

Dance Yanvallu - Arthur Hall in rehearsal with
Rita Cottman Johnson, followed by a composite performance.

Snake Dance Teacher Dance - Arthur Hall and Norman Mills conduct a
West African Festival in a small mill town in Maine (1977).
The U.S. State Department put the film in all our African Embassies.
We should have charged the government more money.

Ode to Yemanya - the dance straight through, as performed at Movement Theatre
International by Rita Cottman Johnson, Monzella Allen, and the late
Van Williams.

Arthur Hall in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood - in which Fred Rogers gives
an introduction to the continent of Africa, after which he taught Arthur Hall
how to quiet things down for smaller people in an audience.

Prince Twins Seven-Seven - clips of Twins Seven-Seven
drawn from the Arthur Hall Collection for screening at the Woodmere
Art Museum's exhibit Africa in the Arts of Philadelphia:
Bullock, Searles, and Twins Seven-Seven.

Orisun Omi (The Well) - the town may change, but the well
remains the same. A portrait of a cultural exchange between
Philadelphia and Bahia in Brazil.

Odunde 1995 - put togethe for Lois Fernandez.
There were multiple cameras over several days.
Lots more footage available.

Marie Laveau Conjers Gris Gris - The opening number of Act Two of
Fat Tuesday and all that jazz! (1977) The entire Great Performances
broadcast has been restored and preserved by Ile Ife Films.

Moving the Arthur Hall Collection - gives some idea of the scale.

Jorge Preloran's The Unvictorious One - Army Signal Corps (ca. 1956)
Filmed in Germany. The original film is in the Preloran Collection
at the Smithsonian.

Bobby Artis Tribute Rehearsal - Great little film
in which the spirits come down.

There are several other worthy pieces on our Vimeo platform which did not get much play in
2021, for whatever reason. Now that most everybody can make high quality films on their
phones, we look forward to the day when some hot-shot starts sampling the Arthur Hall
Collection for new and even better experiential cinema. Personally, I'm getting used to
filming with the new 4K handicam. It makes beautiful pictures (though it crashed my
editing program). Too bad that, back in the day, we were stuck with the expensive 16mm
and then the fuzzy-looking videotape, though every medium has its good points and bad.

By way of a preview of the 2022 Annual Report, see Two Songs from Saka Acquaye.