OUT OF THIS WORLD

{Singapore Premiere}

SAT 29 SEP | 7:10pm

USA 2017
75 mins
NC16
Consumer Advice: Some mature content
English with no subtitle
Directed by David Wright

Synopsis

 

As the dust was still settling after WWII and the Cold War divided the world, the mysterious and impenetrable mountain kingdom of Tibet sent out a plea to help stop the communist forces of China from invading their country. They chose the most well-known newsman of his day to document their plight, hoping to garner international support to protect their borders from the Red Army. Lowell Thomas, along with his son, became only the seventh and eighth Westerners invited to walk through the Western Gate of Lhasa.  Meeting the 15-year-old Dalai Lama was an adventure of a lifetime for them, and the start of a relationship between His Holiness and the Thomas family that has now spanned three generations.

Out of this World is a digitised and re-released version of an original film print from the 1950’s by Lowell Thomas, which will include new scenes and information, as well as photographs from the original trip and those from our 2016 expedition.

 

Director’s Bio

David Wright is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. He has worked in more than 60 countries and has made films for National Geographic, the BBC and PBS. David was cinematographer on features including Slingshot (2015), Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Rise of Broadcast News (2017), The Boys that Said No and The Dark Illuminates the Light (2018). “Lowell Thomas is regarded as the father of broadcast journalism,” David says, “and after a 25-year career shooting and producing documentaries it was a privilege to rework Out of This World for a new audience.”

 

Director’s Statement

Lowell Thomas was America’s best known newsman, one of the world’s greatest adventurers and is considered one of the founding fathers of broadcast journalism. With a 50-year career spanning radio, television, cinema and the publication of many books, he brought the world to the American people. Much of what Lowell broadcast was immediately archived and has sat untouched for decades.

 

 


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THE LAST DALAI LAMA?

{Singapore Premiere}

SAT 29 SEP | 4:45pm

USA 2016
82 mins
NC16
Consumer Advice: Some mature content
English with no subtitle
Directed by Mickey Lemle

Synopsis

The Last Dalai Lama? takes a fresh look at what is important for the 14th Dalai Lama at age 82: the historical confrontation between Tibet and China; his influence in political, spiritual, and educational spheres; and his personal feelings on aging, dying and whether he will be the last Dalai Lama. The film artfully weaves archival and contemporary footage from Lemle’s ground-breaking Compassion in Exile: The Story of The 14th Dalai Lama (1992); intimate interviews with His Holiness, shot 25 years apart; and interviews with his family and the westerners he’s inspired since his exile from Tibet in 1959. The film is enhanced by a beautiful original music score composed and performed by Philip Glass and Tibetan musician, Tenzin Choegyal.

 

Director’s Bio

Producer/Director Mickey Lemle’s multi-award winning documentaries include: The Other Side of the Moon; Our Planet Earth; Compassion In Exile: The Story of The 14th Dalai Lama; Hasten Slowly: The Journey of Sir Laurens Vander Post; Ram Dass Fierce Grace, which Newsweek Magazine named one of the “five best non-fiction films of 2002”; and The Last Dalai Lama? For the past 20 years, Lemle has been Chairman of the Board of the Tibet Fund. He has been named “Cinemas Soul Man; One of the 40 Artists Who Shake the World” by The UTNE READER.

 

 

 


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SOUL ON A STRING

{Singapore Premiere}

SAT 29 SEP | 1:20pm

CHINA 2016
142 mins
NC16
Consumer Advice: Some sexual scenes
Tibetan with English subtitles
Directed by Zhang Yang 张扬  

Synopsis

After discovering a sacred stone in the mouth of a deer he just killed, Tabei, a young lonesome Tibetan cowboy, embarks on a long and difficult mission: to bring it back to the holy mountain of Buddha’s handprint. His journey turns sour as an obstinate woman, Qiong, and a psychic yet dumb elf, Pu, soon decide to join him. This is in addition to the two violent brothers on his tail, who are on a revenge quest.

 

Director’s Bio

Zhang Yang is a Chinese film director, screenwriter, and occasional actor. He studied Chinese literature in Beijing, where he later moved to the Central Academy of Drama from where he graduated in 1992.

One of his earlier films, Paths of the Soul premiered at Tokyo International Film Festival 2015, screening with great success in many international festivals including Busan, Rotterdam, Black Nights, Goteborg and Hong Kong. The film was released in North American and Japan during the summer 2016.

Soul on a String, his latest film, premiered in competition at the Shanghai International Film Festival in June 2016 where it received the Best Cinematography award.

 

Director’s Statement

During the whole year of my stay in Tibet, I shot two films: Paths of the Soul and Soul on a String. With these two films, I was researching the possibilities of the language of cinematography.

Soul on a String is adapted from two novels by Tibetan writer Tashi Dawa: “Tibet, the soul tied on a string” and “On the way to Lhasa”. The spectacular and unique landscape and variety of landforms of Tibet have a natural magical power. The religion and the local civilisation provide a strong ground for the magical realism.

Even though the film was shot in Tibet, it is not an ethnic film. If I take the example of music, this is not like a traditional Tibetan folk song, but a world music piece with Tibetan elements. “Tibet” is the carrier of the film’s space.

 

 


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SACRED

{Singapore Premiere}

SAT 29 SEP | 11:00am

USA 2016
87 mins
PG13
Consumer Advice: Some violence and nudity
Directed by Thomas Lennon   

 

Synopsis

Shot by more than 40 filmmaking teams around the world, Sacred immerses viewers in the daily use of faith and spiritual practice. At a time when religious hatred dominates the world’s headlines, this film explores faith as a primary human experience, and how people turn to ritual and prayer to navigate the milestones and crises of private life. The film’s director commissioned or sourced footage from top independent filmmakers from more than 25 countries — and a wide range of religious traditions — each team contributing a single scene.

 

Director’s Bio

Thomas Lennon’s work in documentary film has earned him an Academy Award and three Academy nominations. His works often explores the themes of society and history. His works have been nominated three times for the Academy Award, winning in 2007 for The Blood of Yingzhou District. He has also won all major USA television awards including two Peabodys, Emmys and duPont-Columbia University Awards. Other notable films include “The Battle Over Citizen Kane” and “Seven Days in Bensonhurst”.

 

Director’s Statement

When it comes to faith, we know what we think. Our minds are set. That’s true of many issues, of course, but with religion, it seems especially so.

As journalists and documentary filmmakers, our training is to approach faith sceptically, and that’s probably as it should be. Religion has wreaked a lot of havoc in recent years; it invites hard scrutiny. And yet that scepticism – a badge we wear proudly – is also limiting. With this film, we set out to take faith seriously as primary human experience. The goal was to capture that experience from the inside, and with enough immediacy that it disturbs some of our certainties, and invites us to think.

 

 


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A CAMBODIAN SPRING

{Singapore Premiere}

Fri 28 Sep | 9.00pm

USA 2017
121 mins
M18
Consumer Advice: Mature content
Khmer and English with English subtitles
Directed by Chris Kelly

 

Synopsis

How much would you sacrifice to fight for what you believe in?

A Cambodian Spring is an intimate and unique portrait of three people caught up in the chaotic and often violent development that is shaping modern-day Cambodia. Shot over six years, the film charts the growing wave of land-rights protests that led to the ‘Cambodian Spring’ and the tragic events that followed. This film is about the complexities – both political and personal, of fighting for what you believe in.

 

Director’s Bio

Chris Kelly is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and the founder of Little Ease Films. He has spent the last nine years making his first feature documentary ‘A Cambodian Spring’ which recently won the Special Jury Prize for International Feature Documentary at Hot Docs 2017. In 2014, he produced an award-winning undercover investigation into slavery in the Thai fishing industry. His work has taken him as far afield as South Sudan, Burma, the Philippines, Laos and Thailand.

 

Director’s Statement

A Cambodian Spring is for me, a deeply personal film, which took nine years to complete. It is an exploration of what motivates us, what gives our lives meaning, and what happens when our personal desires colour and shape our actions. It is an unapologetically subjective portrait of my time in Cambodia, of the people who shared their lives with me and of the shifting landscapes, both physical and emotional, that I found there.

 

 

 


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BECOMING WHO I WAS

{Singapore Premiere}

FRI 28 SEP | 7:00pm

SOUTH KOREA 2017
96 mins
PG
Ladakhi and Tibetan with English subtitles
Directed by Moon Chang-Yong and Jeon Jin

 

Synopsis

The coming of age and a heart-warming tale of a young Rinpoche’s reincarnation and journey home.

Padma Angdu’s world turns upside down when the monastery where he belonged to expels him. He is recognised as a ‘Living Buddha’ in Ladakh, and the only thing that holds him together is the unfaltering love of his teacher. High expectations from his community leads the young Rinpoche into rebellion as he enters into adolescence. After having waited years in vain for his disciples from Tibet, the soon-to-be teenage Rinpoche and his aging teacher embark on an epic journey towards Tibet, in search of an answer.

 

Director’s Bio

Moon Chang-Yong is South Korea’s multi award-winning director and cinematographer who has been creating documentaries for Korea’s major broadcasters since 1998. His awards include EBS Prize for Excellence (2009); KIPA Best Documentary Award Grand Prize (2011); KCTTA Work of Art Prize (2012); and KBS Prize for
Excellence (2013).

Jeon Jin is a a producer/director, raised in Africa and currently producing documentaries in South Korea for a global audience. Her credits include 1 Hectare of Happiness (2013), awarded the KBS Prize for Excellence.

 

Director’s Statement

At the core of this heart-warming tale of two characters living in the harsh, barren land of Ladakh, is the undeniable love and sacrifice that is universal. Despite having been miles away from home, it moved me deeply and conjured up familiar feelings of the unconditional love that I received from my mother. With the sense of hope amidst the trials and tribulations that our characters face, this film recaptures the most valuable human feeling we have long forgotten in our modern world.

 

 


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SUFFERING OF NINKO 仁光の受難

{Singapore Premiere}
> WATCH THE TRAILER (Age-restricted video)

THU 27 SEP | 7:00pm*

JAPAN 2016
70 mins
R21
Consumer Advice: Mature content
Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by Norhiro Niwatsukino

*There will be a post-screening discussion with the film director

 

Synopsis

Ninko, a young diligent Buddhist monk, has a serious problem: women (and some men too) are attracted to him. After a series of troubling encounters with infatuated women, Ninko starts a journey to seek purification and to escape from his troubles.

Bizarre and sometimes kitschy, the film follows Ninko as he comes to grip with the anguish of his hyper-sexualised world, mirroring our modern day society where we are constantly bombarded by sexuality and its allure. Suffering of Ninko turns on sensuality to overload and asks “does the suffering of Ninko come from external sources or from his internal weaknesses?”

 

Director’s Bio

Born April 6, 1981, Norihiro Niwatsukino started making films while attending the Kyushu Institute of Design in Fukuoka. After graduating from the Graduate School of Design at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Niwatsukino moved to Tokyo and started working as a freelance director and also a screen writer. He has directed various video works includes live-action, music video, animation. Suffering of Ninko (2016) is his first feature film.

 

 

Director’s Statement

New and unexpected film experience is what I always want to offer to my audience. I want to show them what they have never seen before. I want to lure them into an unknown world. In order to achieve this, I played with the genre and features of Suffering of Ninko. I also wanted to add a layer to the experience of the main character, Ninko, by bringing his inner world as a live-action, a Ukiyo-e (a Japanese traditional woodblock print) animation and a mandala animation.

 

 


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TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS

{Singapore Premiere}

TUE 25 SEP | 7:10pm

USA 2018
93 mins
M18
Consumer Advice: Mature theme
English with no subtitle
Directed by Adam Sekuler

 

Synopsis

A sensitively rendered documentary looking at the life and death of Shar Jones, a transgender person living with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease, and the difficult choice he and his wife Cynthia Vitale faced as the couple struggled to figure out how to proceed amidst his chaotic decline. Instead of letting his memory slip away and burdening Cynthia with years of care, the film highlights the couple’s journey as Shar pursues a conscious death. With an intimate visual style, Shar’s tale of gender identity gives his choice in death an especially telling element.

 

Director’s Bio

Adam Sekuler is a filmmaker, curator, educator and editor based in New Orleans. Screening in forums and film festivals throughout the United States and internationally, his many alternative films strike a delicate balance between stylisation and naturalism, creating a poetic and lyrical form of visual storytelling. He holds an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Colorado, Boulder, is Founder and Programmer of Radar: Exchanges in Dance Film Frequencies, Associate Director of Zeitgeist Multi-disciplinary Arts Center and was Program Director for Northwest Film Forum (Seattle) for 8 years.

 

Director’s Statement

IIn the United States, assisted suicide isn’t available to anyone who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease because the disease isn’t considered terminal. In making a decision to pursue a conscious death, I realised Shar would have the support he needed to go through with this process. The decision was sustained through a spiritual practice of Buddhism, supported by a team of hospice and palliative care doctors, and held through the process by his love for Cynthia.

 

 


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ONE MIND

{Singapore Premiere}

MON 24 SEP | 7:00pm

USA 2016
78 mins
PG
Mandarin with English subtitles
Directed by Edward Burger

 

Synopsis

One Mind is a rare cinematic portrait of life inside one of China’s most austere and revered Chan Buddhism communities. The monks at Zhenru Chan Monastery continue to uphold a strict monastic code established over 1,400 years ago by the founding patriarchs of Chan Buddhism in China. In harmony with the land that sustains them, the monks operate an organic farm, grow tea, and harvest bamboo to fuel their kitchen fires. At the heart of this community, a group of cloistered meditators sit in silence for 8 hours every day. One Mind offers an intimate glimpse into a thriving Buddhist monastery in modern China.

 

Director’s Bio

Edward Burger grew up in a small Ohio town, spending his days in forests and fields. His favourite toy was a microscope. He would trade it in for a camera much later in life. He studied religion at The College of Wooster, and Buddhism with Antioch University in Bodh Gaya, India. After graduation, Edward moved to China, learnt to read and write Mandarin and sought out a Buddhist master living in the remote Zhongnan Mountain region in central China. He studied Buddhist meditation and philosophy in one of China’s most vital Chan monasteries. In the earlier years, Edward was working occasionally as a film-set interpreter, before he eventually began making his own documentary films about the Buddhist communities with which he had become so familiar.

 

Director’s Statement

The monks at Zhenru are not typical Chinese Buddhist monks; they are a subset of the population respected for their utter dedication to spiritual cultivation in every aspect of their
daily lives.

Over the past century, many old traditions and cultures have been lost, leaving an empty space in the hearts of many Chinese people. Most believe that these traditions are lost or are corrupted. The potential for such communities such as Zhenru Monastery to be wellsprings of hope and healing is enormous. Therefore, it is important to let the world know these traditions not only exist, but are in the process of revitalisation in China.

 

 


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TSUNMA TSUNMA 尊玛尊玛

{Singapore Premiere}

SUN 23 SEP | 4:00pm*

Taiwan 2017
70 mins
PG
Mandarin and Tibetan with English and Chinese subtitles
Directed by Lin Li-fang 林丽芳


*There will be a post-screening discussion with the film director

Synopsis

为拉达克的第一位安尼藏医。亦有住在山洞十年的老安尼多玛慈仁,讲述她们学习佛法的生活和故事。本片也纪录了小安尼秋田多玛十八岁时即成为小主持的欢乐与眼泪。更有德烈汪莫从西藏家乡一路磕长头花了一年多的时间费尽千辛万苦到印度学习佛法,经过十七年的苦读成为西藏第一批女格西(佛学博士)的故事。

Tsunma, an honorific term connoting “noble, delicate, and pure”, refers to the Tibetan Buddhist Nuns of the Himalayan Region who have been largely dismissed or forgotten by the traditions they follow and the societies they’ve served. Taiwanese photographer Lin Li-Fang undertook a solo journey up 4,270 meters into the Himalayan Plateau and lived for an entire summer with some of these nuns and recorded life in the unforgiving environment dubbed “The Roof of the World”. There, Li-Fang captured a life devoted to hope and faith and a people possessing a unique kind of tolerance, humility, and perseverance.

Director’s Bio

Lin Li-Fang was born 1965 in Taishi Township in Yunlin County of Taiwan. In 1999 she began traveling to India, documenting the life and work of Tibetan Buddhist Monks. In 2002, she received her MFA in Documentary Filmmaking from the National Taiwan University of Arts Graduate School of Applied Media Arts. In 2005, she won the Johnny Walker’s “Keep Walking” Prize. To date, she has completed the following films: Papa’s Youthful Dream, Buddha’s Sons, The Returners, and My Mother. Her films have been selected in film festivals all around the world, including France, Holland, and Japan. Tsunma, Tsunma: My Summer with the Female Monastics of the Himalaya is her newest feature length documentary.

林丽芳出生于1965年云林县台西乡,1999开始印度之旅,纪录藏传佛教僧侣在印度的学习与生活。2002 年投入纪录片创作,进入台湾艺术大学应用媒体研究所,并顺利取得MFA学位。 2005 获得Jonny Walker梦想资助计画圆梦学堂。至今作品有《阿爸的青春梦》ˋ《心子》ˋ《朝圣者》,《我的母亲》; 作品入围法国ˋ荷兰ˋ日本等多国影展。 《尊玛、尊玛:我和她们在喜马拉雅山的夏天》是她 2016 最新纪录长片作品。

Director’s Statement

Looking back, I really felt that my solo trip to the Himalayan region of India–at more than 3,700m in Ladakh and 4,250m in Spiti – to make a documentary about the Ani (nuns) has been the wildest and bravest thing I’ve done creatively.

回想起来,我真的觉得只身一人到印度喜马拉雅,位于海拔3,700公尺的拉达克,4,250公尺的斯比堤,拍摄关于安尼的纪录片是我这辈子在创作上,做过最疯狂和最勇敢的事。

 

 

We are pleased to announce that we are doing an additional screening for A Thousand Mothers + Tsunma Tsunma due to overwhelming response. Tickets for this special screening will only be available via email. Interested parties, please email sales@thisfilmfest.com to register your interest.

We will email you confirmation and information on ticket collection. Kindly note the following:

Date and Time: 23 September 2018 (Sunday) 4.15pm
Venue: Shaw Theatres Lido Hall 5
Ticket Price: $13 each (inclusive of $1 handling fee)
Seating: Allocated by system. No selection allowed
Ticket collection: Details will be provided via email

Note:
*There will be no post screening dialogue for this screening
** Tickets are available on first come first served basis and subject to availability.

 


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