HE'S the director who gives Chinese film watchdogs nightmares with his realistically edgy and gritty movies but mainland auteur Lou Ye doesn't fancy being called controversial. "I don't like being labelled; for me, filmmaking is not a tool to achieve anything, I make films only because I love it," states the 49-year-old who spearheaded the indie wave of Chinese directors during the 1990s.

Many of his early works remain banned in his homeland till this day. One of them - his breakthrough sophomore effort, Suzhou River (2000) - will be revisited next week as part of the seventh edition of the annual Perspectives Film Festival.

Organised by students of Nanyang Technological University, this year's theme is displacement; with all seven films in the line-up featuring characters who find themselves marginalised from mainstream society.