Film picks: Archifest On Screen, Perspectives Film Festival, Spy Kids: Armageddon

Archifest On Screen: Patricio Guzman’s Chile Trilogy

Singapore Archifest 2023 is the annual architecture festival commissioned by the Singapore Institute of Architects. This year’s theme is Interim: Acts Of Adaptation, which looks into the ways that interim or stopgap solutions are a response to change.

Presented by indie cinema The Projector and the Embassy of Chile in Singapore, the programme showcases the work of prominent documentary film-maker Patricio Guzman.

In his Chile trilogy, he explores the ways in which Chileans have evolved the means to handle change, especially the upheavals caused by the regime of dictator Augusto Pinochet, who ruled from 1973 to 1990.

In Nostalgia For The Light (2010, PG, 93 minutes, screens on Saturday, 8pm), the first film of the trilogy, Guzman travelled to the high, dry reaches of Atacama Desert to record astronomers scanning the cloudless skies and archaeologists making finds in the earth that preserves ancient remains especially well.

He contrasts their work with that of women combing the desert, hoping to find traces of loved ones murdered by the Pinochet regime.

The documentary was an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for Best Documentary Screenplay by the Writers Guild of America.

The trilogy’s second film, The Pearl Button (2015), will screen on Oct 8, while the third movie, The Cordillera Of Dreams (2019), will play on Oct 15.

Where: The Projector, 05-00 Golden Mile Tower, 6001 Beach Road
MRT: Nicoll Highway/Lavender
When: Saturday to Oct 15, various times
Admission: $15 for a standard ticket
Info:

theprojector.sg/archifest

Perspectives Film Festival

The 16th edition of the student-run Perspectives Film Festival will feature nine films, each with a focus on 2023’s theme of sound.

Noteworthy films include the documentary Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (2023), Estonian film-maker Anna Hints’ debut work.

In the steamy confines of a smoke sauna – a type of sauna favoured in Estonia and other Baltic countries – women of various ages carry out a casual form of group therapy.

With their speech acting as the soundtrack, they talk about their bodies and the ways in which being female has shaped their lives.

For her work, Hints won the Directing award in the World Cinema Documentary section of the Sundance Film Festival in January. All 18 reviewers on the aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a positive rating.

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (M18, 89 minutes) screens on Oct 27 at 8pm.

The festival is a practicum course run by the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University.

Where: Oldham Theatre, National Archives of Singapore, 1 Canning Rise
MRT: City Hall/Clarke Quay/Bras Basah
When: Oct 26 to 29, various times
Admission: $13.50 for a standard ticket, $18 for opening film’s standard ticket
Info:

perspectivesfilmfestival.com

Spy Kids: Armageddon (PG)

109 minutes, available on Netflix
3 stars

Texas-based film-maker Robert Rodriguez returns for a fifth Spy Kids feature after 12 years, rebooting his beloved early 2000s kiddie franchise with a new cast of characters.

They are the Tango-Torrez clan of elite agents, namely Terrence (Zachary Levi) and Nora (Gina Rodriguez) and their totes adorbs tots – rebellious Tony (Connor Esterson) and virtuous Patty (Everly Carganilla).

When power-mad game developer Rey “The King” Kingston (Billy Magnussen) gains possession of a code that can control all technology, the children become spies too, joining their super-spy parents in a mission to save the planet.

Robert Rodriguez understands that children want to be heroes of their own fantasy games, and this fun adventure – complete with skeleton army, cool gadgets, spy suits and an underwater safe house – is aimed squarely at pre-teens.