Gerakbudaya Bookshop - Penang

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

This is the kind of book that people who look at British colonial rule in Penang (and elsewhere) through rosy-tinted spectacles – through the lazy tropes of 'heritage' – really ought to read. David Veevers's The Great Defiance (Ebury Press) is a tour de force. He turns the standard account of how the British Empire 'made the world' on its head; as the sub-title proclaims, the is the history of 'how the world took on the British Empire'. In fact, far from being the tale of a single nation imposing its will upon the world, the British Empire found itself reshaped by the tenacious resistance of the powerful Indigenous and non-European people it encountered. From ill-advised ventures in Ireland to the failure to curtail North African Corsair states all the way to the collapse of commercial operations in East Asia, British attempts to create an imperial enterprise often ended in embarrassment and even disaster. Veevers looks beyond the myths of triumph and into the realities of British misadventures in the early days of empire, meeting the extraordinary people across the world who were the real forces to be reckoned with. From the emperors who determined the expansion of the English East India Company, to the West African kings who resisted English entreaties and set the terms of the lucrative slave trade, to the paramount chiefs in America who fought to expunge European forces from their homelands, The Great Defiance retells the story of early empire from the perspective of the Indigenous and non-European people who held the fate of the British in their hands.

You can order the book online here:
https://gerakbudayapenang.com/product/new/the-great-defiance-how-the-world-took-on-the-british-empire/

KAKI KINO | BURNING DAYS
TUESDAY and WEDNESDAY at 6.00pm | THURSDAY at 6.30pm

We continue our SEARCHING AND FINDING season with an excellent film from the Turkish director, Emin Alper: BURNING DAYS. Emre, a young and dedicated prosecutor, is newly appointed to a small town hit by a water crisis and political scandals. After an initial welcome, he experiences an increasing number of tense interactions and is reluctantly dragged into local politics. When Emre forms a bond with the owner of the local newspaper pressure escalates under heated rumours.

★★★★★
‘Burning Days benefits from Alper’s sparse, boiled-dry screenplay and from DP Christos Karamanis’s casually devastating widescreen photography.’ — Jessica Kiang, Variety

Hikayat
226 Lebuh Pantai
George Town
10300 Penang

T: 04 261 9001 (Hikayat)
04 261 8001 (Gerakbudaya Bookshop @ Hikayat)
E: [email protected]

Burning Days (2022) | Trailer | Emin Alper Emre, a young and dedicated prosecutor, is newly appointed to a small town hit by a water crisis and political scandals. After an initial welcome, he experie...

JAMES SCOTT (1936–2024)

It’s very saddening to learn of the death of James Scott three days ago. He had been in hospice care and anticipating death, surrounded by his loved ones. He decided to pull the plug on himself rather than go through any interventions.

Jim was, of course, one of the great radical scholars of Southeast Asia and of further afield, a non-conformist thinker and an engaged activist, with a progressive anarchist world view. This showed up consistently in the many books he wrote, including: The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia; Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance; Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts; Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed; The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia; Two Cheers for Anarchism; Decoding Subaltern Politics; and Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Of course, the fieldwork for Weapons of the Weak was conducted over two years in Kedah in the late 1970s, and in quite novel ways Jim analysed the ideological struggle in the village and the practice of resistance itself consisting of: foot-dragging, dissimulation, desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance and sabotage acts.

Despite his long-term ill-health, Jim was invariably responsive and enthusiastic in all his dealings with those who sought his advice. My last correspondence with him was a couple of years ago when he immediately agreed to write a piece for a book I am putting together on the life and work of Wan Zawawi Ibrahim, who was a close friend of Jim’s.

Jim also demonstrated great fortitude in the face of calamity. Here’s a recent anecdote. In December 2018, he endured a huge loss when his barn, which was his study, on his New Haven farm burned to the ground. Vanished with the barn were almost all of his 5,000 academic books, his papers and notes, 500 bales of hay, and a computer. He wrote to a mutual friend, the Burmese poet Ko Ko Thett: ‘I have been trying to regain my footing and to figure what’s missing. So, what had been normal academic activities have become far more tortuous and slow. Thank goodness I am a stoic. I have invented a stoic adage for myself that might have been (but wasn’t) invented by Marcus Aurelius: “Whatever you build and write will be destroyed, by flood, by fire, by time, by enemies, by well-intentioned friends. So, ...relax, build and write”.’

[Some of this is from an obituary piece by Ko Ko Thett which he kindly shared]

EXHIBITION AND ARTIST’S TALK | KOMEIL ZARIN | NOT HERE | SATURDAY 27 JULY 2024, 7.00pm

We hope this finds you well. We are delighted to invite you to our new exhibition of paintings – Not Here by Komeil Zarin. Here are the details for your diary.

Opening and Artist’s Talk: Saturday 27 July 2024, 7.00pm

Your chance to see the paintings and meet the artist. Komeil will be in conversation with Gareth and Nicky Almasy on the journey and process of making the images.

Free admission
Refreshments will be served

The exhibition will then run until Sunday 1 September 2024

Venue: Hikayat, 226 Lebuh Pantai, 10300 George Town, Penang

➽ The exhibition

Radical instability is the steady thrum of so much contemporary experience. The world turns and turns in its own massive and self-generated abjection. ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’, as Yeats once wrote. The refugee and the exile stand as a reproach to the multiple failures of a hollowed-out humanity.

Exile signifies not just the consequence of political banishment and economic desperation. It also refers to the violence of displacement, of dislocation and of the subsequent diaspora of people’s values, norms and cultural identity. Neither in nor out. Betwixt and between. Yet, at the same time, of course, actually bearing the name of a previous identification. And now? Existing in a carefully defined nowhere place within the boundaries of some other nation or state, so clearly also undeniably present, so clearly made invisible.

Komeil Zarin is one of millions of Iranians who search for a home in another place. Among those millions, many have been bearers of culture – novelists and poets, filmmakers and actors, painters and photographers, musicians and dancers – carrying memories of trauma, narratives of flight and the need to make a new home. It’s a constant narrative with a long history. The great Ḥāfeẓ, the memoriser, wrote this couplet seven hundred years ago:

ما بدین در نه پی حشمت و جاه آمده‌ایم از بد حادثه اینجا به پناه آمده‌ایم

We have not come at this door for pomp and position
Because of misfortune, we have sought refuge here

The lines are timeless and emotional; they resonate with both calamity and hope. Where, then, is the ‘here’ of an artist like Komeil whose life has been so scarred by rupture? His paintings necessarily generate an idea of home that is never complete. Because the home recalled is not the home that was, and because the present home is deeply compromised by the unsettling of time and space. It is the reason Komeil says, ‘I think I have always been looking for refuge. Art has given me that. It has always shown me the way to escape from the world.’

He creates a visual world instead, one that asserts its own sense of his personal unsettled state of being. The three monochrome paintings – Man Crossing the Border, A Cloud and Origin of the World – explore the possibilities a minimalist form of lyrical abstraction, paring down objects and figures into distinct areas and planes, capturing a liminal space, a pause. The imagery is taken from the real world and altered in conceptual ways to express moments of transformation.

The portraits bring back a vivid, expressionist palette. Each is an arresting representation of the inner character of the subject. The brushstrokes are disruptive, and there is a fierceness to the paint itself as it is pulled, scraped and incised, seeking something below the surface. Are these ‘wounded faces’ whose eyes are unseeing? While Louise is a person known to Komeil, Head of a Women and Portrait of a Poet are almost archetypes, blind seers who can see more than we can.

And then the masterwork that is the self-portrait I, Komeil, monumental in conception and realisation. Painted on a tropical beach under a searing sun, and yet once again the palette is subdued, the black figure of the artist silhouetted against an indeterminate background. But the body is blemished. The surface of the canvas has been scratched so that the white of the canvas is revealed. The black colour of the figure – the hands, the torso, the face – has been marked, injured, while the legs are erased. The intention is not to reveal or disclose, but to shroud the artist, the unsettled who has never regained a home except in his art.

Komeil says, ‘When I paint an object, I like to deconstruct it – destroy it! To the point where it can no longer be recognisable by an unclean eye. I say, let there be a flame in place of that tree, in place of that cloud, in place of the faces that I should paint.’ His own self-portrait exists in a near-void, alone save for his thoughts and his imaginings, perhaps believing that another world is possible and if we remain quiet for long enough we can hear her arriving.

Komeil remarks, ‘It has been lonely here.’ He lives his life through art in perpetual motion, always between before, now and then. ‘If I wish to paint a tree these days I should close the curtains and shut the door. Lest an uninvited visitor should knock on the door. “I’m not home! Not yet! I’m only on my way there!”, I say. The unwanted visitor turns into a tree.’

These are radical approaches to painting, constantly thwarting the representation of the figure or object as a fixed, self-contained whole. Instead the work embraces vulnerable, fragmented forms – a radical instability for our times. In that way, Komeil finds a different kind of refuge here, only one not of this world.

➽ Komeil Zarin

I must be about three years old when I first discover a paintbrush. Its wooden handle looks like a long finger. Its bristles like dad’s stubble. Dad paints.

I draw. Obsessively. With my finger on the sky when there’s no paper and pen. I take the sky with me everywhere I go. And I find the starry night sky fascinating. When I am seven, I am good at drawing. Uncles show me off to their guests. They enjoy watching me draw and seeing the guests impressed. Everyone is amazed. I do not think what I can do is very significant. I wish to be a prophet one day instead and perform signs. I wish to be able to change a rose, for instance, into something else.

When I am seventeen I begin experiencing repetitive nightmares. I am on the run. From those who want to stab me with knives. Shoot me with guns. I run for my life. These dreams are to last for twenty years. Breathless.

I was born in Iran. In 1983. My dad was a painter. I later learned that he was also a musician. But he had to stop playing music. He had to erase his past and live in disguise. A cultural revolution had taken place just before I was born, and music had been banned. I fall in love with the music that leaks from the TV dramas. I fall in love with soundtracks. I often talk with my dad. He is my best company. With him, above all, I feel safe.

When I am twenty-eight dad takes me to the airport. This is my only chance to leave. He is anxious. I must not miss this flight. An hour later I am seated in the plane. I tell myself, if I am forced to return here I will make sure I am dead.

Today I am forty-one. I draw. I paint. I thanked my dad on the phone sometime before he died. I thanked him for painting. He said, ‘It was you. You wouldn’t let me paint unless I prepared a small canvas for you too’.

I have been here for thirteen years. I have made friends – where even death cannot part us. And I don’t want to ever go back. And I don’t want to ever go anywhere. Yet when I am forty-one everything I’ve got is packed inside an invisible suitcase. I wish I could just stay. These are tired times. And everybody’s got to have a home. I hear them say, ‘Not here’

Paintings will be on sale.

Hikayat
226 Lebuh Pantai
George Town
10300 Penang

T: 04 261 9001 (Hikayat)
04 261 8001 (Gerakbudaya Bookshop @ Hikayat)
E: [email protected]

GUO GUANG OPERA COMPANY | NEW PERFORMANCE DATE | FRIDAY at 8.30pm

We are helping our friends at 國光劇團 GuoGuang Opera Company to publicise a new date for their performance.

▍Urgent Notification ‼️

GuoGuang Opera Company’s performance at George Town Festival on Saturday 20 July at 2.30pm has been rescheduled to Friday night at 8.30pm. Ticket holders of Saturday’s show can come to Friday’s instead or get a replacement for Sunday’s performance (please look for notification from CloudJoi). A physical box office will be set up outside the theatre before the show tomorrow to take walk-ins as well.

We apologise for any inconveniences this may have caused. Though we didn’t see this coming at all, we are determined to bring to the stage a great show under whatever circumstances. Please come support GuoGuang on Friday night if you can!

Thank you.

Taiwan in Malaysia 駐馬來西亞台北經濟文化辦事處

CANCELLATION

It is with regret that we have to cancel the talk and demonstration – A New Aesthetic Approach to Jingju—Exploring Female Consciousness with 國光劇團 GuoGuang Opera Company – that was due to take place at Hikayat on Friday evening.

KAKI KINO | PERFECT DAYS
TUESDAY and WEDNESDAY at 6.00pm | THURSDAY at 6.30pm

This week's offering in our SEARCHING AND FINDING season is a treat: Wim Wenders's PERFECT DAYS, starring the incomparable Kōji Yakusho, who won the Best Actor Award at Cannes for this superb performance. Hirayama is content with his simple life cleaning toilets in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books and taking photos of trees. Unexpected encounters reveal more of his story in a deeply moving and poetic reflection on finding beauty in the world around us.

Hikayat
226 Lebuh Pantai
George Town
10300 Penang

T: 04 261 9001 (Hikayat)
04 261 8001 (Gerakbudaya Bookshop @ Hikayat)
E: [email protected]

PERFECT DAYS - Official Trailer Hirayama is content with his simple life cleaning toilets in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking...

YIELDING THE PAST

This new book is a superb study of one of Southeast Asia's most important historial sites. Andrew Hardy and Nguyễn Tiến Đông's Discovering Vietnam’s Ancient Capital: The Archaeology and History of the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long–Hanoi (NUS Press) is a captivating account of both the history of Thăng Long, located in the heart of Hanoi, and of the exemplary rescue excavation. Archaeologists unearthed thirteen centuries of vestiges of Thăng Long, yielding a richer record than anyone had dared to hope for. Construction plans were shelved, excavations widened, and at the city's millennial celebrations in 2010, UNESCO announced its inscription of the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long on its World Heritage List. This archaeological discovery has two histories. The first, told here by the archaeologists involved, is the story of the dig, as their trowels brought to light the bricks, tiles, pillars, sculptures and ceramics of countless ancient temples and palaces. The second is the history of the citadel itself, in its early years as an outpost of the Chinese Empire, in its heyday as the Forbidden City of Vietnam’s emperors, and in its downgrading and eventual destruction at the hands of the Nguyen dynasty and French colonial rulers. The book presents a historical narrative of the continuous development of a regional political centre on this site. Bringing together history, archaeology and a fascinating interplay of influences from China and Southeast Asia, this is also the story of an Asian capital city coming to understand its history, and deciding how to preserve its archaeological remains.

You can order the book online here: https://gerakbudayapenang.com/product/new/discovering-vietnams-ancient-capital-the-archaeology-and-history-of-the-imperial-citadel-of-thang-long-hanoi/

A CROSSROADS OF CONNECTIONS

Eric C. Thompson has written a splendid new longue durée history of Southeast Asia . The oldest figurative cave paintings in the world are found on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Hand stencils and animals painted some 45,000 years ago attest to a long history of human creativity. The Story of Southeast Asia (NUS Press) tells how the peoples of the region have crafted their diverse societies and cultures over thousands of years. Southeast Asia has been a remarkable crossroads of global connections for millennia. Whereas other regions have been defined by centralising forces, Southeast Asia’s story is one of complex networks of trade, ideas, and social relationships. Southeast Asians have created, localised and remade their own cultural values by drawing on influences from around the world.

Marshalling the latest literature from anthropology, archaeology, history and other disciplines, Eric C. Thompson highlights broad themes that cut across history: including the making—and evasion—of states, adoption of diverse religious practices, tolerance and flexibility regarding gender, processes of forging modern identities, struggles over sovereignty, and the making of modern nations in a postcolonial world. This readable, single-volume history reckons with the narrative pull of familiar colonial and national perspectives, but maintains a regional and deep-historical focus. It will be a stimulating read for scholars as well as students and newcomers to Southeast Asian history.

Essential reading.

KAKI KINO | MONSTER
TUESDAY and WEDNESDAY at 6.00pm | THURSDAY at 6.30pm

We continue our 'Searching and Finding' season with a wonderful new film from the Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda; MONSTER. When her young son Minato starts to behave strangely, his mother feels that there is something wrong. Discovering that a teacher is responsible, she storms into the school demanding to know what’s going on. But as the story unfolds through the eyes of the mother, teacher and child, the truth gradually emerges.

★★★★★
‘Lovingly detailed and accented by an aching score from Ryuichi Sakamoto … Monster is one of the finest films of the year, and its structure – like its circle of characters – carries secrets that can only be unraveled through patience and empathy.’ — Natalia Winkelman, New York Times

Hikayat
226 Lebuh Pantai
George Town
10300 Penang

T: 04 261 9001 (Hikayat)
04 261 8001 (Gerakbudaya Bookshop @ Hikayat)
E: [email protected]

MONSTER Official Trailer | Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda | Now Available On Digital MONSTER, Directed by KORE-EDA Hirokazu |Watch on Digital: https://wellgousa.com/films/monster |Synopsis:After a mother (Ando Sakura) discovers that a teacher...

BOOK YOUR PLACE NOW!

We have limited places — so reserving a seat is essential. Don't just click 'Going' on Facebook and show up. Contact us:

➽ Email: [email protected]
➽ Phone: 04 226 9001

TALKS@HIKAYAT
A New Aesthetic Approach to Jingju—Exploring Female Consciousness
國光新美學 京劇未來式—女性意識的探索
with Chang Yu-hua 張育華 and Ling Chia-lin 凌嘉臨

國光劇團 GuoGuang Opera Company

➽ FRIDAY 19 JULY 2024, 7.30pm
We are delighted to be hosting a very special event as part of the George Town Festival. Join Chang Yu-hua and Ling Chia-lin of the world-renowned GuoGuang Opera Company from Taiwan as they talk about new approaches to jingju, one of the greatest forms of Chinese theatre. Here are the details for your diary.

➽ Taiwan’s world-renowned GuoGuang Opera Company is set to take the stage at on the opening weekend (20–21 July) of the George Town Festival 2024, performing excerpts of two jingju classics — Avenging Zidu and Zhuangzi Tests His Wife.
Before the performances, GuoGuang’s CEO Cha Yu-hua will share the company’s journey of revitalising the age-old art form of jingju and how it adheres to traditional conventions while staying relevant and fresh in modern times.

In addition, GuoGuang’s huadan 花旦 (lively, vivacious young female role) Ling Chia-lin, who will play the leading role in Zhuangzi Tests His Wife, will share her views on what it takes to become a jingju performer and demonstrate a special footwork wearing qiao 蹻 – a stilted footwear imitating the bound feet of women. This technique is admired by theatrical aficionados in a manner similar to Western audiences’ appreciation of the artistry of a ballerina.

➽ The talk will be in Mandarin with English translation
中文演講，搭配英文傳譯

➽ Free admission | Registration required
活動免費，但須事先報名

Hikayat
226 Lebuh Pantai
George Town
10300 Penang
T: 04 261 9001 (Hikayat)
E: [email protected]

➽ Supported by: Ministry of Culture, Taiwan | Taiwan in Malaysia 駐馬來西亞台北經濟文化辦事處

KAKI KINO | FALLEN LEAVES
TUESDAY and WEDNESDAY at 6.00pm | THURSDAY at 6.30pm

We start a new mini-season this week: SEARCHING AND FINDING. And we're happy to kick off with Fallen Leaves from the Finnish master of deadpan humour, Aki Kaurismäki, one of his beguiling comedies. In modern-day Helsinki, two lonely souls in search of their first love meet by chance in a local karaoke bar. However, the pair’s path to happiness is beset by numerous obstacles – from lost phone numbers to mistaken addresses, alcoholism, and a charming stray dog.

★★★★★
‘Fallen Leaves is consistently funny, but its laughs arrive without fanfare. They slide in calmly, at times obliquely in eccentric details, offbeat juxtapositions, taciturn exchanges, long pauses and amiably barbed insults.’ — Manohla Dargis, New York Times

Hikayat
226 Lebuh Pantai
George Town
10300 Penang

T: 04 261 9001 (Hikayat)
04 261 8001 (Gerakbudaya Bookshop @ Hikayat)
E: [email protected]

FALLEN LEAVES | Official Trailer | Now Streaming FALLEN LEAVES. Master director Aki Kaurismäki returns with this celebrated love story. In theaters and streaming now in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Turkey, ...

SYED HUSIN ALI (1936–2024)

It is was an enormous sense of loss that we mark the death of our friend and comrade, Syed Husin Ali, after being admitted to hospital just two days ago. He was a profound scholar and thinker, an activist with iron in his soul and, at the same time, the epitome of kindness and grace in his personal dealings. His books – notably The Malays: Their Problems and Future; Poverty and Landlessness in Kelantan; A People’s History of Malaysia; and Ethnic Relations in Malaysia: Harmony and Conflict – are exemplars of engaged scholarship. With their deep understanding of history and social relations, they offer a compelling critique of postcolonial Malaysia and offer much-needed alternative narratives, very much in the spirit of Perlembagaan Rakyat, or People’s Constitution, that radical and progressive imagining of what Malaya might have become. Syed Husin also wrote powerfully about his six years of detention without trial, his expulsion from Universiti Malaya and his later attempts to harness the reformasi moment to radicalise Malaysian politics, with an undimmed vision of a society shaped by justice, truth and the welfare of all people.

Rest in Power.

TALKS@HIKAYAT
A New Aesthetic Approach to Jingju—Exploring Female Consciousness
with Chang Yu-hua and Ling Chia-lin

➽ FRIDAY 19 JULY 2024, 7.30pm

We are delighted to be hosting a very special event as part of the George Town Festival. Join Chang Yu-hua and Ling Chia-lin of the world-renowned GuoGuang Opera Company from Taiwan as they talk about new approaches to jingju, one of the greatest forms of Chinese theatre. Here are the details for your diary.

➽ TALK AND DEMONSTRATION
A New Aesthetic Approach to Jingju—Exploring Female Consciousness
國光新美學 京劇未來式—女性意識的探索

Chang Yu-hua 張育華
CEO 團長

Ling Chia-lin 凌嘉臨
Performer 演員

國光劇團 GuoGuang Opera Company

Friday 19 July 2024
7.30–9.00pm

➽ Taiwan’s world-renowned GuoGuang Opera Company is set to take the stage at on the opening weekend (20–21 July) of the George Town Festival 2024, performing excerpts of two jingju classics — Avenging Zidu and Zhuangzi Tests His Wife.

Before the performances, GuoGuang’s CEO Cha Yu-hua will share the company’s journey of revitalising the age-old art form of jingju and how it adheres to traditional conventions while staying relevant and fresh in modern times.

In addition, GuoGuang’s huadan 花旦 (lively, vivacious young female role) Ling Chia-lin, who will play the leading role in Zhuangzi Tests His Wife, will share her views on what it takes to become a jingju performer and demonstrate a special footwork wearing qiao 蹻 – a stilted footwear imitating the bound feet of women. This technique is admired by theatrical aficionados in a manner similar to Western audiences’ appreciation of the artistry of a ballerina.

➽ The talk will be in Mandarin with English translation
中文演講，搭配英文傳譯

➽ Free admission | Registration required
活動免費，但須事先報名

Hikayat
226 Lebuh Pantai
George Town
10300 Penang

T: 04 261 9001 (Hikayat)
E: [email protected]

➽ Supported by: Ministry of Culture, Taiwan | Taiwan in Malaysia 駐馬來西亞台北經濟文化辦事處

KAKI KINO | SEARCHING AND FINDING | JULY 2024

You are warmly invited to Kaki Kino’s mini-season for July, which runs under the theme Searching and Finding. This month brings five award-winning and brilliant films dealing with different kinds of quest, including the latest offerings from some of contemporary cinema’s greatest directors.

Fallen Leaves from the Finnish master of deadpan humour, Aki Kaurismäki, is one of his beguiling comedies – a sweet-natured odd-couple romance that fills you with a feelgood glow and laughs in the face of current politics. The great Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with his latest, Monster, which challenges us with intricacy and complexity in this family drama about bullying, homophobia, family dysfunction, uncritical respect for flawed authority, and social media rumour-mongering – all working together to create a monster of wrongness. Wim Wenders’s new film, Perfect Days, makes a strong case for simple living with this achingly lovely tale starring Kōji Yakusho as a Tokyo public toilet cleaner who finds quiet joy in the world around him. Emin Alper’s Turkish story, Burning Days, is a sweltering, stylish small-town allegory for corruption in strongman societies – it’s a smart, superbly crafted thriller, in which the morality is blurry with heat haze, but the real lines that divide society are starkly defined. We round off with the latest masterpiece from Alice Rohrwacher, La Chimera, a captivating story that follows a lovelorn Englishman plundering Italy’s historical artefacts with a bizarre gang. It’s a film bustling and teeming with life, with characters fighting, singing, thieving and breaking the fourth wall to address us directly.

The screenings on Tuesday and Wednesday are at 6.00pm, while the Thursday screenings take place at 6.30pm.

Here are the details for your diary.

➭ Tuesday 2 July 2024 | 6.00pm
➭ Wednesday 3 July 2024 | 6.00pm
➭ Thursday 4 July 2024 | 6.30pm

Fallen Leaves
Dir. Aki Kaurismäki | Finland | 2023 | 81 mins
with English sub-titles
starring Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen

In modern-day Helsinki, two lonely souls in search of their first love meet by chance in a local karaoke bar. However, the pair’s path to happiness is beset by numerous obstacles – from lost phone numbers to mistaken addresses, alcoholism, and a charming stray dog.

Winner, Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival
Winner, Best Director, Chicago International Film Festival

★★★★★
‘The key to this movie’s winning emotional delicacy is its formal sturdiness. Every shot has a specific job to do and does it well. The performances are measured and restrained.’ — Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert

★★★★★
‘Fallen Leaves is consistently funny, but its laughs arrive without fanfare. They slide in calmly, at times obliquely in eccentric details, offbeat juxtapositions, taciturn exchanges, long pauses and amiably barbed insults.’ — Manohla Dargis, New York Times

➭ Tuesday 9 July 2024 | 6.00pm
➭ Wednesday 10 July 2024 | 6.00pm
➭ Thursday 11 July 2024 | 6.30pm

Monster
Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda | Japan | 2023 | 125 mins
with English sub-titles
starring Sakura Andō, Eita Nagayama, Sōya Kurokawa

When her young son Minato starts to behave strangely, his mother feels that there is something wrong. Discovering that a teacher is responsible, she storms into the school demanding to know what’s going on. But as the story unfolds through the eyes of the mother, teacher and child, the truth gradually emerges.

Winner, Best Film, Stockholm Film Festival
Winner, Best Director, Asian Film Awards

★★★★★
‘Lovingly detailed and accented by an aching score from Ryuichi Sakamoto … Monster is one of the finest films of the year, and its structure – like its circle of characters – carries secrets that can only be unraveled through patience and empathy.’ — Natalia Winkelman, New York Times

★★★★★
‘The performances from Sakura Ando, Eita Nagayami and the boys have a calm frankness and integrity … this is a film created with a great moral intelligence and humanity.’ — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

➭ Tuesday 16 July 2024 | 6.00pm
➭ Wednesday 17 July 2024 | 6.00pm
➭ Thursday 18 July 2024 | 6.30pm

Perfect Days
Dir. Wim Wenders | Japan, Germany | 2023 | 124 mins
with English sub-titles
starring Kōji Yakusho, Tokio Emoto, Arisa Nakano

Hirayama is content with his simple life cleaning toilets in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books and taking photos of trees. Unexpected encounters reveal more of his story in a deeply moving and poetic reflection on finding beauty in the world around us.

Winner, Best Actor, Cannes Film Festival
Winner, Best Director, Awards of the Japanese Academy

★★★★★
‘This film beams and buzzes inside its closed loop with the hard-won wisdom of acceptance. And it does so while staying in awe of what can never be understood, only appreciated – and if we’re lucky, enjoyed.’ — Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

★★★★★
‘The director has crafted a film of deceptive simplicity, observing the tiny details of a routine existence with such clarity, soulfulness and empathy that they build a cumulative emotional power almost without you noticing.’ — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

➭ Tuesday 23 July 2024 | 6.00pm
➭ Wednesday 24 July 2024 | 6.00pm
➭ Thursday 25 July 2024 | 6.30pm

Burning Days
Dir. Emin Alper | Turkey | 2022 | 113 mins
with English sub-titles
starring Selahattin Paşalı, Ekin Koç

Emre, a young and dedicated prosecutor, is newly appointed to a small town hit by a water crisis and political scandals. After an initial welcome, he experiences an increasing number of tense interactions and is reluctantly dragged into local politics. When Emre forms a bond with the owner of the local newspaper pressure escalates under heated rumours.

Winner, Editor, European Film Awards
Winner, Best Film, Ankara International Film Festival

★★★★★
‘A film that works at once as a highly-charged suspenser, a savvy piece of tightly-enclosed world-building and a sharp critique of machismo, populism and their very tangible dangers.’ — Jonathan Romney, Screen International

★★★★★
‘Burning Days benefits from Alper’s sparse, boiled-dry screenplay and from DP Christos Karamanis’s casually devastating widescreen photography.’ — Jessica Kiang, Variety

➭ Tuesday 30 July 2024 | 6.00pm
➭ Wednesday 31 July 2024 | 6.00pm
➭ Thursday 1 August 2024 | 6.30pm

La Chimera
Dir. Alice Rohrwacher | Italy | 2023 | 133 mins
with English sub-titles
starring Josh O’Connor, Carol Duarte, Vincenzo Nemolato

Everyone has their own Chimera, something they try to achieve but never manage to find. For the band of tombaroli, thieves of ancient grave goods and archaeological wonders, the Chimera means redemption from work and the dream of easy wealth. For Arthur, the Chimera looks like the woman he lost, Beniamina. To find her, Arthur challenges the invisible, searches everywhere, goes inside the earth – in search of the door to the afterlife of which myths speak. In an adventurous journey between the living and the dead, between forests and cities, between celebrations and solitudes, the intertwined destinies of these characters unfold, all in search of the Chimera.

Winner, Best Film, Valladolid International Film Festival
Winner, Best Cinematography, Chicago International Film Festival

★★★★★
‘La Chimera is a film that utterly occupies its own fictional space; it expresses its eccentric romance in its own fluent movie dialect. I was utterly captivated by this sad, lovelorn adventure.’ — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

★★★★★
‘At the heart of La Chimera is the question of how we bear the weight of the past while living in the present, and the answer that Rohrwacher settles on strikes me as both sensible and hopeful: we must, to the best that we can, eradicate any meaningful difference between the two.’ — Justin Chang, The New Yorker

Screenings and refreshments | RM15
Advanced booking is essential

Hikayat
226 Lebuh Pantai
George Town
10300 Penang

T: 04 261 9001 (Hikayat)
04 261 8001 (Gerakbudaya Bookshop @ Hikayat)
E: [email protected]