“Medium Rare”, “God or Dog” and the makings of a Singaporean monster
By Alfonse Chiu (1,700 words, 7-minute read) Content warning: References to violent or disturbing behaviour In late January 1981, the body of a young girl was discovered in a brown PVC bag about a metre high by a young…
“A Land Imagined” and The Ghosts We Forget
By Alfonse Chiu (1200 words, six-minute read) The three definitions of the word “ghost” from the Oxford dictionary are as follows: the first, “an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living”;…
Sandi Tan’s “Shirkers”: Moving Backwards in Order to Move Forwards
By Ke Weiliang (1180 words, six-minute read) NB: It is important to differentiate between the two versions of Shirkers that were filmed. In this article, Shirkers refers to the 2018 documentary film that I am reviewing, whereas Shirkers 1.0 refers to…
“One Two Jaga”: The New Bravery of Malaysian Cinema
By Daniyal Kadir (1330 words, five-minute read) Click here to read this article in Malay. Klik di sini untuk baca rencana ini dalam Bahasa Melayu. It is rare to see social or political criticism delivered boldly and directly in Malaysian films. Even critical commentary, cloaked…
“One Two Jaga”: Keberanian Baharu Sinema Malaysia
Oleh Daniyal Kadir (1260 patah kata, 5-miinit bacaan) Penyampaian kritikan sosial atau politik dalam filem-filem Malaysia jarang berlaku melalui suasana yang berani dan mendatangkan ghairah. Malah mengkritik melalui karya secara berdepan seperti sukar untuk dilakukan. Terdapat banyak hal yang menyumbang…
Three Short Films about Women at SeaShorts 2018, George Town
By Alfonse Chiu (1216 words, five-minute read) The SeaShorts Film Festival ran for its second edition as the official pre-festival to the annual George Town Festival from 1st to 5th August in a radical geographical shift away from the Kuala…
Ai Weiwei’s “Human Flow” drips through Singapore’s impermeable borders
By Tan Jing Ling (1010 words, six-minute read) There is a sublime beauty to Human Flow in how it depicts space, freedom and movement. But it is a beauty that I cannot bear to swallow. For a country whose borders have…
The Pontianak Talks Back: Two Women Discuss Monstrous Femininity in Their Art
This article is republished from the Singapore International Film Festival editorial. It is part of New Waves 2018, an annual series of screenings and dialogues with regional filmmakers. For this third edition of the New Waves series, SGIFF invites participants…
Sentiments of Space: Reading Between the Frames of Don Aravind
This article is republished from the Singapore International Film Festival editorial. It is part of New Waves 2018, an annual series of screenings and dialogues with regional filmmakers. For this third edition of the New Waves series, SGIFF invites participants…
Mayfly Docus: “Die Tomorrow” and “14 Apples” at SIFA’s “Singular Screens”
By Dan Koh (1,715 words, 15-minute read) At this year’s Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA), the two films from Southeast Asia are documentaries, or hybrid-documentaries—just like last year’s three, curiously. Despite the glaring gaps that remain in the funding,…
In the Mood of Brian Gothong Tan: Lost Cinema at Institute of Contemporary Arts (via Invisible Flâneuse)
The woman in the cheongsam and upswept hairdo walks into the audience’s line of sight from behind a pillar, carrying a tiffin carrier. She poses, every gesture and expression countenanced to project drama and artifice, and many of her poses are…
“Cinta Tuah Jebat”: Love on the Rocks
By Corrie Tan (1228 words, 10-minute read) A man is rising from the water. The sea is birthing him: his closely-cropped hair, his bare chest and shoulders, his damp sarong clinging to his thighs. On land, another man with a…
“Shuttle Life 《分贝人生》”: Grief and Powerlessness in Modern Malaysia
By Sherlyn Goh Xue Ting (1100 words, 8-minute read) Bold and unrelenting, Shuttle Life 《分贝人生》is an emotionally-charged social drama about Malaysia’s urban poor, offering a poignant insight into privilege and powerlessness in modern Kuala Lumpur. Featuring strong performances and gritty…
Tan Pin Pin’s “In Time To Come”: On the Edge of a Snow-Globe Starburst
By Marcus Yee (872 words, 8-minute read) A time capsule of a film on time capsules, Tan Pin Pin’s latest film In Time To Come is underpinned by a confounding observation: Singapore’s national obsession with time capsules, despite the nation-state’s…
Three O.P.E.N. Southeast Asian Documentaries
By Dan Koh (1,231 words, 6-minute read) At the inaugural Southeast Asia Fiction Film Lab in Bangkok last week, some of us participants chatted about how close we live to each other regionally, but how far it actually feels, with…
Review of “POP AYE”: A Soul Journey
By Yue Jie (870 words, 7-minute read) Spoiler alert! If you’ve not watched the movie yet, go see it before reading on. Few films deal with animals as a central character, and even fewer have an elephant as its protagonist….
Garin Nugroho’s ‘Satan Jawa’ Flirts with the Dark Side
By Nuraini Juliastuti (1124 words, 12 minute read) Satan Jawa (Garin Nugroho, 2017) a silent movie, in black and white (inspired by Nosferatu and Metropolis), had its world premier with the ‘live’ performances of Gamelan Garasi Seni Benawa and the…
Warming Up to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s ‘Fever Room’
By Alfian Sa’at (1244 words, 15 minute read) In many of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films, the membrane that separates dream from reality is a porous one. In Syndromes And A Century, snatches of dialogue are repeated, with slight variations,…
Learning the Ropes: A Review of ‘Apprentice’
By Satpal Kaler (630 words, 6 minute read) Back in university, my Botswanian friend told me that there is a high demand for executioners back in her country, because very few locals want to do the job. They see it…
Mattie Do: Horror Film? It’s all Ballet.
By Chan Sze-Wei (903 words, 5 minute read) Many things have been written about Mattie Do, the pioneering female film director from Laos. She’s put her country’s horror films on the world festival map. “She wears international laurels including the BFI…
Outside Looking In: “A Yellow Bird”
By Akanksha Raja (810 words, 8-minute read) First screened at the International Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival 2016 this summer, A Yellow Bird is K Rajagopal’s first feature film after many acclaimed, award-winning short films. His body of…
Don’t Say Cheese: Interchange
By Kathy Rowland (988 words, 10-minute read) Spoiler Alert: If you want to enjoy Interchange in all its suspenseful glory, watch the film before you read this review. The 27th Singapore International Film Festival opened last week with the Asian…