USA, UK and Mozambique / 2008 / 35mins / Dance film, Portrait / English

Based on a true story, Nora takes us to the Zimbabwe of dancer Nora Chipaumire’s childhood as she journeys through the vivid memories of her youth. With the help of local performers and dancers of all ages, she brings her story to life in a swiftly moving poem of sound and image.

Alla Kovgan

Born in Moscow in 1973, Alla Kovgan has been sharing her time between Russia and the US since 1996 making films, installations, and stage intermedia performances in collaboration with artists from different disciplines as well as teaching and curating dance film and avant-garde cinema around the world. Her breakthrough film Nora (36', 2008), co-directed with David Hinton and based on true stories of a Zimbabwe-born choreographer Nora Chipaumire, received 30 awards in every kind of genre (fiction, documentary, video art). After being broadcast on ARTE, PBS, TV3 (Spain), NRK (Norway) and SVT (Sweden) and presented at over 200 festivals and venues including MoMA, Louvre and Tate Modern, it was selected to represent the US at Input 2011. Alla also co-directed, wrote and edited Emmy-nominated Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North (2007) and Movement (R)evolution Africa (2007). Her award documentary Cunningham, about the life of Merce Cunningham was released in 2019. Learn More

David Hinton

David Hinton is a director who has made many documentaries for British television. His subjects have included artists of all kinds, including painter Francis Bacon, filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, writer Alan Bennett, and choreographer Karole Armitage. He has also made films about Dostoyevsky, rock and roll, visual comedy, and the Cultural Revolution in China. He is best known in the dance world for Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men and Strange Fish, his film versions of stage shows by DV8 Physical Theatre. He has also made performance films with Adventures in Motion Pictures, the Alvin Ailey Company and the Royal Swedish Ballet, and he has collaborated with several choreographers to create original dance works for the screen. He has twice won British Academy awards for his documentaries, and his dance films have won many awards, including a Prix Italia, an Emmy, and the IMZ Dance Screen Award. In 2008 he co-directed the film Nora (with Alla Kovgan), based on childhood memories of the self-exiled Zimbabwean dancer Nora Chipaumire. Learn More