National Gallery Singapore

What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? [Southeast Asian Premiere]

Director: Alexandre Koberidze
Year: 2021
Runtime: 150 min
Country: Germany / Georgia
Language: Georgian (with English subtitles)
Rating: PG

One summer afternoon, Lisa and Giorgi bump into each other in the street. It’s love at first sight, but they quickly part ways—only to cross paths again almost immediately. When they run into each other for a third time, they decide to go on a date. Unfortunately the pair are cursed; on the morning of their big day, both wake up and find themselves transformed into someone else. But even with new faces and new lives, Lisa and Giorgi still yearn for one another.

This Berlinale FIPRESCI Prize winner is a romantic, Kafkaesque fable full of poignant quirkiness and playful imagery. As writer-director Alexandre Koberidze follows the couple’s journey towards reunification, he also takes the audience on a leisurely and witty detour through daily life in the historic Georgian city of Kutaisi, where human, canine and inanimate-object populations are in the grip of World Cup fever. Saturated in colour thanks to Faraz Fesharaki’s artful mix of 16mm and digital cinematography, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? is an expansive, eloquent love letter to romance, to the mundane and the magical, and to the art of cinema itself.

“Alexandre Koberidze’s joyously elusive flight of fancy … is a slyly inventive, free-ranging adventure in cinematic possibility.” – Screen Daily

Watch trailer here.

This film is part of Still Somehow, It’s Illusions We Recall, a film programme presented by the Singapore Art Museum in conjunction with the ongoing exhibition, The Gift. Drawing on the exhibition’s theme of affinities and entanglements, the programme features responses to our current state of unprecedented disruption and isolation. The series of films conjure and reconfigure familiar aspects of life in ways that are intimate, yet alienating. The intertwining themes found in these filmic narratives present an avenue for collective introspection, and open up possibilities for the reanimating of a new and future self.

The film programme will run from 1 October to 4 November 2021, with on-site screenings in the Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium and Level 5 Theatrette at National Gallery Singapore. It features the Singapore premieres of feature-length and short films, as well as pre-screening introductions hosted by film curator, Jeremy Chua.

Sundown [Southeast Asian Premiere]

Director: Michel Franco
Year: 2021
Runtime: 83 min
Country: Mexico, France, Sweden
Language: English, Spanish (with English subtitles)
Rating: M18

When a distant emergency disrupts the wealthy Bennett family’s vacation on the Mexican coast in Acapulco and summons them back to the UK, simmering tensions rise to the fore. In the process, the delicate balance between siblings is irrevocably upset.

This film continues writer-director Michel Franco’s explorations of individuals and societies under pressure, revealing the hidden heights and depths of a city and a family. Sundown unfolds in short, sharp busrts, playing out in the sleek hotel suites and scruffy tourist haunts of a seaside locale, and across the psychological battlefield of a family dynasty.

Watch trailer here.

This film is part of Still Somehow, It’s Illusions We Recall, a film programme presented by the Singapore Art Museum in conjunction with the ongoing exhibition, The Gift. Drawing on the exhibition’s theme of affinities and entanglements, the programme features responses to our current state of unprecedented disruption and isolation. The series of films conjure and reconfigure familiar aspects of life in ways that are intimate, yet alienating. The intertwining themes found in these filmic narratives present an avenue for collective introspection, and open up possibilities for the reanimating of a new and future self.

The film programme will run from 1 October to 4 November 2021, with on-site screenings in the Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium and Level 5 Theatrette at National Gallery Singapore. It features the Singapore premieres of feature-length and short films, as well as pre-screening introductions hosted by film curator, Jeremy Chua.

The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) PARTS 1 & 2 [Southeast Asian Premiere]

Director: C.W. Winter and Anders Edström
Year: 2020
Runtime: 202 min [PARTS 1 & 2]
Country: USA / Sweden / Japan/ UK
Language: Japanese, Swedish, English (with English subtitles)
Rating: To be advised

The first rule in farming is that you are never to hope for an easy way. The land demands your effort. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) follows Tayoko Shiojiri and his family, who live in a valley in Kyoto Prefecture in Japan surrounded by fields and mountains. In a community where hard work bears fruit (as long as nothing diverts its course), their lives are strictly regulated by the requirements of the land and the particularities of the seasons. Filmed over 27 weeks, the film adheres to this same regimen, with the editors constantly re-weaving the narrative threads as diligently as farmers would till their land.

A geographic description of 14 months of the work and non-work of Tayoko in the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, this documentary feature is a stunning ode to the pastoral in five books. The film won the Best Film of Berlinale Encounters Competition in 2020.

“This is a marvel of cinematic immersion… Now more than ever, The Works and Days speaks to the power, beauty and necessity of the theatrical experience.” – Film Comment

Watch trailer here.

This film is part of Still Somehow, It’s Illusions We Recall, a film programme presented by the Singapore Art Museum in conjunction with the ongoing exhibition, The Gift. Drawing on the exhibition’s theme of affinities and entanglements, the programme features responses to our current state of unprecedented disruption and isolation. The series of films conjure and reconfigure familiar aspects of life in ways that are intimate, yet alienating. The intertwining themes found in these filmic narratives present an avenue for collective introspection, and open up possibilities for the reanimating of a new and future self.

The film programme will run from 1 October to 4 November 2021, with on-site screenings in the Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium and Level 5 Theatrette at National Gallery Singapore. It features the Singapore premieres of feature-length and short films, as well as pre-screening introductions hosted by film curator, Jeremy Chua.

The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) PART 3 [Southeast Asian Premiere]

Director: C.W. Winter and Anders Edström
Year: 2020
Runtime: 130 min [PART 3]
Country: USA / Sweden / Japan/ UK
Language: Japanese, Swedish, English (with English subtitles)
Rating: To be advised

The first rule in farming is that you are never to hope for an easy way. The land demands your effort. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) follows Tayoko Shiojiri and his family, who live in a valley in Kyoto Prefecture in Japan surrounded by fields and mountains. In a community where hard work bears fruit (as long as nothing diverts its course), their lives are strictly regulated by the requirements of the land and the particularities of the seasons. Filmed over 27 weeks, the film adheres to this same regimen, with the editors constantly re-weaving the narrative threads as diligently as farmers would till their land.

A geographic description of 14 months of the work and non-work of Tayoko in the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, this documentary feature is a stunning ode to the pastoral in five books. The film won the Best Film of Berlinale Encounters Competition in 2020.

“This is a marvel of cinematic immersion… Now more than ever, The Works and Days speaks to the power, beauty and necessity of the theatrical experience.” – Film Comment

Watch trailer here.

This film is part of Still Somehow, It’s Illusions We Recall, a film programme presented by the Singapore Art Museum in conjunction with the ongoing exhibition, The Gift. Drawing on the exhibition’s theme of affinities and entanglements, the programme features responses to our current state of unprecedented disruption and isolation. The series of films conjure and reconfigure familiar aspects of life in ways that are intimate, yet alienating. The intertwining themes found in these filmic narratives present an avenue for collective introspection, and open up possibilities for the reanimating of a new and future self.

The film programme will run from 1 October to 4 November 2021, with on-site screenings in the Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium and Level 5 Theatrette at National Gallery Singapore. It features the Singapore premieres of feature-length and short films, as well as pre-screening introductions hosted by film curator, Jeremy Chua.

The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) PART 4 [Southeast Asian Premiere]

Director: C.W. Winter and Anders Edström
Year: 2020
Runtime: 149 min [PART 4]
Country: USA / Sweden / Japan/ UK
Language: Japanese, Swedish, English (with English subtitles)
Rating: To be advised

The first rule in farming is that you are never to hope for an easy way. The land demands your effort. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) follows Tayoko Shiojiri and his family, who live in a valley in Kyoto Prefecture in Japan surrounded by fields and mountains. In a community where hard work bears fruit (as long as nothing diverts its course), their lives are strictly regulated by the requirements of the land and the particularities of the seasons. Filmed over 27 weeks, the film adheres to this same regimen, with the editors constantly re-weaving the narrative threads as diligently as farmers would till their land.

A geographic description of 14 months of the work and non-work of Tayoko in the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, this documentary feature is a stunning ode to the pastoral in five books. The film won the Best Film of Berlinale Encounters Competition in 2020.

“This is a marvel of cinematic immersion… Now more than ever, The Works and Days speaks to the power, beauty and necessity of the theatrical experience.” – Film Comment

Watch trailer here.

This film is part of Still Somehow, It’s Illusions We Recall, a film programme presented by the Singapore Art Museum in conjunction with the ongoing exhibition, The Gift. Drawing on the exhibition’s theme of affinities and entanglements, the programme features responses to our current state of unprecedented disruption and isolation. The series of films conjure and reconfigure familiar aspects of life in ways that are intimate, yet alienating. The intertwining themes found in these filmic narratives present an avenue for collective introspection, and open up possibilities for the reanimating of a new and future self.

The film programme will run from 1 October to 4 November 2021, with on-site screenings in the Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium and Level 5 Theatrette at National Gallery Singapore. It features the Singapore premieres of feature-length and short films, as well as pre-screening introductions hosted by film curator, Jeremy Chua.

Please note that a part of Supreme Court Foyer Level 3 (beside the glass doors) is not available from Mon 13 Sep 2021 – Sun 22 Jan 2023 due to an artwork installation.

Celebrate the opening of the on-site exhibits in the Gallery Children’s Biennale with a special parent-child workshop led by award-winning movement artist and somatic therapist Vincent Yong.
Inspired by the theme of “home”–one of the four major themes of the Biennale–Vincent will lead participants through interactive movement exercises that will encourage them to experience selected artworks of the Biennale with their bodies.

There are 4 sessions available: 

Sat 6 Nov Session 1 | 2.30–4pm 
Sat 6 Nov Session 2 | 4.30–6pm 
Sun 7 Nov Session 1 | 2.30–4pm 
Sun 7 Nov Session 2 | 4.30–6pm 

Each workshop is limited to 16 participants (8 parent-child pairs). Due to space constraints and prevailing Safety Management Measures, each child can only be accompanied by one parent. All Participants and the facilitator will remain masked throughout the workshop.

Event Venue: City Hall Wing,Level 5,Rooftop Studios 3 & 4