Draft:Derrick Belcham

Derrick Belcham is a Canadian filmmaker based out of Brooklyn, NY. His work primarily involves documentary and music video. He has worked with notable artists such as Philip Glass, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, and Paul Simon.

Career
Belcham’s work is multidisciplinary and often experimental. He uses a combination of digital and analog tools in production, including Red digital cinema cameras, Leica R glass, and Fujifilm GFX 100S.

From 2010 to 2016, Belcham directed take away shows, a series of live sessions with musical artists. Popular episodes of the series include performances from The Dø, Angèle, Bon Iver, and The Kooks.

In 2012, Belcham was commissioned to curate a night of dance films for New York dance organization Pentacle. He instead decided to create six of his own dance films by selecting six dancers and choreographers, filming pieces in the streets of New York, and having the visuals scored by musicians. One of these pieces is a video for violinist Sarah Neufeld’s song “Forcelessness.” The video paired violin and modern dance, and was screened at New Dance Cinema and the International Short Film Festival.

In 2014, Belcham, alongside artist Emily Terndrup, staged an evening-length dance theater piece entitled Debut at the Knockdown Center in Queens, NY. Debut, which was choreographed by Terndrup, told the story of a group of high school students sneaking into an abandoned building during their senior prom. The piece garnered high praise in Brooklyn Magazine for its “hairpin turns of emotion and orientation” and “atmospheric richness.”

In 2017, Belcham filmed composers Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto performing in The Glass House amid an installation by artist Yayoi Kusama.

In 2022, Mana Contemporary debuted Belcham’s first video installation, The You Voice, a nine channel video installation that explored the often-contradictory inner voice that both drives and stalls creativity and personal agency. In 2024, the Williamsburg Biannual exhibited 15/50/150: Song & Dance, a mid career retrospective of the 50 films that he created in the past 15 years with 150 musicians and dances, coinciding with a pre-opening artist party to help introduce the organization to the artist community of New York City.