After years of waiting, Spilt Gravy Ke Mana Tumpahnya Kuah hits the screens in Malaysia on 9th June. We speak to Datuk Zahim Albakri (director/co-screenwriter) and June Tan (co-screenwriter) on what it took for the film, adapted from a play, to reach this moment. One privilege of being an artist is the experience of creating …
In Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries, it is common to find Hollywood blockbusters dominating our movie conversations. Even if we were to exclude the major film exports from the West, the Asian film landscape is still greatly dominated by the likes of India, China, Japan, and South Korea. However, since the 1970s, Southeast Asian …
Why Is Southeast Asian Cinema Still Lagging Internationally? Read More »
By Lainie Yeoh I grew up in an era where queer films were rare exceptions and it was your holy gay-af duty to watch all the ones you could access. Yes, even if they’re mostly about white people processing their feelings; or painfully slow art films by gay Asian men thinly disguising their personal journeys; …
By Joel Tan To borrow and distort the title of David Shield’s lyrical manifesto against fiction: I’ve been HUNGRY for reality in the month of May. And so for this month’s edition of SEE WHAT SEE, I’m training my sights on documentaries from Southeast Asia or about Southeast Asian subjects that you can stream right …
SEE WHAT SEE (May 2021): SOUTHEAST ASIAN DOCUMENTARIES Read More »
By Joel Tan Welcome back to See What See! It’s our monthly round-up of interesting stuff by Singapore and regional makers that you can stream right here on the Internet. In this edition, I thought I’d pay a little attention to film, TV, and shorts with a genre fiction flavour, so I went around sniffing …
By Joel Tan Welcome to my new column for ArtsEquator, where every month I’ll be giving you a little line-up of Singaporean and other Southeast Asian streaming content that I think is interesting and worth talking about in my typically TLDR, long-winded way. I’m not even talking about Netflix (which I’ve already written about at …
ArtsEquator speaks to Andy Chia, Natalie Alexandra, Rizman Putra, Russell Morton and Yeo Siew Hua, the creatives behind The Wandering, a dance film about loss connections and a family in crisis, about what it’s like working on the film together, especially during a pandemic. The Wandering runs from 18 to 20 Dec as part of …
Why everyone is dancing during the pandemic: The Wandering at SIFA 2020 Read More »
As Singapore gets used to life under Phase 2 of our COVID-19 relaxation measures, players like Singapore Festival of the Arts (SIFA) – or its gentle rebrand SIFA v2.020 – are responding with programmes that are welcoming us back into a semblance of normalcy. SIFA’s film component, Singular Screens, runs from 4 September to 11 …
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, distribution, marketing, and audience reception of our internationally overlooked non-fiction, plus their increased local censorship …
Mayfly Docus: “Die Tomorrow” and “14 Apples” at SIFA’s “Singular Screens” Read More »
Despite working with limited funds, the spectre of state censorship and the difficulty of only having three working cinemas in the country, local directors are creating a thriving film industry in Laos Mattie Do does not hold back. In her films, the women drink, they wear lingerie, they steal, they murder. In the final moments …
Lao film industry finding its feet on international stage (via SEA Globe) Read More »
Southeast Asia Fiction Film Lab (SEAFIC) has finalised the selection for its second edition, focusing on first-time filmmakers from Laos, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. Established producers such as Fran Borgia (A Yellow Bird) and Anthony Chen (Pop Aye) are attached to some of the projects, which cover topics including family strife, sociopolitical bureaucracy, cross-cultural humour …
“After nearly 10 years of documenting the vanishing stand-alone movie theaters in Southeast Asia, I’d like to invite the public into my world, to experience exactly what it is that I experience when doing this work.” Philip Jablon is a cultural researcher and photographer based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He has been documenting the stand-alone movie …
One Man, Stand Alone: On the trail of the old movie theaters (via Asiola) Read More »
There’s no denying that at some point, all of us have dreamed of having an entire cinema all to ourselves, along with the freedom to scream, shout and blabber all we want without anyone telling us to tone it down. It’s great to know that AMENIC Film Space is that dream now made real. Founded in late …
“The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, is an annual awards show celebrating achievements in cinema across a number of categories from the past year. “First They Killed My Father” is among the 92 films on the Academy’s initial long list, which will be shot down to a handful before the final nominees are …
Oscar predictions: Cambodia frontrunner in best foreign language film category Read More »
“Mouly Surya’s latest genre smash hit, Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts, was screened last month in Singapore as part of the 28th edition of the Singapore International Film Festival. A work that resists easy classification, SINdie had the privilege to catch Mouly and her effusive full-bodied laughter outside of her busy schedule for a …
An interview with Indonesian filmmaker Mouly Surya [Sindie] Read More »
“Boating along a serene stretch of the Mekong River near the UNESCO World Heritage town of Luang Prabang, some passengers were overcome with emotion. “I screamed,” said Xaisongkham Induangchanty. “We all screamed.” Tears poured down Siege Ledesma’s face. “I cried ugly,” she confided. “Really ugly.” Their tears were an expression of joy, unrelated to the …
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 cinematography, the film marks an award-winning feature debut for director Tang Seng Kiat, clinching Best Film, Best Actor and Best Cinematography in the Asian …
“Shuttle Life 《分贝人生》”: Grief and Powerlessness in Modern Malaysia Read More »
“When contacted, the director, Karthik Shamalan, said, “At first when we received the email from Yellow Fever Indie Film, we were very surprised. We didn’t believe it until we saw the official announcement on their website!” He added, “We are very happy to win this award. This acknowledgement is a push to help us create …
“This year is the the 50th anniversary of Asean (Association Of Southeast Asian Nations). To commemorate this, the Asean-China Film Festival has been announced to establish a long-term exchange and cooperation platform for the Asean film industry, in line with China’s Belt and Road initiative. The inaugural Asean-China Film Festival will be held in Malaysia next month from …
First Asean-China Film Festival to take place in Malaysia in December [SEA] Read More »
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 short post-independence history. The otherwise plotless film follows three time capsules, the sealing of two time capsules …
Tan Pin Pin’s “In Time To Come”: On the Edge of a Snow-Globe Starburst Read More »
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 opportunities to convene and collaborate like SEAFIC remaining far and few between. Curated by Tan …
“Queer cinema in the Philippines is going through some kind of resurgence. Although LGBTQ stories have always had a constant presence in local film — a number of iconic LGBTQ classics enjoyed mainstream success from the late 70’s to the early 90’s — the number of local pink movies released per year had dwindled dramatically. …
Coming out and breaking through: The Philippine queer cinema roundtable [Philippines] Read More »
“Today, the 35-year-old is one of Singapore’s most exciting film-makers with a robust slate of award-winning short films and documentaries under her belt. Her first feature, Pop Aye – an offbeat tale about a disenfranchised architect and the elephant he adopts – just nabbed prizes at two of the world’s most important film festivals: Sundance …
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 London Film Festival and is an alumni of the Cannes Film Festival’s Les Cinemas du Monde …
