Heat, with legions of fans clutching bags toting pickets bearing their favorite member's face, comparing merchandise hauls like the spoils of war. Heat, under the blazing equatorial sun. And heat, on stage, when the nine active members of the 13-person group emerged to thunderous cheers.
A sprawling tale of two Singapores, the short documentary Sandcastles draws connections between Singapore, Michigan - a 19th-century ghost town swallowed by sand following widespread deforestation - and the island country of Singapore, where rapid development and land reclamation has, for decades, been enabled by the importation of sand. More poetic exploration than call to action, the work surveys waterways, cycles of development and the transient nature of sand - deceptively sturdy over short timescales but, over decades, quite volatile.