Venue: NTU CCA Singapore Screening Room, 38 Malan Road, #01-06, Gillman Barracks.
Date: 21 April 2023, 7.00pm
Film Programme:
Three films on The Auroville Project (2017)
What is Auroville?, 55 min
Auroville Archives, 12 min
Nine Palms, 23 min
The three films by Heidrun Holzfeind and Christoph Draeger that are part of their Auroville Project explore the potential for an alternative way of living. These films showcase how engaging in alternative practices and thinking can foster conviviality, ultimately shaping human relations and transforming society into a more welcoming home.
Auroville is an ambitious intentional community located in Southeast India, founded in 1968 by French philosopher Mira Alfassa, who is also known as “The Mother”. The community is designed to bring people of all nationalities and creeds together to live in peace and harmony, making it an experiment in both self-knowledge and collective living. The project explores how the utopian ideals of the community— no private property, no money, no rules, and no religion, in short: divine anarchy—are being realized almost 50 years later.
It investigates how relationships between humans and nature, an ecological and sustainable lifestyle, spirituality, and political ideals of self-development and collectivism can be reimagined in the present day. Despite being one of the few alternative communes born in the 1960s, Auroville not only still exists, but is also growing and thriving.
What is Auroville?, 2018, 55 Min.
What is Auroville? is a film that explores how the utopian ideals of the community are being lived today, almost 50 years after its establishment. In the past, Auroville residents designed utopian living environments that embodied their visionary ideas. The film delves into how Auroville keeps promoting an ecological and sustainable lifestyle while also embracing spirituality and political ideals of self-development and collectivism. It offers insights into how these ideals can be applied in the present day, as we seek to navigate a rapidly changing world.
The Auroville Archives, 2017, 12 Min.
The Auroville Archives juxtaposes film footage produced by and about Auroville over the past decades with an interview with the archivist while giving a tour of the catacombs.
Nine Palms, 2018, 23 Min.
Nine Palms portrays two generations of a German family who settled in Auroville’s greenbelt in 1973. The parents’ radical lifestyle, which rejected the conveniences of modern life and technology, has strongly influenced their seven children in their life choices and their quest for living freely.
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Presented by Assistant Professor Dr. Ella Raidel, School of Art, Design, and Media, and Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, NTU.
Venue: NTU CCA Singapore Screening Room, 38 Malan Road, #01-06, Gillman Barracks.
Date: 21 April 2023, 7.00pm
Film Programme:
Three films on The Auroville Project (2017)
What is Auroville?, 55 min
Auroville Archives, 12 min
Nine Palms, 23 min
The three films by Heidrun Holzfeind and Christoph Draeger that are part of their Auroville Project explore the potential for an alternative way of living. These films showcase how engaging in alternative practices and thinking can foster conviviality, ultimately shaping human relations and transforming society into a more welcoming home.
Auroville is an ambitious intentional community located in Southeast India, founded in 1968 by French philosopher Mira Alfassa, who is also known as “The Mother”. The community is designed to bring people of all nationalities and creeds together to live in peace and harmony, making it an experiment in both self-knowledge and collective living. The project explores how the utopian ideals of the community— no private property, no money, no rules, and no religion, in short: divine anarchy—are being realized almost 50 years later.
It investigates how relationships between humans and nature, an ecological and sustainable lifestyle, spirituality, and political ideals of self-development and collectivism can be reimagined in the present day. Despite being one of the few alternative communes born in the 1960s, Auroville not only still exists, but is also growing and thriving.
What is Auroville?, 2018, 55 Min.
What is Auroville? is a film that explores how the utopian ideals of the community are being lived today, almost 50 years after its establishment. In the past, Auroville residents designed utopian living environments that embodied their visionary ideas. The film delves into how Auroville keeps promoting an ecological and sustainable lifestyle while also embracing spirituality and political ideals of self-development and collectivism. It offers insights into how these ideals can be applied in the present day, as we seek to navigate a rapidly changing world.
The Auroville Archives, 2017, 12 Min.
The Auroville Archives juxtaposes film footage produced by and about Auroville over the past decades with an interview with the archivist while giving a tour of the catacombs.
Nine Palms, 2018, 23 Min.
Nine Palms portrays two generations of a German family who settled in Auroville’s greenbelt in 1973. The parents’ radical lifestyle, which rejected the conveniences of modern life and technology, has strongly influenced their seven children in their life choices and their quest for living freely.
Wednesday, 17 August, 7.30 – 10.00pm
Screening of exodus of nowhere, episode 1: the water is wide
Lee Wai Yi, Enoch Ng, and Kelvin Wu, Hong Kong 2002-13, 75mins. Selected and introduced by Ting Chun Chun (Hong Kong/Singapore), Assistant Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences (Chinese Division), NTU
the water is wide evolves around the intensifying conflicts between mainland Chinese migrants and local Hong Kong people in recent years. It tells the story of the very first controversy — the right of abode of Hong Kong citizens’ children who were born in Mainland China before the 1997 handover. The controversy ended in 1999 when the National People’s Congress in the People’s Republic of China reinterpreted the Hong Kong Basic Law to deprive these citizens of their right of abode in Hong Kong. Fourteen years after, we look back at this story and the right-of-abode fighters’ continuing struggle with this hardening border, in order to ask what defines us as humans, peoples, and communities.
Friday, 19 August, 7.00 – 10.00pm
Screening of exodus of nowhere, episode 2: gamble, Lee Wai Yi, Enoch Ng, and Kelvin Wu, Hong Kong 2013-14, 140mins. Selected and introduced by Ting Chun Chun.
One says, life is a gamble. Yet for the ones who are isolated and lacking in resources and information, every move is a gamble with their bare lives.
The grandfather who survived the embargo during the Korean war and the financial crisis of 1973; the sailor who witnessed the oil crisis and the Iran-Iraq war; people who fled Hong Kong to settle in England after the 1989 Tiananmen movement; the foreign domestic workers and Chinese farmers who travelled afar from their impoverished homes to cities where their contributions had never been recognised. Stories of seemingly unrelated individuals recount similar and connected experience with migration, ethnicity, borders, responsibility, and oppression in a globalised world. Hence we ask, what are the things that connect us as individuals with the world?
Saturday, 20 August, 1.00 – 4.00pm
Screening of exodus of nowhere, episode 3: rondo for the dis/placed
Lee Wai Yi, Enoch Ng, and Kelvin Wu, Hong Kong 2002-13, 210mins. Selected and introduced by Ting Chun Chun.
In a fragmented, non-linear style, exodus of nowhere: rondo for the dis/placed recounts a series of migration stories across Southeast Asia, mainland China, and Hong Kong. As these stories of border crossing highlight the manipulation of identity politics for colonial rule, nationalist consolidation, economic domination, etc., the film eloquently debunks the mainstream narratives of political history and definition of boundary. This critical stand subsequently enables the film to find a new way to tell the stories of the powerless and reveal the hurt suffered by communities who were pit against each other by the hands of power. The screening with be followed by a casual conversation between the audience and the filmmakers.
These screenings are organised as part of the public programme of Amar Kanwar: The Sovereign Forest.
Wednesday, 17 August, 7.30 – 10.00pm
Screening of exodus of nowhere, episode 1: the water is wide
Lee Wai Yi, Enoch Ng, and Kelvin Wu, Hong Kong 2002-13, 75mins. Selected and introduced by Ting Chun Chun (Hong Kong/Singapore), Assistant Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences (Chinese Division), NTU
the water is wide evolves around the intensifying conflicts between mainland Chinese migrants and local Hong Kong people in recent years. It tells the story of the very first controversy — the right of abode of Hong Kong citizens’ children who were born in Mainland China before the 1997 handover. The controversy ended in 1999 when the National People’s Congress in the People’s Republic of China reinterpreted the Hong Kong Basic Law to deprive these citizens of their right of abode in Hong Kong. Fourteen years after, we look back at this story and the right-of-abode fighters’ continuing struggle with this hardening border, in order to ask what defines us as humans, peoples, and communities.
Friday, 19 August, 7.00 – 10.00pm
Screening of exodus of nowhere, episode 2: gamble, Lee Wai Yi, Enoch Ng, and Kelvin Wu, Hong Kong 2013-14, 140mins. Selected and introduced by Ting Chun Chun.
One says, life is a gamble. Yet for the ones who are isolated and lacking in resources and information, every move is a gamble with their bare lives.
The grandfather who survived the embargo during the Korean war and the financial crisis of 1973; the sailor who witnessed the oil crisis and the Iran-Iraq war; people who fled Hong Kong to settle in England after the 1989 Tiananmen movement; the foreign domestic workers and Chinese farmers who travelled afar from their impoverished homes to cities where their contributions had never been recognised. Stories of seemingly unrelated individuals recount similar and connected experience with migration, ethnicity, borders, responsibility, and oppression in a globalised world. Hence we ask, what are the things that connect us as individuals with the world?
Saturday, 20 August, 1.00 – 4.00pm
Screening of exodus of nowhere, episode 3: rondo for the dis/placed
Lee Wai Yi, Enoch Ng, and Kelvin Wu, Hong Kong 2002-13, 210mins. Selected and introduced by Ting Chun Chun.
In a fragmented, non-linear style, exodus of nowhere: rondo for the dis/placed recounts a series of migration stories across Southeast Asia, mainland China, and Hong Kong. As these stories of border crossing highlight the manipulation of identity politics for colonial rule, nationalist consolidation, economic domination, etc., the film eloquently debunks the mainstream narratives of political history and definition of boundary. This critical stand subsequently enables the film to find a new way to tell the stories of the powerless and reveal the hurt suffered by communities who were pit against each other by the hands of power. The screening with be followed by a casual conversation between the audience and the filmmakers.
These screenings are organised as part of the public programme of Amar Kanwar: The Sovereign Forest.
Gambut (Peat) is a meditation on the coexistence of man and environment. Entrapped in a vicious cycle of accusations, efforts in resolving the decades-long haze issues in Riau, Indonesia are becoming alarmingly futile. This short film is a juxtaposition of thoughts, anecdotes, opinions and images from affected locations.
From India to China, the fastest growing economies of the world are accumulative, exhaustive, and insatiable. The parallels of Odisha in east India can be found in the Wuhai area of Inner Mongolia; a dwindling pasture ravaged and disembowelled by the acts of toxic mining. Inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Beixi Muoshou (Behemoth) projects a poetic, contemplative gaze over China’s search for a paradise, one that has ended up looking more like hell. This film is a winner of the Green Drop Award at the 72nd Venice Film Festival (2015).
This screening is part of the public programme of Amar Kanwar: The Sovereign Forest.
Gambut (Peat) is a meditation on the coexistence of man and environment. Entrapped in a vicious cycle of accusations, efforts in resolving the decades-long haze issues in Riau, Indonesia are becoming alarmingly futile. This short film is a juxtaposition of thoughts, anecdotes, opinions and images from affected locations.
From India to China, the fastest growing economies of the world are accumulative, exhaustive, and insatiable. The parallels of Odisha in east India can be found in the Wuhai area of Inner Mongolia; a dwindling pasture ravaged and disembowelled by the acts of toxic mining. Inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Beixi Muoshou (Behemoth) projects a poetic, contemplative gaze over China’s search for a paradise, one that has ended up looking more like hell. This film is a winner of the Green Drop Award at the 72nd Venice Film Festival (2015).
This screening is part of the public programme of Amar Kanwar: The Sovereign Forest.
Blk 38 Malan Road, The Single Screen
2020, HD video, colour, sound, 15 min 37 sec
Realised in collaboration with local residents, the first experimental video of the collective Rice Brewing Sisters Club weaves together oral histories, folk tales, poems, and agricultural wisdom harvested in Deokgeo-ri, a small rural community in the north-eastern region of Gangwon (South Korea). The work is structured in seven short chapters, with each chapter featuring enactments where villagers, sacred trees, and ritual objects perform simple choreographies to illustrate stories and practices of coexistence and interrelatedness between humans, the natural environment, and an otherworld teeming with spiritual entities. Imbued with a playful and whimsical sense of the communal, Cheopcheopdamdam Iyagigeuk / Mountain Storytellers, Storytelling Mountains: A Tale Theatre 첩첩담담 疊疊談談 이야기극 offers an insight into alternative worldviews made of sustainable practices and ecological belief systems.
Blk 38 Malan Road, The Single Screen
2020, HD video, colour, sound, 15 min 37 sec
Realised in collaboration with local residents, the first experimental video of the collective Rice Brewing Sisters Club weaves together oral histories, folk tales, poems, and agricultural wisdom harvested in Deokgeo-ri, a small rural community in the north-eastern region of Gangwon (South Korea). The work is structured in seven short chapters, with each chapter featuring enactments where villagers, sacred trees, and ritual objects perform simple choreographies to illustrate stories and practices of coexistence and interrelatedness between humans, the natural environment, and an otherworld teeming with spiritual entities. Imbued with a playful and whimsical sense of the communal, Cheopcheopdamdam Iyagigeuk / Mountain Storytellers, Storytelling Mountains: A Tale Theatre 첩첩담담 疊疊談談 이야기극 offers an insight into alternative worldviews made of sustainable practices and ecological belief systems.
Born in 1982, Taipei, Taiwan. Chu made a number of short films and participated in international film festivals when he was still in university. Upon receiving his B.A. film degree, he shifted his direction towards fine art, working on film, video art and installation. Chu is deeply concerned with the dilemma of the individual in modern society, in particular to individual existence, social hierarchy, and political conflicts, which are revealed throughout his art practice.
His work has been widely presented by major film festivals and international art institutions, include The 28th Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, The 19th Singapore International Film Festival, The 7th Seoul international Film Festival, and 2014 Taipei Biennial — The Great Acceleration, Kunsthaus Esse, Shanghai Contemporary Art Museum, Glasgow Center for Contemporary Arts, and Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art.
In 2013 Chu ChunTeng founded a co-working art space "Polymer" in Taipei, with the attempt to promote interdisciplinary art practices and artistic experiments.