NJ Film Fest doc profiles Alice Rende, artist who thinks outside the box while staying in it

Alice Rende in “My Own Box.”

Sometimes she contorts her body. Sometimes she stands on her head.

Sometimes she seems to float. Sometimes she climbs the walls. Something she presses her face against glass to make it look like something seen in a funhouse mirror.

Alice Rende’s “Fora” is an innovative dance piece/acrobatics feat featuring Rende, alone, in what looks like a see-though phone booth. And the Belgian filmmaker Filip Jacobson’s short film “My Own Box” — which will be screened by the fall edition of the New Jersey Fall Film Festival on Sept. 6, in New Brunswick and also online — features excerpts from “Fora” along with footage of Rende outside the box. Interview segments focus on the artistic choices that led her to create “Fora.”

The film is a fascinating look at an artist who has created a simple but powerful metaphor for the problems of life that many of us find ourselves facing.

Rende, who studied at the National Circus School of Brazil of Rio de Janeiro and founded Compagnie Ar in Aix-en-Provence, France, says in the film that she has often felt like a misfit, and that “Fora” is meant to evoke “this lack of space and the violent power relations that sometimes we feel in society. This is what gives me anger. So I think there is two feelings: Like, I need to fit, and also, an anger against the feeling that society shapes you, and you are not allowed to be the way you are.

“I say ‘anger,’ but it’s rebellion, also. If it’s rebellion, we see there is hope in it. When we do rebellion, it’s because we believe we can change. Otherwise, it would simply be depression.”

“My Own Box” was developed as part of Take Care, which describes itself as “the first-ever EU project dedicated to supporting mental health and well-being in the circus arts sector.”

Jacobson shows Rende cleaning the box, waiting for a performance to begin and, in the film’s final scene, making her way through a large outdoor maze. When she finally reaches the center, she twirls, and does a handstand, and then lies on her back, as if she has found peace.

It is a variation, basically, on what she does in “Fora.”

“The shape, for me, is always the same, and I know it, and I feel protected,” she says about the “Fora” box. “It’s my place, and this is nice. It’s small, but it’s mine.”

“My Own Box” will be part of a Shorts Program that will be shown at The New Jersey Film Festival at Voorhees Hall at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, Sept. 6 at 5 p.m. It will also be available online all day Sept. 6. For more about the film or the festival, visit newjerseyfilmfestivalfall2026.eventive.org/welcome.

Here is an excerpt from “Fora.” This clip is not part of the “My Own Box” film but I have included it to give you a sense of what the performance is like.

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