The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

This APT7 film program uses the motif of ‘change’ to explore 20 years of filmmaking throughout the region, reaching from the Middle East across Asia to Australia and the Pacific. Works featured consider social, political and aesthetic transformations broadly, as well as specifically in moving-image culture. While the selection profiles a wide range of video and filmmaking practices, genres and makers, the program particularly highlights a contemplative mode of storytelling that sets individual experience within the context of broader social change. In particular, children and young adults are shown as a locus for change in cinematic narrative experience. Other subjects explored in the program include political and social upheaval, urban transformations and the transitions between rural and city life, labour, industry and the environment; shifting borders and the movements of people; and the intersection of faith, religion and conflict. The program acknowledges that the nature and characteristics of filmmaking have changed during the last decade, galvanised by the rise in independent film and video using digital technologies, the democratisation of media through accessibility and portability, as well as artists and filmmakers working experimentally across art and cinema contexts. The intertwining of documentary and narrative elements is also a re-occurring strategy throughout films in the program, highlighting the creation of new cinematic forms that exceed the traditional categories of documentary and fiction. José Da Silva CHANGE Paths Through 20 Years of Film IVAN SEN Australia b.1972 Production still from Toomelah 2011 HD video transferred to 35mm, colour, Dolby Digital, 106 minutes, Australia, English / Image courtesy: Visit Films, Bunya Productions PREVIOUS PAGES ZHANG XIAOTAO China b.1970 Production still from Sakya 2010–11 Digital video, 3D animation and live action, colour, stereo, 15:06 minutes, China / Image courtesy: The artist 280