Alex Reuben is an artist filmmaker and lecturer with a background as a DJ and in art and design. He makes improvised, choreo-geographic movies and sound for cinema and teaches collaborative arts labs.
Reuben's films have a focus on intangible cultural heritage in social dance, sound and crafts. Routes – Dancing to New Orleans (48', Arts Council England), a road-movie in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, was selected in the ‘Top 20 Movies of the Decade’ (Geoff Andrew, BFI/Time Out). Colin's Wings (15', 16mm, UK, 1998 - see films), about the celebrated ceramic artist, Colin Pearson and Parkinson's Disease, was Critic's Choice (Time Out) at the BBC Short Film Festival.
The films are exhibited internationally and throughout UK cinemas including Picturehouse, Cinémathèque Française, Curzon, HOME Manchester, BFI and the ICA. Events and commissions include BBC, Tate Modern, Wellcome, Guggenheim New York, British Council, Channel 4 TV, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, NAGW, Birkbeck, Jerwood and The Place London. Articles include Sight & Sound, The Observer, Little White Lies and Time Out.
They collaboratively explore the connections between art, cognitive science, anthropology, environments and politics in a process of slow-cinema, walking and workshops. NEWSREEL (DANCE REEL) (64', ACE, Sadler's Wells), documenting improvised music, dance and protest on the streets of London, was projected live in a series of cinema screenings and talks (see 'films').
Gingerella RockaFela (66', ACE/Wellcome, UK 2018), an improvised movie about improvisation and a collaboration with neuroscientist, Professor Chris Frith, was Gala screening at Light Moves Festival of Screendance. Line Dance (5', CH4/ACE/MJW, 2004), a motion-capture for Channel 4 TV, was selected in Best British Shorts and Best Dance Films (Encounters/British Council).
The process is based upon workshops and field R&D, including urban, forest and cognitive science research in the Brazilian Amazon and Japan, supported by ACE, Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and a-n Artists.
Previous events include Moving Humans (Tate Modern), Dame Marina Warner's Words on the Move 4: The Digital Body (Birkbeck), Dance Umbrella's Sunday Shorts (Barbican Cinema), Choreo-Geography: Chartists, Class and Culture (Open House London) and A Conversation with Alex Reuben and James Lasdun (NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts [CBA] in collaboration with the New York Institute for the Humanities).
Reuben has taught workshops in the urban Amazon and South London, the latter as a Mayor of London Culture Seeds award winner for voluntary, community and heritage walking projects in arts, movement and science, KAS. He was a lecturer at the University of the Arts London and Head of M.A. Dance for the Screen at London Contemporary Dance School. DJ'ing includes the pioneering clubs, A Night in Havana, Soul Makossa and Those Rhumba Nights.
Publications include an interview in Music and Shape (Oxford University Press, 2017) and consultant for neuroscience Professors Uta and Chris Frith's Two Heads (Bloomsbury, 2022) and What Makes Us Social (MIT, 2023).
Reuben studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and Middlesex University London. Most recently he was an NYU Fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts researching his current movie and workshop project Trumpet Voluntary, developed with the BFI and based upon a short story by James Lasdun.