Dancing Across Borders – Review

The arts resonate throughout each culture in their own fashion, and one of those is the form of dance. Anne bass translates for us the trying journey of a young Cambodian dancer in the feature Dancing Across Borders, a visual account of several years in Sokvannara (Sy) Sar’s life as he makes the rough transition between cultures and the dance world.

The one major complaint that echoes is the pacing, how there is little to no real definitive line of acts. With a film that’s practically aimed to strike an emotional cord with this tale of talent and determination, you would expect a more linear story line. Instead all you get is a mesh of events that overlap each other during a several year span of time that makes you loose track of where his journey starts and where it ends.

The direction, though some what jumbled by the placement of said footage, is simple at best. Bass gets the work done showing off the vast differences between the two worlds, working off the perspective of the dancer as he makes his way in and out of different struggles in order to obtain his dream.  There’s not much going on with the camera work, especially judging the fact that half of this film was not intended to become a feature length documentary, and it really does show.

Although the key point of obtaining your dreams despite the obstacles clearly comes through in this picture, that’s the only thing that really stands out. Everything else is all right at best, but the film serves it’s purpose that shells out enough inspirational points in order to move people to a certain point.

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