My Films’ Biennale Screening Details

The Singapore Biennale opens next weekend. 63 artists from the world over including nine of us from Singapore are showing work in four locations for two months. Since the theme of this event is “process”, the curators have chosen to highlight not just my recent films, but my doggerel as well.

I will be showing six films including my first film, Moving House (1997) and two new works, one of which (Snow City) was just completed two weeks ago. They have chosen not just the documentaries but a drama (Rogers Park) and a short experimental work (Ivan Polunin’s Sound Archive). The films will play in a loop for the duration of the Biennale at the Moving Image Gallery at 8Q Singapore Art Museum.


>>On Sat, 12 March, 2.30pm at that location
, I will be in attendance to present the Singapore premieres of the two new works, The Impossibility of Knowing and Snow City. The screening followed by a Q&A will last an hour, admission details are below. I look forward to seeing you.


The Impossibility of Knowing
11 min, HD, 2010 Singapore Premiere NEW
The director visits locations that have experienced tragedies in the past to look for a clue of those happenings. Featured locations include the Nicoll Highway tunnel collapse site, Seletar Express Way, where a rare deer was run over, and a canal at Bukit Batok Ave 8 where a drowning took place. Under the scrutiny of the camera arises a dialogue between images and the voice over, between past and present and between what we imagine and what really happened.


Snow City
16 min, DVCam, 2011 International Premiere NEW
A film that is the result of a Singapore walkabout featuring polar bears, snow, a river crossing and a tunnel opening


9th August
7 min, mixed video formats, 2006
A ritual that never changes, the Singapore’s National Day Parades from 1965-2006. This was commissioned by the National Museum of Singapore to be the finale of the History of Singapore permanent exhibit there.


Ivan Polunin’s Sound Archive
DVCam, 5 min, 2008
Film ethnographer Ivan Polunin gave the director sound recordings from the 1950s. Locations covered include the swamps at Tuas to a coffee shop. This piece examines the veracity of such recordings which are disembodied from the visuals.


Rogers Park
16mm, 11 min, 2000
A drama about a latchkey boy, his neighbour upstairs and the neighbourhood cat and its owner. They all converge in a way that only cinema can manipulate.


Moving House 1997
Beta SP & 16mm, 21 min, 1997
The director films the exhumation of her great-grandfather and great-grandmother’s gravesite. They were the first in her family from China to stake their ground in Singapore only to be exhumed 80 years later. This is the earlier version of a work that eventually won the Student Academy Award in 2002


Total Running Time: 1 hour 12 min. The films play in a loop


Location
: Moving Image Galley, 8Q, Singapore Art Museum
8 Queen Street, Off Bras Basah Road. Phone: (65) 6332 3200
Time: 13 March – 14 May (2 months) Opens 10am-7pm daily.
Entrance: $10, free if you are a student