Dances With Films (DWF): NY 2026
World Premiere of GLENDORA
Dances With Films (DWF) is an annual independent film festival based in Los Angeles and New York. Founded by Leslee Scallon and Michael Trent, the festival is dedicated to showcasing true independent cinema, requiring that all films in competition have no known directors, writers, or producers attached. (Dances With Films, 2025)
DWF programs feature-length films, shorts, documentaries, and animations that highlight bold, original voices.
The 2026 New York edition of Dances With Films will take place January 15–18 at Regal Union Square in Manhattan. The feature documentary GLENDORA will have its world premiere at the festival. (EG PR, 2025)
GLENDORA
Feature Documentary | World Premiere
Runtime: 74 minutes
A film by:
Isabelle Armand & Glendora Collaborative
Official DWF: NY 2026 Screening
Friday, January 16 at 4:45 p.m.
Location: Regal Union Square
850 Broadway, New York, NY 10003
About the Film
In the heart of the Mississippi Delta, the village of Glendora may seem quiet and remote. Beneath its stillness, however, lies a vibrant, tightly knit African-American community whose strength, resilience, and creativity thrive despite chronic scarcity.
GLENDORA is the result of five years of close collaboration between filmmaker and townspeople, offering an intimate portrait of life where economic fragility meets profound cultural wealth. Told through the voices of multiple generations, the film weaves personal testimonies with daily rituals, birthdays, graduations, weddings, and funerals, capturing the rhythm of a town that continually rises above its circumstances.
As the Mississippi landscape shifts, so do the stories, revealing both the universality of human experience and the distinct textures of rural Southern life. More than a portrait of place, GLENDORA reflects a larger American history shaped by racial injustice, economic neglect, and structural inequality, while underscoring the community’s determination to remain connected and shape its future.
Made with and by the people who live there, GLENDORA amplifies voices too often unheard, offering a powerful story of culture, resilience, creativity, and collective memory from a town long overlooked, but not easily forgotten.
About the Filmmaker
Isabelle Armand
(Filmmaker, Cinematographer, Writer)
Isabelle Armand is a New York–based documentary photographer and filmmaker whose work interweaves photography, film, and oral testimony to explore the complex layers of people whose histories, lives, and potential have long been undervalued.
Her acclaimed book Levon and Kennedy: Mississippi Innocence Project (powerHouse Books, 2018), which documents the wrongful convictions of two men, has received wide recognition. Her work is held in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Akron Art Museum, and Portland Museum of Art, and has been featured in The New York Times, Art in America, The Economist, The Daily Beast, and more.
GLENDORA is her first feature documentary. She is currently editing a photo book of the same title.
USA | Feature Documentary | 74 Minutes | Not Rated | 2025
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