SCREENING

Free Screenings: Dreams and Rituals

This August, ArtScience Museum and Objectifs present Dreams and Rituals: Selected Shorts from Objectifs’ Women in Film and Photography, a trio of short films that explore familiar myths and rituals that are often entangled with the interior, intimate lives of women.

Since the programme’s inception in 2015, the Objectifs Women in Film & Photography programme continues to highlight seminal works by visual storytellers.

In Home Economics with A Stubborn Bloom, Stephanie Jane Burt and Daniela Monasterios-Tan perform a tongue-in-cheek re-staging of texts from 1970s Home Economics Textbooks, revealing the extremes of femininity beneath a veneer of frills and ribbons. Dreams and reality are interwoven in Natalie Khoo’s a spider, fever and other disappearing islands, where a grandmother’s tale becomes entwined with the path of a spider spirit. In Pom Bunsermvicha’s Lemongrass Girl, on-set sexism subtly unfolds through a common ‘purity’ test in Thailand that is rooted in archaic beliefs.

Featuring a mix of genres that shift between docu-fiction and dark comedy, the stories in Dreams and Rituals playfully subvert linear narratives through soft, sometimes surreal aesthetics, reflecting life’s absurdity and irrationality.

Co-curated by ArtScience Museum and Objectifs.

This programme complements the exhibition, Goddess: Brave. Bold. Beautiful.

Total programme duration: 50 minutes

About Objectifs

Established in 2003, Objectifs is a visual arts space in Singapore that is dedicated to film and photography. Our goal is to cultivate original voices in visual storytelling, and to inspire and broaden perspectives through the power of images. We do this by presenting a year-round programme of exhibitions, screenings, workshops, talks, mentorships and residences, aimed at fostering dialogue about visual culture, and advancing the practice and appreciation of photography and film.

About Objectifs’ Women in Film and Photography Showcase

The Objectifs’ Women in Film & Photography Showcase (WIFP) is an annual celebration of extraordinary and groundbreaking works by women and non-binary photographers and filmmakers. Over the last few years, we have explored themes ranging from Collective Power to Remedy for Rage, sharing intimate yet powerful stories about communities that deal with critical issues such as politics, inequality, gender, sexuality, and cultural identity. Since 2015, WIFP has presented the works of over 150 artists and collaborated with over 20 artists through commissions and residencies.

More details about Objectifs

Showtimes

Every Mon – Thu
On the hour from 11am – 6pm (last screening at 6pm)

11 Aug (Sun) & 31 Aug (Sat)
On the hour from 11am – 6pm (last screening at 6pm)

9 Aug (Fri)
11am, 6.30pm, 7.30pm

16 & 23 Aug (Fri)
11am, 12pm, 1pm, 6.30pm, 7.30pm

17 Aug (Sat)
11am, 12pm, 1pm, 5.30pm, 6.30pm, 7.30pm

18 Aug (Sun)
11am, 12pm, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm

24 Aug (Sat)
11am, 12pm, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 6.30pm, 7.30pm

25 Aug (Sun)
11am, 12pm, 1pm, 5.30pm

No screenings on 8 Aug (Thu) and 30 Aug (Fri)

FAQ

a spider, fever and other disappearing islands (2022), Natalie Khoo

21 minutes | PG
Singapore

In A Spider, Fever and Other Disappearing Islands, my grandmother’s migration between the Riau Islands and Singapore becomes intertwined with the mutable story of a spider spirit. On the cusp of soft-horror and docufiction lies a ghoulish dreamscape that constellates between the islands, each narrative simultaneously generative and unstable. Memories of war and sickness, tinctures of empire and tales of spirits – both familial, and strange – continue to haunt and playfully reconfigure themselves around the spider story and the media forms they are represented through. Embroidered by a web of collaborators, what emerges is a story that shape-shifts along with the spider spirit itself.

Images Courtesy of Objectifs
Natalie Khoo is a filmmaker and programmer based in Singapore with a background in Archaeology and Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. Her experimental documentary approach has garnered awards like best documentary and cinematography at the 4th Singapore Short hi Film Awards and screened at film festivals including London International Documentary Festival and Thai Short Film and Video Festival, including her debut short On Such And Such A Day At Such And Such A Time (2013), a semi-fictional portrait of her grandmother which explores the relationship between dreams and memory. She participated in Docs by the Sea, organised by Tribeca Film Institute and In-Docs, Objectifs’ Short Film Lab, and is currently working on a short film produced by POTOCOL.

Her latest work a spider, fever and other disappearing islands (2021) recently screened as a video and sculptural installation at Objectifs WOMEN IN FILM & PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION 2021 and Kurzfilm Hamburg 2022 and screened in cinema form at Queer East Film Festival in London and Seashorts Film Festival in Kuala Lumpur, both in 2022.

Home Economics with A Stubborn Bloom (2021), Stephanie Jane Burt & Daniela Monasterios-Tan

11 minutes | PG
Singapore

A re-staging of instructional texts from Home Economics Textbooks used in the 1970s, outlining the correct manner for personal grooming, house-keeping, and entertaining. The film critiques the extreme performativity of femininity through gestures and costumes to a soundtrack of highly gendered phrases taken verbatim from the textbooks.

Images Courtesy of Objectifs
A Stubborn Bloom is a multidisciplinary collective started by artist Stephanie Jane Burt and fashion researcher Daniela Monasterios-Tan. Sharing an interest in the exploration of feminine tropes, the duo brings a new perspective through a synthesis of film, fashion and material culture. In their first project, they translated their research through fictional interventions, creating an archive of femininity using sourced objects. Through multi-disciplinary research and art-making, they uncover how material culture can be understood not only as consumer products, but also as a product of ideology and a very personal vehicle of identity.

Lemongrass Girl (2021), Pom Bunsermvicha

18 minutes | PG
Thailand

In accordance with a Thai superstition that a virgin can ward off rain by planting lemongrass upside-down underneath an open sky, a young production manager on a film set is left with little choice but to take on this burden as her fellow female coworkers shy away from the role.

Images Courtesy of Objectifs
Pom BUNSERMVICHA (b. 1993, Thailand) is a non-binary filmmaker based in Bangkok, Thailand. Their work, which mostly combines documentary elements with fiction, has been shown at festivals in Southeast Asia and abroad, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Locarno Film Festival, MoMA’s Doc Fortnight, Hamburg International Short Film Festival, and SeaShorts.