Perspectives Film Festival 2016

CELEBRATING THE WEIRD: Maya Banno plays Sachiko Haruno in The Taste of Tea, a little girl who has a giant version of herself following her. PHOTO: PERSPECTIVES FILM FESTIVAL

Lovers of film and cinema had much to rejoice when the Perspectives Film Festival (PFF) returned for its ninth consecutive year.

Run entirely by students from Nanyang Technological University, the annual festival featured a tightly curated selection of films which were considered a breakthrough in their respective time periods.

Rational thinking was thrown out of the window with this year’s theme of Surrealism.

The festival featured four Singapore premieres, among which were The Dance of Reality (2013) and Endless Poetry (2016) — two of the newer films by director Alejandro Jodorowsky.

This is a comeback for the Chilean surrealist master after The Rainbow Thief in 1990.

Meanwhile, audience members who caught The Taste of Tea by Japanese director Katsuhito Ishii were in for a treat as Ishii joined the crowd in the post-screening dialogue, sharing with the audience his inspirations behind the surrealist film.

PFF also showcased 70s cult classics like David Lynch’s Eraserhead (yes, the same visionary that brought us Twin Peaks), UK director Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth and French animated film, Fantastic Planet, a technical marvel in the time period which used cut-out stop motion.

The seventh film screened at the four-day festival was Czechoslovakian director Vera Chytilová’s Daisies, which offered a riveting commentary on gender identity within the conservative social structure of 1966.