Saturday, March 21, 2026

Peaks, by Navzad Dabu
Pivot Festival of Contemporary Arts

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Peaks is the award-winning third directorial outing in a series of shorts all focused on observing stories in a much distilled temporal space, to appeal to a viewer's activity rather than their passivity, to slow down the viewer's observation to something more akin to a real life experience of a singular moment. This Slow Cinema piece, at a 30-minute runtime, was produced in Australia around 2020. The idea for it was birthed when my close friend and collaborator [Dina Grinberg, who also plays Mila in the film] brought up the idea of children playing a prank on each other that has unexpected, lasting repercussions. What developed was a film that explores male toxicity, jealousy and micro-violence in a natural landscape where distance is visually synonymous with time.

The short observes a largely unspoken communication — when one person's fleeting sensibilities meet another person's unrelenting, nagging daemons. What "is" between two people who supposedly care for each other isn't always enough when a single party can't let go of what "isn't." Peaks desires to explore this dynamic and the confusing releases of energy that arise from irreconcilable relationships.

Tickets