GUNKWORLD (2020)
Director: Mark Chee
Runtime: 8 min
Country: Singapore
Language: English, Japanese
Rating: NC16 (Coarse Language)
Awards
BEST DIRECTOR
BEST HORROR SHORT
Genre Celebration Festival (Tokyo), 2020
Synopsis
Gunkman, Sallysweets and Roboji are a gang of alien-monster students who terrorise their class with horrifying antics. As Gunkman’s mind-controlling powers escalate beyond the confines of the classroom, no one in the world is safe! A ghastly creation of illustrator and filmmaker Mark Chee, GUNKWORLD contains uncanny resemblances to Battle Royale’s themes of power, brutality and mass fatality.
Battle Royale (2000) (Theatrical Cut)
4K RESTORATION
Original title: バトル・ロワイアル / Batoru Rowaiaru
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Runtime: 114 min
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Rating: R21 (Strong Violence)
Awards
BEST FILM
BEST NEW ACTOR
Blue Ribbon Awards 2001
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Yokohama Film Festival 2002
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN FILM EDITING, POPULARITY AWARD, AND NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR
Japanese Academy Awards 2001
AUDIENCE AWARD FOR THE BEST FEATURE FILM
San Sebastián Horror & Fantasy Film Festival 2001
Synopsis
As the students of Third Year Class-B Shiroiwa Junior High School prepare for a field trip, little do they know that they would end up on a remote island where—decreed by law—they must savagely fight to the death. With the decline of the Japanese economy in the 90s, unemployment and juvenile crime were rampant. Outraged, the parliament deemed the film harmful to the young, and slapped it with an R15 rating. Unsurprisingly the controversy fueled public interest, making it among the highest-grossing films that year.
Tapping on his own traumas as a teenager during World War II, director Fukasaku related to the experiences of Japanese millennial teens of the time, who were set adrift by their elders amidst a sea of mounting social instabilities—the heightened anxieties of both generations transmuted into a fable of violence and destruction.
Coming of Rage: Asian Youth & Politics on Screen runs from 2 – 25 June 2023. See the full programme here.
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