For decades, filmmakers have defied conventions to make movies that revolutionised style, technique, and treatment of subject matter. They have worked tirelessly against the status quo to create powerful films. For our 10th anniversary, Perspectives celebrates these mavericks – filmmakers, characters, and even institutions – who push against the mainstream. They are iconoclasts, refusing to conform to the social, political, institutional or technical boundaries that might limit their cinematic vision.

Films

CITY OF GHOSTS (M18 – Violence)

Opening Film - Singapore Premiere

In City of Ghosts, Matthew Heineman shines the spotlight on the anonymous Syrians behind the group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), who risk their lives every day documenting the ghastly atrocities committed by ISIS. View details

BLACK GIRL (NC16 – Some Nudity)

Restored Classic

A black Senegalese woman moves to France to work for a white family. Additionally, Borom Sarret (1963) - a short film exploring the life of a cart driver - will accompany Black Girl. View details

BLOW-UP (M18 – Some Nudity)

Restored Classic

A London fashion photographer facing existential ennui chances upon a couple in an empty park, and photographs them. While developing the photos, he becomes convinced that there is something sinister going on. View details

BEHEMOTH (PG – Brief Nudity)

Zhao’s visually-stunning poetic documentary on the life of coal miners in China is stark and poignant. Behemoth shows the hellish conditions of the coal mining industry and its detrimental effects on the dwindling environment. View details

THE APPLE (PG)

A pair of twin sisters have been locked in their home for 12 years. They are let out into the world for the first time after neighbours and their local welfare agency intervene. View details

LA HAINE (NC16 – Some Coarse Language & Violence)

La Haine follows three restless young men in the 24 hours after a violent riot in an ethnically-diverse housing project in Paris’s suburbs. View details

MCCABE & MRS. MILLER (M18 – Some Nudity)

Restored Classic

A gambler arrives in a mining town and establishes a successful brothel with an English woman. They try to ward off a large mining company from buying out the town - at a lethal price. View details

SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS (M18 – Some Nudity)

In a small Hutsul village located in the Carpathian Mountains of Western Ukraine, a young Ivan falls in love with Marichka, the daughter of the man who killed his father. View details

THE LURE (R21 – Sexual Scenes & Nudity)

Singapore Premiere

Two carnivorous mermaid sisters encounter a family who takes them into their cabaret club. Their fates take a turn when one of the mermaids falls in love. View details

I AM NOT A WITCH (PG)

Singapore Premiere

Zambian orphan named Shula is accused of witchcraft, and her village banishes her to a travelling witch camp. A corrupt official, Mr. Banda, decides to exploit Shula's "powers". View details

DAYS OF BEING WILD (PG)

Closing Film

In 1960, young playboy Yuddy pursues - and ends - a series of romances. This intoxicating period piece meditates on missed opportunities, urban alienation and unrequited love. View details

View All Films

Schedule

October 2017

15 Oct

2.30pm

A New World: The Cinematic
Virtual Reality Experience

*SCAPE Gallery Level 5

20 Oct

9pm

City of Ghosts

Shaw Lido

21 Oct

4.30pm

Black Girl

National Museum of Singapore

21 Oct

7.30pm

Blow-Up

National Museum of Singapore

22 Oct

2pm

Behemoth

National Museum of Singapore

22 Oct

4.30pm

The Apple

National Museum of Singapore

26 Oct

8pm

La Haine

Alliance Française de Singapour

27 Oct

8pm

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

National Museum of Singapore

28 Oct

2pm

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

National Museum of Singapore

28 Oct

4.30pm

Dovzhenko Centre and the Revitalisation
of Post Soviet Film Archive in Ukraine

National Museum of Singapore

28 Oct

7.30pm

The Lure

National Museum of Singapore

29 Oct

3pm

I am not a witch

National Museum of Singapore

29 Oct

5.30pm

Days of Being Wild

National Museum of Singapore

The Committees

Festival Directors

Programming

Editorial

Design

Festival Management

Publicity & Sponsorship

Supervisors

Perspectives Film Festival: Breakthroughs in Cinema is an annual arts event that features breakthrough films that are thematically curated. The festival is a practicum course run by the faculty of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information and is organised by undergraduates from Nanyang Technological University. We are the only student-run film festival in Singapore.

Journal

Staying Gold

By Boey Kim Cheng There are movies that change your life forever, that seem to read and reflect your life so uncannily they become part of you, and the experience of watching them deepens into memories just as vital as memories of real, dramatic events. Especially memorable are the growing up movies that you watch […]

Filming From A New Perspective: An Interview With Gina Kim

By Jared Alex Tan South Korean filmmaker Gina Kim is all about firsts — she was the first Asian woman to teach at Harvard’s Visual and Environmental Studies department (she now teaches Film, Television and Digital Media at UCLA), and her 2013 culinary film Final Recipe marked the first movie by a South Korean director […]

Breaking Asian stereotypes in Hollywood

Asians have long had an uneven relationship with Hollywood. Over the decades, they have found themselves oddly misrepresented on screen, subject to an industry that plays off comical caricatures of broken English, uncouth behaviour and nerdy, awkward science geeks. An example of this is the character of Long Duk Dong in the 1984 teen film […]