Cinematic Voids

In collaboration with Singapore Art Museum, we are pleased to present Cinematic Voids, a curated film series appearing alongside the exhibition Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness. Taking its cue from the exhibition’s focus on the five elements, this programme explores the concept of the ‘Void’—a space that, in Sugimoto's world, is never truly empty, but rather brimming with potential, time, and light. The series serves as a moving-image extension of Sugimoto’s meditative practice, inviting viewers to find depth in stillness and the unseen. The selected films are structured around the five fundamental elements, creating a visual dialogue between the stillness of the gallery and the rhythmic flow of cinema.

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Koyaanisqatsi
1982 86mins (PG) Documentary
Directed by Godfrey Reggio Starring Ed Asner, Pat Benatar, Johnny Carson

Crumbling skylines and towering natural landscapes, factory lines moving like living organisms, cities pulsing like circuit boards, all set to Philip Glass's now-legendary score. Koyaanisqatsi is a cult big-screen experience that has shaped cinema and documentary filmmaking for decades.

Presenting CINEMATIC VOIDS: a curated film series in collaboration with Singapore Art Museum, accompanying the ongoing exhibition ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness

Rated PG.

Taste of Cherry
1997 99mins (PG13) Drama
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami Starring Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Safar Ali Moradi

A man drives around Tehran searching for someone to bury him after he takes his own life. Along the way, he meets strangers who each try, in their own way, to talk him out of it. Taste of Cherry, Abbas Kiarostami’s most recognised work, won't let you down with the simple yet profound journey it takes you on. 

 

Presenting CINEMATIC VOIDS: a curated film series in collaboration with Singapore Art Museum, accompanying the ongoing exhibition ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness

In Persian with English subtitles

Rated PG13 for Some Mature Content. 

Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto
2012 83mins (PG) Documentary
Directed by Yuko Nakamura Starring Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tadao Ando, Lee U-Fan

This documentary follows 200 days in the life of contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto— a leading presence in the world of modern art. He is the winner of many prestigious awards and his photographs are sold for millions of yen at overseas auctions. The film shows the sites of the Architecture series shot in southern France, the huge installation art work at 17th Biennale of Sydney, his new work Mathematics at Provence, his art studio while working on Lightning Fields, and more. It thoroughly pursues the question Sugimoto's works pose - "living in modern times, what are these works trying to tell us?" A thrilling look into the world of Hiroshi Sugimoto.

 

Presenting CINEMATIC VOIDS: a curated film series in collaboration with Singapore Art Museum, accompanying the ongoing exhibition ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness’

In Japanese with English subtitles.

Rated PG.

Stalker
1979 162mins (PG) Science Fiction
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky Starring Alisa Freyndlikh, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, Anatoliy Solonitsyn

A faithful stalker guides a melancholic writer and a skeptical scientist into the Zone, a stretch of heavily guarded land where the ordinary laws of physics no longer apply. At its centre lies a room said to grant a person's deepest, innermost desires.

Tarkovsky's most well known masterpiece, Stalker, turns the spectacle of the Zone into an introspection for the three men inside it. In this liminal nothingness, the camera lingers on moss and rust and water until stillness feels comfortable.

 

Presenting CINEMATIC VOIDS: a curated film series in collaboration with Singapore Art Museum, accompanying the ongoing exhibition ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness

In Russian with English subtitles.

Rated PG.

Memoria
2021 136mins (PG) Drama
Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul Starring Tilda Swinton, Agnes Brekke, Daniel Giménez Cacho

Tilda Swinton stars as Jessica, a Scottish orchid farmer in Colombia who wakes one morning to a loud, inexplicable bang that only she can hear. Her search for its origin leads her through a sound studio, a tunnel, and a stranger who seems to carry the memories of everyone before him.

 

Presenting CINEMATIC VOIDS: a curated film series in collaboration with Singapore Art Museum, accompanying the ongoing exhibition ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form Is Emptiness

In Spanish and English, with English subtitles. 

Rated PG.