An outdoor film programme highlighting the artistic, playful, and expressive form of short and medium length films.

Annexe, Objectifs
14 Sep 2024, 7.30pm to 8.30pm 
Screening Rating: NC16 (Consumer advice: Some drug use)
Entry by donation, please RSVP here.

Related events
Playing the ♯ and ♭ Zine-making Workshop (Register here)
14 Sep 2024, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
$10 per pax
Join us for a zine-making workshop revolving around music in film!

Everyone is welcome to sing! – that is the general mantra of karaoke. Since its invention, karaoke has evolved into a cultural and popular phenomenon, specifically in Asian countries like Japan, Hong Kong, Philippines, and Vietnam. In these lands, singing takes various forms and is carried out in locations such as bars, KTVs, homes, cafes, weddings, and funerals. The communal act is not only entertaining and fun, it can also provide a sense of comfort and familiarity.

Exploring the social impact of this beloved activity, Karaoke! Playing the ♯ and ♭ presents short films where realities, dreams, and fears converge with the act of singing. Whether as a form of escapism, the yearning for something more, or a chance to dance the night away – these films invite you to experience the rhythm of their world.

This screening is part of Objectifs’ new quarterly film programme, Now Showing, which highlights the artistic, playful, and expressive form of short and medium length films. Beyond film screenings, the programme is also a space for discussions and activities.

Juliet's Dinner by Elsa Wong and Stephanie Jane Burt / 5 min 10 sec / 2022
JULIET’S DINNER is a collaborative experimental film between Elsa Wong and Stephanie Jane Burt featuring the track, “Last Day” by Subsonic Eye, which follows the character Juliet who escapes a dinner party through an encounter with an enigmatic dollhouse. Originally created for video art platform Monzoom.xyz in a 12-part series, the video explores notions of identity, pop culture and translocal histories through karaoke and sci-fi aesthetics.
When You Left Me on That Boulevard by Kayla Abuda Galang / 13 min / 2023
Teenager Ly and her cousins get high before a boisterous family Thanksgiving at their auntie’s house in southeast San Diego in 2006.
Karaoke Cafe BOSA by Kaori Oda / 13 min / 2023
Karaoke Cafe BOSA is located in the suburbs of Osaka, Japan. It’s a place where elderly neighbors gather to chat and sing. Cafe BOSA leaves traces in these days of unrest as a time capsule of the Anthropocene.
Supermarket Affairs by Hang Luong Nguyen / 15 min 41 sec / 2022
A Vietnamese immigrant mother and daughter in the US argue over how to honor the late patriarch as they shop for his second death anniversary, and inadvertently involve a handsome stranger at the local Asian supermarket.
A Trip To Heaven by Linh Duong / 15 min / 2020
During a peculiar tour bus to Mekong Delta, 50-year-old Mdm.Tam bumps into her high school sweetheart. She’s hopeful for a chance of reconciliation, but maybe he’s not.

 

 

About the filmmakers

 

Elsa Wong is a filmmaker, photographer and set designer based in New York and originally from Singapore. She explores themes of fairy tale and performance, creating surrealistic environments and characters within her work. Taking inspiration from the cinematic, she is interested in creating visuals that expand beyond the realistic landscape, enhanced through colours and editing. Her work has been featured in i-D, FEMALE Singapore, Asian Film Archive and NOWNESS ASIA. In 2023, her experimental short film Softshell and Feeders premiered on NOWNESS ASIA as part of their Just Dance series. Most recently, she participated in *SCAPE Singapore’s Movement Lab Program and co-created a short film titled hard boil, soft centre.

Stephanie Jane Burt is an artist whose practice spans from sculptural installations to fictional prose. Her work invites the viewer to explore dialogues between her installations and their settings through a fictional narrative at times referencing film and literature. Her research looks across feminism, gender, an analysis of girl culture and the nouveau roman. She is one half of collective, A Stubborn Bloom, which explores representations of femininity within fashion, film and material culture.

Born in Olongapo, Philippines, and raised across San Diego and Houston, Kayla Abuda Galang is an award-winning filmmaker whose work draws from the funny minutiae of her communities, surroundings, and memory. Her latest film, When You Left Me On That Boulevard, made its debut at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Short Film Grand Jury Prize. In 2023, she was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. She is currently in development for her debut feature.

Born in Osaka, Japan, Filmmaker/Artist Kaori Oda explores explore the memories of human beings through images and sounds. She lived in Sarajevo for three years from 2013 and completed the Doctor of Liberal Arts in filmmaking under the supervision of Bela Tarr in 2016. Her first feature, ARAGANE (2015) shot in a Bosnian coal mine, had its World Premiere at YAMAGATA International Film Festival and received Special Mention. The film has been screened at festivals such as Doclisboa, Mar del Plata IFF, Sarajevo FF, Taiwan International Documentary FF, and more. She is a recipient of Grants for Overseas Study by Young Artists of Pola Art Foundation. Her second feature, Toward A Common Tenderness (2017) a poetic film research, had its World Premiere at DOK Leipzig and her film, TS’ONOT/Cenote (2019) shot in underwater caves in Yucatan Mexico, was premiered in Bright Future section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020.

She received the Inaugural Nagisa Oshima Prize in 2020 and the new face award of Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts in 2021. Her latest film GAMA (2023) has been screened at MoMA DocFortnight, Cinéma du Réel and Cinéma de Brive (Jury SFCC de la Critique).

Hang Luong Nguyen is an award-winning writer-director and producer from Ho Chi Minh City interested in exploring the Vietnamese female identity in global and familial contexts. Her debut short THE STORY OF US (2014) screened at the 2016 Focus on Asia Fukuoka FF. She then served as producer for Trinh Dinh Le Minh’s acclaimed debut feature Goodbye Mother (2019), one of the first LGBTQ films out of Vietnam to participate in the international cinematic scene and selected by prestigious festivals in Busan, Hawaii and Toronto before its distribution on Netflix Vietnam. Her sophomore short, Supermarket Affairs (2022), screened at Osaka Asian FF, Palm Springs ShortFest and Nashville FF among others, and won several awards. She is an alumna of Singapore IFF’s Southeast Asian Film Lab, Locarno Open Doors Lab and EAVE Ties That Bind Workshop. She received an MFA in Film & Media Production at the University of Texas at Austin with support from the Fulbright Program. Her thesis Rooftkp Lempicka received the 2022 Austin Film Society (AFS) Grant for Short Films. The debut feature project of the same name is in development and a 2023 AFS Grant for Feature Films recipient, has been selected for the Munich Film Up! residential program and Full Circle Lab Philippines.

Linh Duong is a Vietnamese filmmaker who takes special interest in the unconventional depiction of sad, angsty and naggy middle-aged women. Her series of shorts, which seamlessly blend hyper-realistic, slice-of-life subject matters with magical realism elements deeply rooted in South East Asian mythology and superstitions, have been competing and winning awards at prestigious film festivals around the world.

Her debut feature, Don’t Cry, Butterfly, is in competition at Venice Critics’ Week 2024. Linh is also an alumni of the Berlinale Talents, Asian Film Academy, Locarno Summer Academy and Bucheon Fantastic Film School.