This week, those who lived through the 2000s or trying to dress like personalities from that era should make a beeline for the Asian Film Archive’s upcoming Y2K DreamZ film festival, where there’ll be 12 films looking at various subject matters unique to the 2000s. More details below.
Y2K fever has had fashion in a stranglehold in recent years and now, non-profit organisation Asian Film Archives (AFA) is putting on its own tribute to the Aughts. Fittingly titled Y2K DreamZ, AFA has curated a festival presenting 12 films that explore the social anxieties, hopes and fears prevalent within Asian cinema during a period with plenty of significant upheavals – coming off the back of the 1997 Asian Financial crisis and the uncertainties around the millennium bug. And within the film industry itself, the era also represented many new aesthetic and visual possibilities, as the 2000s saw the development of digital film formats – which made things easier especially for emerging filmmakers, with many of the films in the festival being shot digitally.
There are classic blockbusters like 2000 AD (starring Phyllis Quek and Aaron Kwok, pictured here) but also feted works like Peppermint Candy, which established Lee Chang-dong as a key name in South Korea’s arthouse scene, as well as Spacked Out, a gritty look at the youth who have been shunned to the margins of Hong Kong society, and which highlights the uglier pains of reality that are often ignored by coming-of-age films.
Get your tickets here.
September 1 to 30, various times, at Oldham Theater, 1 Canning Rise
Credit: Mediacorp TV Singapore Pte Ltd
TAKE IN A SHOW CAPTURING AN ARTIST'S LIVED EXPERIENCES
We first highlighted Israfil Ridhwan last June as an emerging name in the fine arts scene here and the artist is now back with his second solo show at Cuturi Gallery, titled Spaces In-Between. In this new body of work, the artist mines the human journey, translating the lived and dreamed experiences of the people around him into a series of lush oil paintings. The signatures of his work are all there – a love for cinematic songs, as well as an emphasis on body physicality, as seen in a work that depicts a person in unbuttoned jeans – the artist’s interpretation of love, which he manifests in the act of giving parts of oneself to be cherished by another.
September 2 to October 1 at Cuturi Gallery, 61 Aliwal Street
Credit: Israfil Ridhwan
