In Week 1, we watched a screening of Love For Sale, an Indonesian film about a man named Richard, a single man approaching the halfway point of his life, who is dared by his friends to bring a date to the wedding of his friend.

Whilst watching, the first thing that immediately came to my mind was the feeling of loneliness and isolation that pervades the opening scenes of the film, and much of the early portion of the movie.

Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t help but get the impression of Richard being a very lonely man during the opening credits of the movie. I could be influenced by this ongoing pandemic thing that has lead to many of us being shut-ins without much social interaction, but it reminded me of what the past several months have been like – waking up, going to work, and coming…

In Week 2, we watched Furie, a Vietnamese film about a mother/ex-gangster’s quest for revenge after her daughter is kidnapped by human traffickers.

The first primary theme I noticed being explored in Furie was the empowerment of women.

The central protagonist of the film, Hai, is an ex-gangster who collects debts for her employers, often in a violent manner. She’s also a single mother, taking care of her daughter, Mai. Throughout the course of the film, Hai continues to demonstrate that she is an independent woman, self-sufficient and perfectly capable of existing without the assistance of a man, or other women – she even displays her skill in hand-to-hand combat against multiple men at the same time. Put simply, Hai is less of a ‘damsel in distress’, and more of a ‘Kill Bill‘ type of female lead.

This is all important to note because, according to a study,

In Week 3, we watched a screening of Cake, a Pakistani movie that explores the dynamic between family members brought together to care for their dying parents.

One of the first things I noticed in Cake was that it sought to invert traditional gender roles.

Pakistan, much like its mortal enemy neighbour India, has a very strong traditionalist presence – to many people, the rules are the rules because the rules have always been the rules. This manifests in many different ways in a family, but the primary one is the preservation of traditional gender roles, in which men go to work and are the breadwinners, whilst the women cook and clean.

But Cake goes out of its way to flip these notions on their head. There are several moments throughout the film that show this, like the aforementioned scene in which a woman changes a car tire…

In Week 4, we watched and live-tweeted multiple screenings (totalling 4 episodes) of Hi Score Girl, an anime that explores the lives of multiple schoolkids in Japan during the height of the arcade game craze of the 80’s and 90’s.