Launching In London On June 29; Touring The Uk In Summer/Autumn 2018
Aperture: Asia & Pacific Film Festival is a new UK-wide film festival dedicated to screening some of the boldest, most daring, challenging, and striking films from the Asian and Pacific regions. Focusing particularly on underrepresented cinemas, from Azerbaijan to Vanuatu and everything in between, the festival aims to open windows on worlds whose landscapes and peoples remain largely absent from UK screens. Aperture is the only φestival in the UK currently with a remit that specifically covers the whole of the Asian and Pacific regions.
For this first edition of the festival, key areas of focus include films from Central Asia, the Himalayas, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands. The programme comprises 12 features, including 4 UK premieres and 4 London premieres, and 17 short films.
Key themes within the festival programme include migration and displaced peoples, social justice, and female empowerment. Over half of the festival programme comprises films made by women. This spotlight on women in film includes a dedicated shorts programme of films by and about women entitled “Women in the Frame”. This strand also features the first film by a female filmmaker in the post-Taliban era A Letter to the President, the New Zealand film Waru by 8 Maori female filmmakers, winner of three Indian National Film Awards this year Village Rockstars, and a short documentary on human rights activist Sabeen Mahmud and actorfilmmaker/activist Fawzia Mirza The Streets are Ours: Two Lives Cross in Karachi.
Other festival highlights include shorts and features from lesser-known film industries exploring far-flung corners of the Asian and Pacific regions and offering insights into communities and landscapes rarely seen on UK screens – Afghanistan, Armenia, Assam (India), Bhutan, Georgia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Pakistan.
The festival is co-founded and co-directed by Sonali Joshi and Jasper Sharp and is presented in partnership with the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM), University of Westminster. The festival is supported by Purin Pictures.
Aperture is intended to be an ongoing and collaborative project with events taking place across the year. The festival opened in Glasgow in the Spring, and tours across the UK during Summer/Autumn 2018, with a two part programme for the London leg of the festival at the beginning and end of the Summer.
Aperture/London Part 1 runs from 29 June-8 July at Close-Up Cinema, The Cinema Museum, The Lexi Cinema and The Horse Hospital.
Aperture/London Part 2 will take place in mid-September, comprising a Southeast Asian focus and a one-day symposium hosted by CREAM, University of Westminster.
Aperture is jointly presenting some events with other festivals, including Masala Festival in Newcastle at Tyneside Cinema on 21 July, and Chinese Visual Festival in September.
Festival Director Sonali Joshi commented:
“The idea behind Aperture was to bring some of the freshest and boldest films emerging from across Asia and the Pacific, and to fill a gap in the current festival landscape in the UK. We feel this is an important initiative to widen audience choice for Asian films in the UK and to offer more opportunities to see films that rarely reach UK screens.”
Festival Director Jasper Sharp commented:
“It is absolutely thrilling to be able to bring such a diverse array of wonderful films to the UK, many from countries you'd never expect to be making films.”
• Aperture/London Part 1 programme listings:
Aperture Shorts I: Women in the Frame – 29 June, The Horse Hospital
A selection of films by and about women, putting women in the frame.
Aperture Shorts II: UnorthoDocs – 29 June, The Horse Hospital
Short documentary and experimental works exploring ideas of geography, territory and landscapes, both natural and manmade.
Aqerat (Edmund Yeo, Malaysia 2017) / UK premiere – 30 June, The Cinema Museum
A topical feature film focusing on migration of persecuted Rohingya to Malaysia.
Fake (Tatsuya Mori, Japan 2016) / UK premiere – 30 June, The Cinema Museum
Documentary on Mamoru Samuragochi, the once celebrated deaf composer dubbed “Japan's Beethoven” but later denounced, exploring the nature of truth and lies.
A Letter to the President (Roya Sadat, Afghanistan 2017) / London premiere – 30 June, The Cinema Museum
The first feature film by a female director in Afghanistan's post-Taliban era, presenting a poignant portrait of a female police chief striving for justice in the face of a corrupt and patriarchal society.
Waru (various female Maori filmmakers, New Zealand 2017) / London premiere – 6 July, The Lexi Cinema
A sequence of eight ten-minute short films shot by eight individual female Maori filmmakers that weave a narrative around the death of a young Maori boy.
Returnee (Sabit Kurmanbekov, Kazakhstan 2017) / UK premiere – 7 July, Close-Up Cinema
The trials and tribulations of a Kazakh family who, having migrated to Afghanistan, attempt to return to their homeland.
Namme (Zaza Khalvashi, Georgia 2017) / UK premiere – 8 July, Close-Up Cinema
Contemporary fable about a young woman entrusted to take over the family tradition of healing local villagers with water from a local spring, while in the background environmental issues are stake with the construction of a hydroelectric power station.
Tickets for screenings can be booked from the festival's website: www.day-for-night.org/aperture.
