Jointly presented by the National Museum of Singapore and the Embassy of France in Singapore, Visions of the East: Asia through French Eyes is an eye-opening film programme that takes a look at French cinema’s portrayal of Asia and Asian culture throughout history. Featuring 19 films from the past nine decades, the programme seeks to explore France’s fascination with the East from earliest film footage of Indochina and Japan by the Lumière Brothers and orientalist epics of colonial times to the groundbreaking New Wave era films of the 1950s and 60s.

Highlights include Pierre Schoendofferffer‘s newly restored La 317ème section (1965), Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and Regis Wargnier‘s Indochine (1992). To add further dimension to the classic silent French films on offer, musicians such as prolific composer and pianist Robert Casteels, local talents Vivian Wang, Leslie Low, Bani Haykal and Shane Thio (resident pianist with the Singapore Symphony Chorus) were commissioned to create and perform live music to accompany the screenings of The Red Lantern (1919) and Hara-Kiri (1928).

The programme concludes with a roundtable discussion moderated by film critic Ben Slater, featuring speakers director Pierre Rissient and academics such as Dr Farish Noor from the Nanyang Technological University. Film and history buffs alike will get a kick out of this comprehensive exploration of how Asia is viewed through European eyes and how these films influenced the way in which the world perceives Asia, and even how Asia sees itself.

Visions of the East: Asia through French Eyes takes place at the National Museum of Singapore’s Gallery Theatrem from 4 to 16 October. Tickets are are available for purchase at the National Museum of Singapore (Stamford Visitor Services Counter). For additional ticketing, scheduling and synopsis information, please visit www.nationalmuseum.sg.

The critically acclaimed and award winning play Gemuk Girls will be returning to the stage after its wildly successful 2008 run here and across the Causeway. Last we saw of this fabulous cast and crew, The Neccessary Stage production took home 3 awards at the 9th Life! Theatre Awards (Best Script, Best Actor and Production of the Year) as well as the adoration of theater lovers and art critics island wide. Written by playwright Haresh Sharma and directed by Alvin Tan, this provocative story set in the 1960s revolves around the tumultuous relationship between a free-spirited mother and her overachieving daughter. Best news of all is that all original cast members will return for this run to reprise their roles. So if you didn’t manage to catch this amazing play during its initial run, well this is your second chance!

Gemuk Girls will be staged at The Necessary Stage Black Box on 9 – 12 & 17 – 19 November (8pm) and 12 – 13 & 19 – 20 November (3pm). Tickets are available via SISTIC.

www.necessary.org

The art of print takes the limelight on the upcoming exhibition, I Have A Room With Everything. Curated by Yanda (of www.theartistandhismodel.com), this room with everything will contain over 200 items of rare and out-of-print materials, carefully handpicked to pay homage to hte print techniques and workmanship behind them. Get your hands over magazines (like WERK and Guerillazines), catalogues (from On Pedder), books (such as limited edition ones by John Clang), mailers and record sleeves designed by some of the finest names in the biz, like Asylum, WORK, Stefan Sagmeister, Why Not Assosicates, Kinetic and H55. All this will be served up in a personal and intimate setting, and visitors are wholly encourage to interact with this room and everything in it. And for those keen to look into the finer print, don’t miss dialogue sessions with industry heavyweights like Junny Saw (AlsoDoMinie) who’ll be taking us through AlsoDoMinie’s portfolio, as well as Yong (Somewhere Else/Asylum), Jonathan Yuen (Roots) and Yah-Leng Yu (ForeignPolicyDesign), who have more than enough personal stories and insights to share.

I Have A Room With Everything runs from 23 July 23 to 5 August 5 (12pm to 7pm daily, except Sundays) at the Night & Day Gallery, 139C Selegie Road. Admission is free.

The dialogue session takes place on 30 July, 12pm to 3pm. As there are limited seats available, reservations are required. RSVP to yes@ihavearoomwitheverything.com.

www.ihavearoomwitheverything.com

Villa Alicia is a new thought provoking sound and photography installation by artist Alecia Neo (Home Visits) and sound artist Clarence Chung. The project is an attempt to preserve the memory, personality and spirit of an old 1970s home that is about to be vacated by its tenants, Tan Ying Hsien, a winebar owner and his mother Dr Nalla Tan, 88, a prominent physician and feminist suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. The gray-haired Binjai Park bungalow will be split into two parts, each encapsulating the lives and memories of its two 40-year inhabitants.

Ying Hsien’s area is replete with his marathon medals and wine magazines, and the other, belonging to his mother, is fillled with paintings, drawings, kitchenware in rooms that have seen little change since the 1970s. More than an indulgent nostalgia trip, this exhibition allows visitors to get an up close look at the fragility of human memory and how malleable it is by time, disease and perception. Sadly, the house is slated to be demolished a few days after the exhibition closes so come by and bid farewell to his lovely old home.

Villa Alicia takes place from on 6 to 11 August 2011, from 9 am to 9 pm at 43 Binjai Park, Singapore 589843. Admission is free. For enquiries, please email villaaliciashow@gmail.com.

www.villaalicia.info

Every year, The National Museum gets young at heart and celebrates the spirit of youth with its Children’s Season. This time their Under The Banyan Tree open-air cinema and cozy Gallery Theater gets in on the summertime frolic with screenings of three absolutely marvelous family friendly films. First up is the groundbreaking 1940 Disney classic Fantasia. The animated feature was a cinematic milestone and hailed as one of the greatest “concert” movies ever made, featuring outstanding orchestral compositions and enchanting, artistically-choreographed animation.

The bizarre and surreal 1953 adaptation of Dr. Seuess’  The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T is also on offer. This delirious tale of enslaved child pianist Bart Collins may be weird and but it’s also riotous fun! The film has gained a dedicated cult following over the past 60 years due its funhouse strangeness and outlandish visuals. Finally, the National Museum will also be presenting The Fairy Tales of Lotte Reiniger. Lotte Reiniger’s animated retellings of famous fairy tales are famed black and white marvels, stylistically inspired by Chinese silhouette puppetry. Icelandic band Amiina (who frequently collaborate with Sigur Rós) will be delivering their delicate and ethereal compositions live as part of the screening.

Fantasia will be shown on Friday 27 May at 8pm while The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T will be on Saturday 28 May 2011 at 8pm. Both will be screened at The National Museum’s Under The Banyan Tree and admission is free.

The Fairy Tales of Lotte Reiniger will be screened at the Gallery Theater on Thursday 2 June at 7.30pm as well as from Friday 3 June to Sunday 5 June at 3pm. Tickets are priced at $15.

www.nationalmuseum.sg

Who says you can’t mix live theatre with film? Tagfish by the Flemish theatre group Berlin is a theatrical performance of film montage premiering exclusively in Singapore at the National Museum from 14-16 April. The unique multi-platform story tells of six gentlemen projected onto six of the screens: an architect, a town planner, a professor, a representative from UNESCO, a journalist, and an actor.

Although they have never met in real life, they have one thing in common – all of them are waiting for Sheikh Hani Yamani to occupy the seventh empty seat. Each eminent professional has a part to play in realising the Sheikh’s dream of building a luxury hotel on the vacant heritage site that he bought. As each are divided over the idea, they argue and philosophise about the project’s feasibility.

Berlin specialises in artistically and technically brilliant ―filmic theatre, which combines the styles of documentary performance and video installation. Through their works, the artists of Berlin—Bart Baele and Yves Degryse—seek to reveal what is happening in today’s cities and towns. Based on their true interviews with the six professionals, the artists crafted Tagfish, an ostensibly realistic docu-fiction about the future of Zollverein.

There will be three screenings of Tagfish at the National Museum of Singapore, at 8:00pm on 14, 15 and 16 April 2011. Tickets are available from SISTIC and are priced at S$20.00 each (includes handling fees).

www.nationalmuseum.sg.

Edward Yang is one of the most talented yet least known directors in Chinese-language cinema. So when The National Museum of Singapore ran a retrospective on the man, we couldn’t resist checking it out.

Even among those that do follow him, his 1996 crime-comedy Mahjong isn’t too widely seen, which is a shame because it’s a doozy. The film easily strikes you as a Taipei-based Tarantino flick, with the fast-paced intertwining stories of various petty lowlifes, all lensed with noir sensibilities and peppered with bites of witty dialogue (in Mandarin, Hokkien, and now English and French!).

The narrative focuses upon a dense metropolis riddled with crime and get-rich-quick schemes, but it isn’t a critique of the Taiwanese city per se as much as it is a satire on urban ills. There are a myriad of smooth-talking sleaze-balls to follow but at the heart of things and most cognizant of the film’s theme is Red Fish, a teenaged scam artist. According to him, ”There are two types of people, crooks and dopes,” and for a long while right up till its bloody climax, this mantra is followed to a fault.

Mahjong is the only bit in Yang’s oeuvre that uses foreign actors. Marthe (Virginie Ledoyen) is a gorgeous 18-year-old French girl in way over head when she arrives in the bustling city. She’s looking for an ex-lover, Markus (Nick Erickson), an obnoxious English ex-pat. Meanwhile Ginger (Diana Dupuis), is an American who was once a little-known cabaret girl who has since made it big as high-end escort Madame. Mix them in with assorted local gangsters and you get a tangled web of amoral wheeling and dealing. It’s a convoluted brew leading up to a gut-wrenching morality lesson, that’s both satirical and sentimental.

The National Museum of Singapore Cinémathèque will be reminiscing about one of Taiwan’s finest cinematic exports, Edward Yang, with a comprehensive look back at the great director’s work. For those who don’t know, Edward Yang has been at the forefront of New Taiwan Cinema in the ’80s and is best loved for helming absolute masterpieces such as A Brighter Summer Day, The Terrorizer, Mahjong and That Day on the Beach (his debut that kind of kick-started the Taiwanese New Wave in 1983).

The retrospective will be screening all his completed works along with fragments of his last filmic endeavor, The Wind (an animated project with Jackie Chan that was cut short by his untimely death), as well as the premiere of a new documentary specially commissioned for this occasion, which features never-been-shown footage of Yang directing his last film, Yi Yi. A few of his trusted collaborators from both his film career and private life such as Hsiao Yeh and Hung Hung will also be on hand for insightful dialogue sessions discussing their memories of him and his legacy.

In His Time: The Films of Edward Yang takes place from March 2-13 at The National Museum of Singapore. Full schedule and ticketing information can be found at http://www.nationalmuseum.sg/FilmDetail.aspx?id=60

If your head belongs to art and design, then get your head to the newly opened NAFA Creative Design Centre + Gallery. Located wihtin NAFA’s Fashion Campus 2, this space is all geared up for exhibitions and events, and comes armed with a phat collection of arty books (lovingly supplied by Thames & Hudson). The gallery will enjoy its grand opening on 10 March with an exhibition of local designer Frederick Lee, entitled “The World of Frederick Lee”, and of course we’ll be there.

NAFA’s Fashion Campus 2 is located at 80 Bencoolen Street.

:phunkTanaaMIX – :phunk & Keiichi Tanaami is an exhibition featuring the collaborative paintings and silkscreen prints by noted Singaporean art collective :phunk studio and Japanese artist Keiichi Tanaami. When :phunk, a younger generation artists, met their long time inspiration, Keiichi Tanaami, each artist’s enduring vision of utopia found a candid comrade, a whole lot of psychedelia and creative madness. The enchanting parade of eccentric characters and vibrant colors is the result from this collaborative project, with each artist’s portrayal of a new world carrying on a dialogue and manifestation into a seductive utopia.

phunkTanaaMIX by :phunk & Keiichi Tanaami takes place from 8 – 31 October, Tues – Sat 11am – 7pm and Sun 1pm – 6pm (closed on Mondays and Public Holidays) at ART SEASONS Singapore, Kaki Bukit Road 1, Eunos Technolink Blk 7 #02-12