15 - Screening 2 Oct

Hey guys, just a reminder that we'll be screening Royston Tan's 15 this Friday as part of the film series! It's a great film which explores issues related to homosociality and masculinity.

The screening will be followed up by a discussion as usual - we're sure you'll have plenty to say about this film!

Once again, the screening will be held at Function Room 2 of PGP.

Please note that 15 is rated R21. It features adult situations, language, violence and brief male nudity.

Hope to see you all there!

New Line-Up!!

Hey guys, thanks for coming for Perth last night! :)

We've concluded the first half of our series with films that explored different aspects of Singapore's commerical sex industry. With Saint Jack, we tasted a seedy but colourful world of casual sex in the 1970s through the eyes of an American pimp. Pleasure Factory provided a contrast with its more 'up-to-date' portrayal of the sanitary and orderly flesh trade in contemporary Singapore. Finally, we ended off with Perth, and its depiction of an alienated man who seeks a sense of personal redemption through his efforts to "save" a Vietnamese prostitute.

Once the mid-semester break is over, we'll be resuming the film series with a selection that moves gracefully away from Singapore's flashy red light district, and into less obvious locales including dingy HDB flats in suburban Singapore where 15 year olds exchange lip piercings; and a secluded Catholic monastery where nuns tot machine guns (?!) Yet issues related to sex are still implicated in these unlikely places. One of the unifying themes in the second half of our series will be how these films construct and treat notions of gender and sexuality.

So all that said, we're pleased to announce our upcoming programme!

15 (R21) - 2nd Oct

Directed by Royston Tan

Synopsis: Combining gritty realism with edgy style, 15 is a fast, frenetic and strangely beautiful portrait of disaffected youth in Singapore.

Trivia: The uncut film stirred up controversy with its various 'music videos' featuring gang chants. Fearing that these scenes would incite "social unrest," the authorities famously placed pressure on Tan to make 27 cuts to the cinematic version.




They Call her Cleopatra Wong (NC16) - 16th Oct

Directed by Bobby A. Suarez

Synopsis: "She purrs like a kitten and makes love like a siren!" Featuring the sexiest secret agent on this side of the Pacific, Cleopatra Wong is an unabashedly campy ride across Asia with Singapore's female answer to James Bond.

Trivia: Quentin Tarantino reportedly listed this film as one of his early inspirations. References to Cleopatra Wong can be glimpsed in Tarantino's Kill Bill.



Tanjong Rhu and other short films (R21) - 30th Oct
Complete line-up to be confirmed at a later date
Directed by Boo Jun Feng

Synopsis: A line up of short films made by young, up-and-coming film-makers, depicting issues related to homosexuality in Singapore

Invited Guest: Boo Jun Feng (more details to be announced later)


We hope to see you at our future screenings! Stay tuned and watch this space :)

Perth (2004)

Director: Djinn

Starring: Lim Kay Tong

For those familiar with Martin Scorsese's 1976 classic Taxi Driver, Djinn's movie homage strikes a chord. Like Scorsese's protagonist Travis Bickle, Harry Lee (the irony in the name is almost self-evident) is a part-time security guard, and then a taxi driver ferrying call girls. As a marginal character in society, Lee's ambition is to save enough money to emigrate to Perth, his idealized retirement utopia. However, like Bickle, he becomes increasingly involved with one of his prostitute passengers and attempts to buy her freedom--it doesn't end well at all. (the full title of the movie is, tellingly--Perth: the Geylang Massacre)

It is perhaps unfortunate to tout the film as "Singapore's answer to Taxi Driver," as the DVD box boldly quotes one particularly impressed reviewer. It sets very high expectations for the film--and while it is a homage, Perth is arguably a very different creature from Scorsese's creation.

In Djinn's movie for example, Lee might be angry and lonely, but he isn't a friendless misfit (at least--not friendless). He has a wife (albeit with a strained relationship), and the coffeeshop scenes in which he bitches with others about the moral decay in Singapore develops the (few) friendships he has very well.

There is also the issue of context--while the Vietnam War was good fodder for quite a few alienation movies in the US (the first Rambo is a very good example), it is hard to imagine Lee's situation playing out here--would the recession and working class unhappiness be sufficient to push someone over the edge? As an exercise in style, however, the gritty cinematography beautifully captures the seedy reality of Lee that, to my mind, wasn't so much present amongst the neon lights and colours of last week's feature, Pleasure Factory--which really is a modern adaptation of classic whore romances. But perhaps you will have thoughts on this, after Friday.

PS: there is FoodZ. if you're early--movie starts strictly at 7.30.

Pleasure Factory

Director: Ekachai Uekrongtham

Cast:
Yang Kuei-Mei || Ananda Everingham ||Loo Zihan || Xu Er || Katashi Chen || Isabella Chen || Jeszlene Zhou || Ian Francis Low

Pleasure Factory comprises of a series of 3 vignettes: a NS boy is escorted by his army buddy into Geylang to lose his virginity; a young girl is being initiated into the sex trade; and a jaded prostitute picks up a young busker for a song . . . Prostitution as an institution of negotiable relations thus becomes the backdrop against which the stories of alienation, (filial) love and unspeakable longing are played.

Separate stories, the paths of the protagonists cross only incidentally, reminding us that Geylang isn't such a big place after all. While the docudrama maps the spatial boundaries of Geylang, we are also taken down the darkened alleys of the sex trade, so to speak, where women are sold like exotic products off a shelf, marketed by their looks and ethnicity.


(Fishbowls and aquariums form a controlling theme throughout the film. It is easy to imagine why a fishbowl would be an apt metaphor--but perhaps it is already a cinematic translation of a metaphor. Some brothels in Geylang are informally known as "fish tanks" (魚缸). The rationale, as I've been told--is that the women sit behind a glass and the clients pick them.)