Perspectives Film Festival 2014: Our Picks
PUBLISHED September 17th, 2014 04:00 pm | UPDATED June 3rd, 2020 12:16 am
Our favourite film festival is back! With seven films and three workshops in two locations – screening at Golden Village Vivocity for the first time on top of old nest National Museum of Singapore – to say that Perspectives Film Festival is bigger and better is no understatement.
This year, explore with the timeless theme of displacement – how do people deal with estrangement, contempt and exile? Resist, conform and adapt, or try to strike a balance, these seven thought-provoking works will change you to confront humanity’s uncomfortable realities. Excellently curated as always, we’re sorely tempted to get the festival pass, but if you need to decide which ones to spend your money on, here are our top picks of the festival:
Short Term 12 – 16 October, 7.30pm
Based on writer-director Daniel Cretton’s two-year stint at a youth facility, Short Term 12 tells the story of Grace (Brie Larson), the passionate young supervisor of a group home for at-risk teenagers pulled from the worst kind of home situations. As Grace readies for marriage to long-time boyfriend Mason (Jason Gallagher Jr.), the arrival of a new resident – whom Grace sees as a reflection of herself – compels her to come to terms with the ghosts of her past, like the youths she mentors. This sensitive and realistic exposé portrays the complex lives of troubled teenagers as they seek refuge while carrying emotional wounds inflicted by their loved ones and how their mentors take on the responsibility of picking up the broken pieces of their short lives, even though these adults may also have their own demons to overcome.
Awards: SXSW Grand Jury Award – Best Narrative Feature, Locarno Film Festival – Prize of The Ecumenical Jury
Salaam Bombay! – 17 October, 7.30pm
Digitally remastered for its 25th anniversary, the film chronicles the loss of innocence of 10-year old Krishna, who is abandoned by his travelling circus. Drifting to Mumbai, he’s sucked into the world of drug pushers, pimps, addicts, and prostitutes along with thousands of other street children in the city. The film poses the question of what should be done about these displaced children, and raised awareness about India’s underprivileged citizens years before Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. Fun fact: all the kids in the film were non-professionals that were enlisted off the streets, thus contributing real life experience to the film.
Awards: Cannes Film Festival – Audience Award and Golden Camera
Suzhou River – 18 October, 4.30pm
Still banned in China today, Suzhou River is director Lou Ye’s bid at capturing the zeitgeist of millennial China’s material predicament and its people’s social dislocation. Instead of the glitzy metropolis that Shanghai’s often portrayed to be, Suzhou River takes place in the environs of the decrepit factories of its squalid waterfront. The narrator (Hua Zhongkai) falls in love with Meimei (Zhou Xun), who masquerades as a mermaid in a nightclub, and also meets a small-time crook (Jia Hongsheng), whose ill-fated paramour Mudan (also Zhou Xun) looks like Meimei. This tragic love story explores the themes of loss of identity, love and death, and truth and falsity.
Awards: International Film Festival Rotterdam – Tiger Award, Viennale – Fipresci Prize
Sin Nombre – 19 October, 1.30pm
Inspired by a 2003 New York Times article about immigrants who died trapped in a refrigerated trailer, writer-director Cary Fukunaga (aka the guy who won an Emmy for True Detective) shot a short film that led to his feature film debut Sin Nombre. The story follows Honduran teen Sayra (Paulina Gaitán) on her journey toward the American dream atop a freight train, where she runs into Willie (Edgar Flores), a young gang member. Sayra and Willie represent these two groups whose lives are risked so often in this part immigrant, part mobster tale.
FYI: Fukunaga wanted to do justice to the immigrant’s story, so he rode the rails with hundreds of illegal immigrants to bear witness to bandits, violence and death, as well as the unwitting camaraderie aboard.
Awards: Sundance Film Festival – Directing Award and Cinematography Award
On top of the seven films, festivalgoers can also participate in different workshops like Filmmaking for Social Change with filmmaker Jasmine Ng and Behind the Scenes of Salaam Bombay! with the film’s screen writer Sooni Taraporevala. In conjuction with ArchiFest, speakers Jave Loh and Joycelyn Yeo will be speaking about urban displacement with two case studies, the graveyard slum community of Manila and the infamous Squats of London.
Perspectives Film Festival runs 16-19 October 2014 at the National Museum of Singapore and Golden Village Vivocity. Tickets are priced at $8 (students, seniors and Singapore Film Society members), $10 for the general public, and $45 for the all access festival pass. For more information on films and workshops, see website. See SISTIC for film tickets.
Images: Perspective Films Festival, Momento Films, Sooni Taraporevala and Focus Features
