Bringing together moving-image works from across the region, the Australian Cinémathèque presents specially curated programs at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) throughout the 11th Triennial exhibition period. Forming five distinct programs, collectively, the films consider how the passage of time is perceived and altered through the lenses of individual experience and personal history.
The first of two thematic programs, ‘Future Visions’ (10 January – 16 March 2025) showcases the works of moving-image artists and filmmakers who reflect on the current state of technology, society and cultural identity through the genre of science fiction. Entwining elements of cultural traditions and knowledge with new technologies, many of the selected films explore the slippery space of non-linear time across past, present and future, through the motifs of magical realism and time travel.
Ideas of ancestral memory, society, culture and tradition are also unpacked in ‘Children of Independence: The Rise of Central Asian Cinema’ (12 February – 19 March 2025). In the second of the thematic programs, the effects of the past on the present are writ large, spotlighting current concerns by emerging filmmakers from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. These countries gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and the resulting shifts in rule have subsequently offered opportunities for many filmmakers to begin probing previously taboo subjects. In ‘Children of Independence’, the films address corruption, political and religious conservativism, the treatment of women and the influence of rapid cultural, economic and political change on personal and community connections.
These ideas are further explored by three programs surveying the directorial careers of remarkable cinematic voices: Indonesian filmmaker Kamila Andini (11 January – 8 February 2025), Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi (28 March – 11 May 2025), and senior Taiwan-based Malaysian filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang (1 November – 22 December 2024). While distinct in their individual approaches, all three directors question the past, present and future within broader cultural, historical and personal narratives. Their modes of presentation also interrogate the fluidity of the cinematic medium itself, with their practices exploring works as diverse as gallery-led art installations and online streaming series.
Asia Pacific Triennial Cinema delivers a series of events accompanying these screening programs. Australian audiences have a rare opportunity to hear from Andini, Tsai, and Hamaguchi‘s creative collaborators — producer Satoshi Takata and musician-composer Eiko Ishibashi — who discuss their work at the Australian Cinémathèque through an In Conversation series. Asia Pacific Triennial Cinema also presents a display of Tsai’s single-channel video installation works, and an event in which Ishibashi performs her audiovisual work Gift 2023, which evolved from conversations between the composer and Hamaguchi for whom Ishibashi previously created the soundtrack for Drive My Car 2021.
Future Visions
Throughout cinematic history, ‘the future’ has served as a rich playground for filmmakers to explore the imagined, the taboo and the unknown. Today, anthropocentric concerns, including the accelerated rate of climate change, increased migration and the rapid pace of technological development, have catapulted anxieties about the future of the environment, culture and identity into the present, raising questions about the legacies of humankind.
‘Future Visions’ showcases a diverse selection of works by filmmakers and moving-image artists from Asia and the Pacific who are combining hallmarks of the science-fiction genre with heritage traditions and ancestral stories to reflect on contemporary environmental, political and cultural concerns. Set amid neon-drenched cityscapes, architectural ruins and futuristic worlds, these films variously reject, parody and expand on past ‘techno-orientalist’ tendencies of the dominant European and North American film industries.1 These Asian and Pacific filmmakers present an array of imagined futures that delve into the realms of postcolonialism, the contemporary diaspora, queer identities and post-humanism.
Despite an emphasis on prefiguring the future, the films featured in this program are as much about memory as speculative thinking. Filmmakers in the region draw from tradition and memory to transgress the constraints of linear time, allowing them to tell stories about the past from a future viewpoint, and to comment on the present. They are also reconfiguring traditional science-fiction narratives, integrating culture and history. By asking ‘what if?’, this suite of films considers what the movement of humanity — both in terms of geography and evolution — means for our environmental future, our personal and cultural identities, and our memories across the region.
Children of Independence: The Rise of Central Asian Cinema
Emerging from years of Soviet Union rule, the rise of cinema in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan since 1991 offers an exciting insight into the region with contemporary filmmakers having much to say about society, culture and tradition.2 Often unflinching in their approach to difficult and sometimes taboo subjects, the articulate and award‑winning films showcased in ‘Children of Independence: The Rise of Central Asian Cinema’ champion stories of vulnerable and exploited people.
Like many of their Asian and Pacific regional counterparts, Central Asian filmmakers explore the effects of rapid cultural, economic and political change in their work. Embedded in the narratives of many films from Central Asia is an examination of traditional values and customs, and how they apply to the changing contemporary landscape.
In a climate of conservative politics, artists and filmmakers are mindful of subjects that are frowned upon or outright forbidden. In Central Asia, governing bodies set the tone for what is acceptable within film narratives; however, previously taboo topics are slowly emerging in the contemporary filmmaking of the region. In recent years, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have moved closer to functional democratic rule and more open societies, while Uzbekistan and Tajikistan tend toward Soviet-era restriction.
The loosening of cultural taboos and the increased agency of filmmakers to tell their own stories have encouraged a creative cinematic outpouring over the last 20 years. It is a time of growth, and a dynamic moment for independent voices to be heard as filmmakers from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are beginning to find their way onto the international stage.
Kamila Andini, Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Tsai Ming-liang
Presenting near-complete career surveys of the filmmakers Kamila Andini (Indonesia, b.1986), Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Japan, b.1978) and Tsai Ming-liang (Malaysia/Taiwan, b.1957), these programs for Asia Pacific Triennial Cinema explore the work of directors who are expanding the amorphous boundaries of contemporary cinema in singular ways.
Kamila Andini makes films that are uniquely Indonesian, exploring her country’s many histories through the often-unheralded roles of women in society, and nimbly using both the conventions of feature films and the more expansive model of the streamed series.
An astute observer of the human condition, Ryusuke Hamaguchi has crafted a prolific body of work that explores the performance of self, the unknowable nature of others’ inner lives, and the joys and impossibilities of connection in the modern world.
Tsai Ming-liang, a major figure in Taiwan New Cinema, draws on his practice as an acclaimed video artist to devise new ways of conceiving cinema. After working in theatre and television for several years, Tsai made his feature debut with the enthralling portrait of urban ennui, Qingshaonian Nuozha (Rebels of the Neon God) 1992.
While these directors’ approaches to filmmaking are individually distinct, Andini, Hamaguchi and Tsai share formal and narrative preoccupations. In their work, each explores understandings of time and memory, how our relationship with these concepts is ever‑changing, and continually expand the formal possibilities of the medium.
Amanda Slack-Smith is Curatorial Manager, Rosie Hays is Associate Curator, Dr Victoria Wareham is Assistant Curator, and Robert Hughes is Assistant Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, GOMA. This is an edited excerpt from their curatorial essays on Asia Pacific Triennial Cinema in the publication The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art.
Endnotes
1 ‘Techno-orientalism’ is a term coined by David Morley and Kevin Robins in Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries (Routledge, London, 1995) to describe the European and North American perception of East Asia as aesthetically emblematic of near futures.
2 These four nations with their unique languages and cultures were invaded by Russia and became part of the Soviet Union in 1918. In 1991, they each declared independence, beginning a significant new chapter in their history.
The Asia Pacific Triennial Cinema program is supported by Presenting Partner Crumpler.
Featured image: Production still from The Seen and Unseen 2017 / Director: Kamila Andini / Image courtesy: Cercamon
Art that crosses borders
Asia Pacific Triennial
Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art
30 November 2024 – 27 April 2025