Local indie cinema The Projector joins in on the nation’s National Day festivities with a month-long spotlight on Singapore filmmakers: Calleen Koh, He Shuming, Kirsten Tan, K. Rajagopal and Quen Wong.
As Singapore gears up for SG60 celebrations this August, The Projector takes the month to celebrate local filmmakers and the films that made them. MAJULAH CINEMA! is a showcase featuring five acclaimed Singaporean directors, their works, and the feature films that have had a special impact on them. The programme provides a unique avenue to appreciate local filmmakers’ artistic practices and allow them to share more about their creative process and formative years through the selection of a film that’s specially relevant to their work.
Cinephiles can look forward to screenings of acclaimed titles such as Satoshi Kon’s PERFECT BLUE, which BAFTA-nominated animator Calleen Koh cheekily selected because “I want to trauma bond with my audiences, to let you understand why I have become the way I am.” Screenings of PERFECT BLUE will be accompanied by Koh’s SXSW-winning short film MY WONDERFUL LIFE.
Also on the roster is VOLVER by Pedro Almodóvar, chosen by He Shuming who calls it “the film version of comfort food for me, or a reset button when I’m trying to get back to work”; audiences can look forward to catching his short film MATINEE AT THREE, which features the historic Golden Theatre (now home to The Projector), together with Almodóvar’s masterpiece.
Sundance Film Festival Screenwriting Award recipient Kirsten Tan gives audiences the opportunity to revisit her 2017 short film WU SONG SLAYS THE SEDUCTRESS, paired with Toshio Matsumoto’s drama FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES. The latter served as an inspiration for Tan’s upcoming film project, CROCODILE ROCK. Says Tan, “[FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES] was a reference point not just for its formal chaos but for the way it holds contradiction: truth and performance; joy and grief; beauty and mess.”
K. Rajagopal takes a break from writing his upcoming feature to curate Mike Leigh’s NAKED, alongside his own feature, A YELLOW BIRD, which screened in the Critics’ Week section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. Leigh’s treatment of the marginalised lead character inspired Rajagopal’s depiction of his own protagonist in A YELLOW BIRD, who is released from prison after eight years.
Rounding out the showcase, Singapore International Film Festival Audience Choice Award-winning director Quen Wong presents her feature film SOME WOMEN, with a special in-person post-show director Q&A, as well as Peter Chan’s HE’S A WOMAN, SHE’S A MAN, which stars Hong Kong legend Leslie Cheung in a rom-com for the ages.
SCREENING SCHEDULE
My Wonderful Life (2024) + Perfect Blue (1997) | 10 August & 23 August
My Wonderful Life will come with an introductory speech by the director, Calleen Koh.
Grace, an exhausted mom in Singapore, collapses at work and is admitted to the hospital, where she unexpectedly discovers a new sense of freedom as a patient.
Perfect Blue is about a pop singer who quits her music career to pursue acting. However, she gradually descends into madness as she becomes haunted by an obsessed fan and what appears to be a ghost from her past.
Some Women (2021) | 13 August (with Q&A from Quen Wong)
In this intimate yet powerful debut feature, a trans filmmaker from conservative Singapore confronts stigma the way a director knows how: by turning the camera on herself.
A Yellow Bird (2016) | 24 August
Siva, a Singaporean-Indian man, is released after a prison term for contraband smuggling. Unable to find forgiveness from his mother, he begins a quest to locate his ex-wife and daughter.
Naked (1993) | 17 August
An unemployed Brit vents his rage on unsuspecting strangers as he embarks on a nocturnal London odyssey.
Matinee at Three (2024) + Volver (2006) | 29 August & 5 September
As the black-and-white love story echoes through the cinema’s empty halls, two strangers seek a connection. Shot in the historic Golden Theatre located in Golden Mile tower, this homage to Tsai Ming Liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn acts as an ode to the ghosts and sanctity of the cinematic space.
After her death, a mother returns to her home town to fix the situations she couldn't resolve during her life.
Wu Song Slays the Seductress (2017) + Funeral Parade Of Roses (1969) | 30 August
A self-reflexive reinterpretation of a Ming dynasty play from one of China's four great classical texts, The Water margins. In attempting to stage the tension between updating a traditional opera form and maintaining its authenticity, elements of ancient Chinese erotica, internet art and techno music are introduced to blur the start and end points between new and old, avant-garde and kitsch, innovation and tradition.
Director Toshio Matsumoto’s shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late 1960s: a headlong dive into a dazzling, unseen Tokyo night-world of drag queen bars and fabulous divas, fueled by booze, drugs, fuzz guitars, performance art and black mascara.
He's a Woman, She's a Man (1994) | 31 August & 6 September
Starring Cantopop icon Leslie Cheung, the film is deeply radical and unorthodox. A singer is so desperate to meet a famous record producer and his singer girlfriend that she disguises herself as a man, resulting in a wild love triangle.
For more information and ticketing, visit theprojector.sg/majulahcinema