22-24 Mar 2019
Venue: Legend Cinema, Exchange Square (2F). Free Entry, open to all audiences. First Come First Serve.
Venue: Legend Cinema, Exchange Square (2F). Free Entry, open to all audiences. First Come First Serve.
Currents film program features a number of short and feature films across genre by mostly Cambodian and Southeast Asian filmmakers that explore various perspectives on cities.
22.03
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"Dream Land"
by Steve Chen (2015, OV Khmer, ST English) with the presence of Steve Chen and Q&A after the screening Lida, a career-driven woman in her late 20s in the developing metropolis of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, sells modern and upscale real estate developments to the growing middle and upper class in contemporary Cambodia. Lida may be thriving as a top real estate agent, but in her personal life, her relationship with her photographer boyfriend is deteriorating. Unable to escape the trauma and prison of her interior monologue, she travels to the quiet beach town of Kep, Cambodia, with her close companions. While the growth and modernization of the city promote an urban and cultural erasure, Kep reveals treasures from Cambodia’s heritage. It is there that Lida discovers that the specters from the past haunt in sublime and beautiful ways. |
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“Mamma Roma”
by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1962, OV Italian, ST English) An ex-prostitute, Mamma Roma, tries to start a new life selling vegetables with her 16-year-old son Ettore. When Ettore later finds out that she was a prostitute, he succumbs to his dark side and stops doing his duties. He later carries out a petty theft of a radio in a hospital and goes to prison. Meanwhile, Mamma Roma is struggling to raise her son the best way possible and build a new life for both. |
23.03
SHORTS: IN OBSERVATION - AFTERNOON PROGRAM
with the presence of Nguyen Trinh Thi and John Torres and Q&A after the screening
with the presence of Nguyen Trinh Thi and John Torres and Q&A after the screening
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“Letters from Panduranga”
by Nguyen Trinh Thi (2015, OV Vietnamese, STEnglish) Letters from Panduranga was initially inspired by the fact that the Vietnamese government is to build Vietnam’s first two nuclear power plants in Ninh Thuan by 2020. Public discussions regarding the project have been largely absent in Vietnam due to strict government controls over public speech and media; and local communities have also been excluded from consultations. |
Trio from John Torres
Inspired by an artist's drawings, an experience traveling, or a poet's words, these three works unravel a sense of place and time through the use of recurring images and creative experimentation with sound, color, and light.
Inspired by an artist's drawings, an experience traveling, or a poet's words, these three works unravel a sense of place and time through the use of recurring images and creative experimentation with sound, color, and light.
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“After Nonoy Estarte, A Certain Orpheus, And Those Flowers in Dahilayan That Accompanied This Other Sense They Told Me About”
(2016, no dialogue) |
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“Hai, They Recycle Heartbreaks in Tokyo so Nothing’s Wasted” (2009,no dialogue)
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“Muse”
(2011, OV English) |
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"One Lightyear on Earth"
by Albert Samreth (2018, OV English, ST Khmer) Set in a rapidly developing Phnom Penh, this film is told through letters written by a ghost who is losing its memory. Myths about the origins of the world, remnants of biography, and screaming cicadas invoke the Buddhist cycle of reincarnation against scenes of demolition and construction in the Cambodian capital. After four decades of war, a genocide, and slow economic development, Phnom Penh is finally exorcising its past for an uncertain, sudden future. |
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“Phnomkyo”
by Douglas Seok (2017, no dialogue) A young artist journeys from Phnom Penh to Tokyo with her works. |
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"Railway Sleepers"
by Sompot Chidgasornpongse(2016, OV Thai, ST English) with the presence of Sompot Chidgasornpongse and Q&A after the screening Railway Sleepers explores the close connection between Thai people and Thai railway, a celebration and record of what it is like to live in Thailand today. Through various activities and scenes inside and outside the moving vehicles, the film turns the train into the microcosm of life in Thailand during this changing time. With mundane talk, onboard walks, outward gazes, exchanged glances, sitting, and sleeping, the film takes the audience to experience a 2-day, 2-night trip from the north to the south. As the vehicle’s rhythm synchronizes with the mechanism of a movie camera, the long history of the Thai train is encapsulated in this moving entity, while we become passengers of light. |
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"Nervous Translation"
by Shireen Seno (2018, OV Filipino, ST English) with the presence of Shireen Seno and Q&A after the screening Eight-year-old Yael is shy and not always at ease. She prefers writing letters to performing dances for her applauding Filipino family. She listens endlessly to the cassette tapes recorded by her father, who is spending years away from home working in Riyadh. Her uncle, a rock star with the band The Futures, acts as something of a surrogate father. When she hears an advertisement for a pen that will give her a ‘wonderful life’, she decides to spend all her savings on this miracle pen. |
24.03
Shorts: 3 x Anti-Archive + 1 x 13 Little Pictures
with the presence of Davy Chou and Danech San and Q&A after screening
with the presence of Davy Chou and Danech San and Q&A after screening
“Cambodia 2099”
by Davy Chou (2014, OV Khmer, ST English) Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On Diamond Island, the country's pinnacle of modernity,two friends tell each other about the dreams they had the night before. |
“A Million Years”
by Danech San (2018, OV Khmer, ST English) A young woman relaxes at a riverfront restaurant. She recounts stories of her past experiences, finding enchantment in the flows of the river and the trees on the mountains nearby. |
“New Land Broken Road”
by Kavich Neang (2018, OV Khmer, ST English) Phnom Penh at night. Three young hip-hop dancers drive a single motorbike and stop on a muddy deserted road. Nick leaves the others to look for an iPhone he heard was lost in the area. Piseth and Thy discuss their hopes and doubts, and Piseth shows his best Michael Jackson moves. They meet Leakhena, a young female street vendor whose cart is full of colors. |
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“A Dance for Ren Hang”
by Lei Yuan Bin (2018, no dialogue, Rated R - Age 18+Only) Three dancers reenact the best photographs by brilliant Chinese photographer Ren Hang, who was well known for his shocking photographs bordering on taboo. |
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“The City of Mirrors: A Fictional Biography”
by Truong Minh Quy (2016, OV Vietnamese, ST English) The City of Mirrors: A Fictional Biography enters the inner world of the filmmaker: his childhood memories, his family’s everyday life in their hometown. Through the magical transformation of cinema, those trivial stories and those banal images suddenly become un-real as if they are the reflections of what is beyond reality. |
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“A Land Imagined”
by Yeo Siew Hua (2018, OV Mandarin/English/Bengali, ST English) Rated R - Age 18+ Only Amidst a Lynchian vision of Singapore’s metropolis, worn-out police investigator Lok sets out to solve the mystery behind the disappearance of a migrant Chinese construction worker from a land reclamation site. As Lok’s insomnia sets in, the truth he seeks begins to seep out from the reclaimed sand. The story then turns on itself to follow Wang, a lonely Chinese construction worker living in fear of being repatriated after a work site accident renders him expendable. He finds kinship in two others: his sympathetic Bangladeshi colleague Ajit, and the aloof supervisor of a dreamscape cybercafé he begins to frequent during his own sleepless nights. When Ajit needs help, Wang enacts a doomed scheme that sparks a sinister,irreversible turn of events, and throws him headlong into the path of inspector Lok’s investigation. |
