Film Picks: Dreaming & Dying, Japanese Film Festival, The Boy And The Heron
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Follow topic:
Screening with Q&A: Dreaming & Dying
Singapore film-maker Nelson Yeo’s drama won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 2023, and at this special screening, there will be a question-and-answer session with Yeo, moderated by Singapore director Daniel Hui.
Dreaming & Dying (NC16, 92 minutes) stars Peter Yu, Doreen Toh and Kelvin Ho as three friends who reconnect after years apart. During a holiday together, they have to deal with unfinished moments from the past, in a way that Yeo in his director’s statement likens to “a haunting, by their own memories and desires, which they believe is the result of karma rippling through their lives”. str.sg/if44
Where: Golden Village x The Projector at Cineleisure, Level 5, 8 Grange Road
MRT: Somerset/Orchard
When: Dec 15, 7.45pm
Admission: $15 for standard ticket prices
Info:
Japanese Film Festival 2023 @ ArtScience Museum
In Tetsuo: The Iron Man, actor and director Shinya Tsukamoto relates a horror story about people becoming biomechanical monsters
PHOTO: JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL
The festival has five films included in the ArtScience Cinema’s In Search Of Tomorrow programme, aimed at screening movies that celebrate visions of the future.
Curated by the ArtScience Museum and held in conjunction with the Japanese Film Festival 2023, the five Japanese films include the science-fiction horror work Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989, R21, 67 minutes, screens on Dec 9, 2pm).
While he might have been influenced by Canadian body-horror specialist David Cronenberg, writer-director Shinya Tsukamoto’s in-your-face vision of biomechanical monsters is all his own.
His portrayal of the fetishisation of technology has since become a cult favourite and influenced a generation of film-makers who make movies about humanity’s obsession with cars and weapons.
An average salaryman (Tomorowo Taguchi) becomes infected with a metal virus, after which he experiences disturbing dreams and images of assault by human-machine hybrids. On waking, he realises that his nightmares are a reality and that he is not alone.
Where: ArtScience Cinema, Level 4 ArtScience Museum, 6 Bayfront Avenue jff.sg/november-highlights
MRT: Bayfront
When: Till Dec 17, various timings
Admission: $12 for standard ticket prices, with concessions
Info:
The Boy And The Heron (PG13)
The Boy And The Heron is the latest film from Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki.
PHOTO: 2023 STUDIO GHIBLI
124 minutes, open Nov 30, 4 stars
This semi-autobiographical story is based on writer-director Hayao Miyazaki’s wartime evacuation from the city to the countryside.
The revered maker of animation classics, most of them made under his Studio Ghibli banner, visits many of his favourite themes – adults who have lost the ability to dream are useless, a tissue-thin door separates the natural and the supernatural realms, scary demons are only misunderstood people, and fighting skill alone will never get a kid out of trouble.
Japan is in the midst of World War II. Mahito (voiced by Soma Santoki) is an 11-year-old boy whose mother has died in an American air raid. His factory boss father Shoichi (Takuya Kimura) moves his family to the countryside.
There, at a large estate, the boy meets his aunt-turned-stepmother, Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura). The resident heron, normally a stand-offish bird, begins intruding into the family rooms, bringing a strange message about his dead mother. The boy’s curiosity draws him into a world of wonder and terror.
