Perspectives Film Festival 2023 to be held Oct 26 – 29; will feature 9 films, including Cannes Film Festival prizewinners
The festival will see the Southeast Asian premieres of two films – ‘The Klezmer Project’ and ‘Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’ – and the Asian premiere of ‘Paco’.
The 16th edition of the Perspectives Film Festival: Breakthroughs in Cinema (PFF) will run from Oct 26 to 29. This year’s programme will feature nine films, which will all be screened at Oldham Theatre.
Themed “Sound WAVE”, this year’s festival will present films that utilise soundscapes to “define their own genres or… [explore] their characters’ inner psyche.”
Oct 26
PFF will kick off with Perfect Days (dir. Wim Wenders, 2023), whose protagonist, a toilet cleaner named Hirayama, sees the turning point of his life’s monotony expressed through music rather than dialogue.
The 123-minute long film will be screened at 8 pm on Oct 26. Individual tickets for the film are available for $16 under Concession (Senior citizens, SFS and AFA, and students), and $18 for General.
Oct 27
Another film that festival-goers can look forward to is Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (dir. Anna Hints, 2023), an M18 Estonian film that places its focus on dialogue where its female characters “bare all” and “[divulge] the painful realities of womanhood.”
The 89-minute film will be screened at 8 pm on Oct 27. Tickets begin at $11.50 for Concession and $13.50 for General.
M18 occult horror film The Shout (dir. Jerzy Skolimowski, 1978), follows a musician and his wife living in an English village when a stranger appears and claims to possess the ability to kill anybody with one fatal shout.
Tickets for its screening at 10.30 pm on Oct 27 are priced at $11.50 for Concession and $13.50 for General.
Oct 28
Derek Jarman’s final feature film, Blue (1993), represents his diagnosis with AIDS (Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), loss of community, and subsequent worsening of vision through the use of a blank blue screen. The film is rated NC16 for mature themes.
Individual tickets for Blue’s screening at 3 pm on Oct 28 are available at $11.50 for Concession and $13.50 for General.
PFF will also present a portrait documentary, Trances (dir. Ahmed El Maânouni, 1981), following Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane’s rise to fame with “political lyrics blended with traditional Moroccan sounds.” The film was the first to be restored by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project.
The film, rated NC16 for some nudity, will screen at 5pm on Oct 28. Tickets are available for $11.50 for Concession and $13.50 for General.
Anti-establishment Portuguese film Black God, White Devil (dir. Glauber Rocha, 1964), explores the political landscape of Brazil following the 1964 military dictatorship, “rekindling the spirit of revolution” using Brazilian folk songs, minstrels, and poetry.
Tickets for the film’s 8 pm screening on Oct 28 are available at $11.50 for Concession and $13.50 for General.
Oct 29
PFF’s closing day will begin with Paco (dir. Tim Carlier, 2023), a film about a sound recordist who loses a radio and must track down the signal through Adelaide to find the actress he accidentally left it with. During this journey, he “[braves] time-travellers, British permit-checkers, and an all-important King Arthurian reference.”
Tickets to the film are available at $11.50 for Concession and $13.50 for General.
Docu-fiction film The Klezmer Project (dir. Leandro Koch, Paloma Schachmann, 2023), tells the story of an Argentine wedding cameraman who falls in love with a Klezmer (Jewish folk music) clarinettist while on the job, and comes up with a documentary about Jewish music as an excuse to go after her.
Tickets to its 4 pm screening on Oct 29 are available for $11.50 for Concession and $13.50 for General.
The film that closes off PFF 2023 will be The Music Room (dir. Satyajit Ray, 1958), a 95-minute drama about a Bengali landowner who must come to terms with the loss of his wealth, which he previously used to put on “extravagant shows… in his prized music room.”
Tickets for the festival’s final screening at 7.30 pm on Oct 29 are available at $11.50 for Concession and $13.50 for General.
A festival pass with full access to all screenings is available for $75. Timing and pricing for each individual film’s screening can be referred to on the festival’s website.
Besides the screenings, a variety of film-related content is available on the festival’s website, ranging from opinion pieces on films like Stepping Onto The Sound-Stage to a podcast by members of the festival committee under the Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.
Oldham Theatre, where the screenings will be held, is located at 1 Canning Rise, Singapore 179868, at the National Archives of Singapore.
