Aperture: Asia & Pacific Film Festival Kicks Off in London
After launching in Glasgow earlier in the year, Aperture: Asia & Pacific Film Festival is coming to London from June 29 - July 7, 2018. Aperture, which is co-directed by Sonali Joshi and Jasper Sharp, is the only festival in the UK that specifically covers the entirety of the Asian and Pacific regions. Representative countries include Afghanistan, Armenia, Assam (India), Bhutan, Georgia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Pakistan. Sonali Joshi says that “[w]e 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.”
Aperture's summer program boasts 12 features, including four UK premieres and four London premieres, as well 17 short films. A second London program will occur in September. Film titles with descriptions and venues are provided below.
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.
NAMME (Zaza Khalvashi, Georgia 2017) / UK premiere - 4 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.
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.
