Vaudeville Saturdays

Lu Ann

On the last Saturday of July, I attended FFIGS’s “Super Silly Symposium for Super Niche & Neglected Film Skills”. I work in the museum sector and am a casual film viewer; so I was a bit skeptical about going for an event that catered primarily to aspiring filmmakers and industry professionals. Yet, as the 10 film workers spoke about the long hours of production and the inevitable rush towards completion, I was reminded of the late nights I’ve spent frantically preparing media text and checking on the installation progress in the lead up to an exhibition opening. I was curious how this symposium would address the persistent pain points of arts workers.

As they had during the June PowerPoint party, FFIGS again set us up for an evening of fun and hilarity. The host of the evening, Yang Vicki, opened the event with a faux “sermon” about the “lived testimony” of each film professional, before leading a lively choral rendition of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”. This mood of jest continued with the first presentation, a cross between a home shopping channel and the reality TV show Shark Tank. As director and writer Weiqi Chuah waxed lyrical about gadgets like multi-purpose clipboards, files, bottle hooks, pouches to keep drinks cold, and portable mosquito coil containers to repel insects, Yang and another FFIGS organiser, Daryl Cheong, judged the practicality of each item. I imagined how ridiculous it would be to attach multiple things to your person while running around, moving bulky props, adjusting lights, and repositioning cameras. While aimed at making film production less hectic, Chuah’s solutions seemed impractical and consumption-oriented.

Other presentations highlighted best practices without discussing the accompanying costs. Lou Zihao proposed ways to reduce plastic waste during production, by replacing individually packaged snacks with nutritious fresh fruit. To drive the point home, Yang passed around a platter of sliced oranges and apples, eliciting gasps of delight. I took a slice, and let the juice of an orange fill my mouth. In that moment, a sustainability measure seemed like more than just a troublesome obligation, but a distinctly Asian expression of familial love as well. Even so, I recalled how an initiative to reuse plastic packaging in galleries made unpacking paintings more tedious: since we could not simply cut through layers of plastic, the process took twice as long. Such additional work typically falls on lower-ranking staff and production assistants, who are rarely remunerated for the extra labour and time needed to meet environmental goals, or to cut fruits.

I started to wonder if this symposium was the right forum for addressing the issues that plague the arts sector, especially as filmmaker Jason Soo shared his experience negotiating screening restrictions on Al Awda (2024), a documentary chronicling the efforts of 22 activists to break the Gaza blockade. Soo provided a breakdown of screening guidelines and detailed the history of the Censorship Review Committee. As he spoke, a hush settled over the audience, reflecting the seriousness of the topic; it felt like whiplash after the humour that had characterised the rest of the evening. While Soo encouraged us to join his call for more transparency by the Films Appeal Committee, I worried that his rallying cry might be forgotten amidst the skits and parodies. I thought we should have had more time to discuss how effectively a small group of concerned artists and filmmakers can push for change when, realistically, critical mass is necessary to change policy.

These proceedings were of a piece with FFIGS’s other events, with humour used to keep us entertained. But humour does not put us in a state of mind to confront the trade-offs that come with eco-friendly measures, nor to tackle systemic problems, such as the arbitrary media regulations that artists are forced to navigate and more realistically, the need for a critical mass to change policy. Wide-ranging in scope and certainly silly, the symposium struck me as vaudevillian — light in mood, content, and impact.

Rating Niche Film Skills as a Crew Member

Rafy Michael

Since finishing my diploma three years ago, I have taken on various below-the-line roles on many film sets. As I continue to build my skillset, I was excited for FFIGS’s “Super Silly Symposium For Super Niche & Neglected Films Skills”, which promised to offer strategies for efficiency and fun on set. Drawing on my experience in film production, I rated each presentation’s applicability from “CHOP” to “BOP”, assigning “CHOP” to shallow advice that crews can skip, while reserving “BOP” for presentations that improve crew welfare, and had me nodding along.

“CHOP” presentations had limited potential to improve the on-set experience of film workers. Weiqi Chuah’s “Get Set-Ready with the Best Shit on the Market” highlighted an assortment of cute objects that might be useful to crew members, from donut-shaped tape dispensers to retractable markers, but these are good-to-have accessories rather than essential kit. Next, in “How to Finish a Movie”, post-production coordinator Ani Hoo spoke about the challenges of negotiating last-minute changes across departments, though she did not specify how to handle uncommunicative clients and directors.

Other “CHOP” presentations failed to provide advice for engaging with the wider film industry. In his presentation, “Congrats, You’ve Been Invited to a Film Festival — Fuck Sia No Money for Red Carpet Looks then How Like That?! Hot Takes & Severe Judgments from a Subject Matter Expert”, Nathaneal Ng emphasised personal branding, asking us to vote on red carpet outfits. While he raised the example of Hollywood stars with access to stylists and designers, and local filmmakers like Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen, who often wear thematic costumes to premieres, he did not discuss how one might put together an outfit with limited resources. Similarly, the roleplay session, “Ways to Tell a Filmmaker Their Film Sucks”, by the evening’s hosts, Daryl Cheong and Yang Vicki, did not teach us how to phrase criticism gently and constructively.

In contrast, programmer and FFIGS organiser Viknesh Kobinathan’s “Spiritual Guidance on What Makes a Good Q&A” was a certified “BOP”. As an experienced moderator, they noted that a moderator must direct the conversation, firmly and politely focusing the discussion when audience members deviate from the topic. Viknesh also encouraged the audience to recognise that our thoughtful participation can contribute to a robust dialogue.

Other “BOPS” provided strategies that can be directly incorporated into the workflow on set. “Cashbackmaxxxing on Filmmaking: Art of Curating Meals on Set” by Cheong and filmmaker and writer Elliot Wong, introduced cashback apps we can use to save on production costs. Their savvy tips make it convenient to cater tasty, balanced meals (besides the default chicken rice) that meet different dietary requirements and boost the crew’s mood. Likewise, in “FRUIT & REFILLS: Keep That Plastic Shit Away from Filmmaking”, Lou Zihao proposed easy swaps to reduce plastic waste on film sets, like replacing disposable bottles with water gallons, and packaged chips with fruits. As Lu Ann notes, a plate of cut fruits is a distinctly Asian expression of love, and might help to maintain crew morale.

A big “BOP” for me was filmmaker and activist Jason Soo’s “C*N*O*S*I*: The Film That Shall Not Be Named”. He shared his experience with the film classification board at the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), noting that it had been 15 years since the last review of the Censorship Review Committee. At the end, he provided his phone number so anyone could join him in calling for a review of IMDA regulations.

Whether “CHOP” or “BOP”, these presentations all sprung from an interest in supporting film workers: making on-set experiences more enjoyable, film production more environmentally sustainable, or the regulatory environment more transparent. The best solutions, to me, are those I can readily adopt in my day-to-day working life. As I return to school for a fine arts degree in August, it feels empowering to know there are small, concrete steps I can take to improve an industry I intend to continue working in.

Lu Ann is a writer and art enthusiast who is broadly interested in how images circulate across different cultures and spaces.

Rafy Michael is a Fine Arts student with an interest in experimental storytelling and a love for artful experiences that ignites passion and curiosity. Beyond work as a set designer, you can find him painting at home or reading at the beach with an aperol spritz in hand.

I first caught 给阿嬷的情书 (Dear You, 2026) at a Beijing cinema in May, after being recommended the film by my Chinese friends. This sleeper hit tells the story of a migrant, Tay Bak Seng, who leaves Chaoshan for Nanyang (South of China), to escape the civil war draft and secure a living for his family. Separated for decades, he and his wife Sok Jiew communicate through letters which take months to arrive, and are always too short. I’d heard this film was heart-wrenching; by the end of the movie, I had stuffed the cup holder full of tear-soaked tissues.

Back in Singapore, two versions of the film — one in the original Teochew, the other dubbed in Mandarin — premiered in June. Tickets for the 10 permitted screenings in Teochew quickly sold out. Over the next month, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) made concession after concession for hundreds of Teochew screenings to keep up with demand. There has been parliamentary debate on IMDA’s current film screening guidelines, which stipulate that Chinese films should be released in Mandarin, in line with the Speak Mandarin Campaign. The public outcry has even pushed the government to review its guidelines.

Amidst the deluge of personal responses and op-eds about the film, there have been calls to rethink the place of Chinese languages like Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, and Hainanese — even calling them “dialects” is to make a social and political distinction that connotes a secondary status. It’s apt that Dear You has become a lightning rod for discussions, given its preoccupation with literacy, letter-writing, and linguistic tradition. Director Lan Hongchun has made it his life’s work to explore Teochew culture: this film is based on his research into qiaopi, remittance letters Chinese migrants sent home with money to support their families. In the film, the illiterate Bak Seng dictates his thoughts to a scribe who must convey, and condense, everything from major life updates to feelings of love and longing. Recruiting this scribe as a teacher, Bak Seng sets up an illegal school for other Teochew immigrant children to give them better job prospects. His landlady, Lamgi, gets to sit in on the lessons in exchange for hosting them, and eventually becomes an educator herself.

Watching Dear You in Teochew, I fell in love with the cadence of the language and poetry of the letters, which are dense with cultural significance. Take the following:

吾夫木生，展信佳
一百元收到
七月初七，大妹出花园，已亭亭玉立
大弟和小弟亦个头出挑，健朗聪慧
见子女茁壮成长，欣慰非常，这是你我共修之骄傲
七夕当夜，你衣锦归来，仍是少年模样
梦醒行至寨门前，闻溪水潺潺，方觉夜深
念你安康，好梦即已知足

妻 淑柔

To my husband Bak Seng, I hope this letter finds you well
I have received the 100 yuan
On the seventh day of the seventh month, our daughter had her Cug Huê Hng ceremony, she has grown into graceful young woman
Our two sons have grown taller, they are healthy and bright
Watching our children grow, I am very grateful, they are our pride
On the day of Qixi festival, I dreamed that you returned in fine clothing, still youthful in appearance
When I woke and walked to the gate, I heard the stream, and realised it was deep in the night
Wishing for your well-being, but this sweet dream was enough to comfort me

Your wife, Sok Jiew

In her letter, Sok Jiew mentions the Cug Huê Hng, a Teochew coming-of-age ceremony performed on the seventh day of the seventh month, to celebrate a child turning 15. That same date coincides with another festival celebrated across China, based on the tale of the cowherd and the weaver girl, forbidden lovers allowed to unite just once a year. This is Qixi, or Chinese Valentine’s day. It is no surprise, then, that Sok Jiew would be dreaming of her husband in Nanyang.

Without such context, it would be hard to appreciate the weight of tradition. In another instance, Lamgi is called 走囝 (zao-kia), which translates to “child who leaves”. Referring to “daughter”, the word weaves patriarchal norms into the fabric of social life and personal identity. Lamgi is constantly reminded that as a zao-kia, she should move out and marry into another family. Instead, the fiercely independent Lamgi turns suitors down and refuses to leave her aged father. She is shown to be a capable business manager and later adopts a baby, starting a family without getting married, entirely on her own terms. The term zao-kia registers as ironic, considering that Lamgi is a woman who defies convention — a detail that is lost in Mandarin as the term for daughter, 女儿 means “female child” and has a more neutral connotation.

While Dear You draws on cultural specificity and linguistic nuance in its storytelling, the study of Chinese in Singapore is devoid of emotional, historical, and political charge. In the comments section of an Instagram post about translating Chinese poetry, writer Amanda Lee Koe characterises the Mandarin taught in Singapore as “depoliticised and culturally-contextless”. She remarks: “I never felt empowered in the Mandarin I studied in school. It’s a Mandarin I can use perfunctorily in the market or at the office, but not a Mandarin I can compose or emote at length in.” Her sentiment resonates with a generation that grew up taking Mandarin as a compulsory subject, treating it as a chore to get through.

The Chinese curriculum in local schools tends to be dry and uninspiring, and students are largely focused on passing the subject. Although students can write either narrative or discursive essays for the O-Level Chinese exam, most choose the latter, which is widely considered the easier and safer option. To prepare for oral tests, they memorise stock phrases to describe inconsiderate behaviour in public spaces. Rather than a medium of self-expression, Mandarin serves primarily as a tool of civic instruction and business communication for many young Singaporeans.

I, too, am equipped with an impoverished form of Mandarin. During my visit to Beijing, I realised my bilingual education had fallen short. I know how to send a business email and order kopi, but to express my feelings in a heartfelt letter? I wouldn’t know where to begin, in Mandarin or any other Chinese language. Even the Mandarin I learned, supposedly the lingua franca of China and derived from Beijing dialect, sounds different on the tongue of a Beijinger. While I admire the ease of native speakers and the profundity of Chinese literature, I regret that I cannot express myself the same way.

One might argue that the state of Mandarin education speaks to the failure of the Speak Mandarin Campaign — or more cynically, to the campaign’s success. In his memoir One Man’s View of the World (2013), Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew maintains: “For sentimental reasons and practical reasons of trade and business with China, we need Chinese as a second language. But we certainly do not need the dialects.” To the English-educated Lee, Mandarin should be taught mostly for its commercial utility and nostalgic value, even though family tradition and provincial culture are embedded in our grandmother tongues, rather than in Mandarin.

In contrast to this narrow, functional view of Chinese, Dear You makes an argument for the beauty and vitality of language. For Bak Seng and Sok Jiew, words have the power to sustain a relationship across time and space. For Lamgi and the children who learn Teochew in her inn, literacy roots them in their community while providing a path to economic independence. Dear You reminded me of my perfunctory Mandarin and alienation from my ancestral tongue, but it also returned me to a richer experience of Chinese: a language to yearn, love, and dream in.

Zhiyu (知鱼) is a writer interested in contemporary Chinese culture and cinema.

Dear reader,

In The Use of Photography, Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie respond to a set of photos taken during their year-long love affair, while she was undergoing intensive chemotherapy for breast cancer. Every morning, they would compulsively photograph the heaps of clothes, shoes, and underwear strewn across the floor, in an effort to hold on to fleeting moments of beauty and the pleasure of the previous night. But photography seemed insufficient as a record of their relationship, and they “needed something more — writing”. For this project, Ernaux and Marie picked 14 photos to respond to, writing separately so they could record their independent reactions to the same scene. Their pieces were ultimately published side by side, bringing together two distinct perspectives of a relationship.

While a written text serves as a form of documentation and interpretation on its own, the pairing of written responses further enlarges the field of interpretive possibility, as borne out through our Roving Correspondents workshop. Since April, our young writers have been attending and reflecting on the monthly FFIGS Seasons events: a film walk; a 16mm live projection and screening; and most recently, a PowerPoint party, the “Very Serious & Democratic Film Deep-Dive Conference”. In Speed Dating for Cinephiles, Rafy discusses his experience as a participant in this conference, where he shared his thoughts about Michael Bay’s impact on the subgenre of monster and creature films. He takes a closer look at how FFIGS’s hospitality encouraged young cinephiles like himself to connect with their peers, creating the kind of third space that is sorely lacking in Singapore. As an audience member, Lu Ann provides Minutes from an Unserious Film Conference, analysing FFIGS’s interest in community building and explaining why this event may represent its most successful attempt yet. Drawn from their own emotional reactions and memories, their accounts differ and overlap, leaving us with an impression that is at once subjective and shared.

Writing, and the act of writing, draws people into direct conversation with one another. Over the last few months, Lu Ann and Rafy have been engaged in an ongoing dialogue, while tracking the evolution of the FFIGS collective. At the PowerPoint party, the camera also caught them conferring with one of the presenters, Phyllis Chan (who contributed to The Daily last year). But like Ernaux and Marie’s love story, which came to a natural end, our workshop and FFIGS’s Season will soon draw to a close. We are now past the midway-point of the Roving Correspondents workshop, and taking stock of what is emerging from it.

As Ernaux told a journalist, the purpose of writing is not only to document, but to “make things exist”. Writing can activate a reader’s imagination, and quite literally realise or create something new. Three dispatches in, we’re noticing how the interaction between the writers has become an integral part of this process. Guiding them through each round of edits, we’ve witnessed how each shapes and sharpens the other’s thinking; seeds new ideas; even influences the language of their counterpart. It is a beautiful thing to have sprung into existence, this friendship. 📮

With love,
The CORRESPONDENCE Team

Speed Dating for Cinephiles

Rafy Michael

Two weeks before the last Saturday of June, FFIGS launched an open call for presentations on Instagram:

I was intrigued. The post’s direct address, along with its overtly cheeky and playful tone, recalled the casual way my friends and I speak to each other, which in turn reminded me of our conversations about director Michael Bay. My hot take: despite the criticisms of Bay’s poor writing, his Transformers franchise has created a visual template for how contemporary cinematic monsters are depicted. His inventive use of Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) to create realistic robot transformations has been a major influence on the subgenre of monster and creature films — what I call the Cinematic Universe of Monsters (CUM).

I had previously asserted Bay’s important contributions to CUM as a way to entertain and provoke my friends. This time, I wanted to challenge myself, and test the strength of my argument in a room packed with cinephiles my age.

That evening, I cheered along with everyone else, as my fellow presenters shared their opinions on various topics ranging from the derivative tendencies of acclaimed Chinese director Bi Gan, to a passionate defence of Chinese vertical dramas, to a case for why James Bond should continue being played by a white male misogynist. When my turn came, I was anxious, especially when I faced playback issues for several clips in my presentation. But my nerves were soothed by the encouragement of the audience, who whooped at the double entendre of CUM and applauded every time I faced technical hiccups. I was overwhelmed by how supportive everyone was.

The presentations sparked curiosity and conversation flowed freely over the course of the night. During a DJ break between presentations, I eagerly sought out two speakers to ask them more about the topics they’d covered. Likewise, after my presentation ended, two members of the audience came up to me to discuss other polarising directors, like M. Night Shyamalan. The PowerPoint party felt like a quick and easy way to get to know the people who frequent FFIGS events, a kind of speed-dating session to encourage conversation between like-minded people. As I settled back into my seat, I thought about how FFIGS was able to replicate the feeling of being with close friends, even in a room full of strangers.

Spaces like these, where we can gather with minimal obligations, are sorely lacking in Singapore. Hanging out at commercial venues like cinemas and restaurants can be cost-prohibitive for young adults on a budget, but I’ve noticed that hospitality and price accessibility are priorities for the FFIGS collective. Entry to the FFIGS events are by donation, and they have a policy that “no one will be turned away for lack of funds”. These monthly events fall on Saturday evenings, and there is always a spread of snacks and beverages available at a pay-what-you-can rate. Every FFIGS event so far has been fully subscribed, and the FFIGS lounge has become a third space, a weekend hangout spot with a low barrier of entry. By cultivating a warm, inviting environment and taking an unserious approach to films, FFIGS has helped to connect people with similar interests. With each event, I have ventured further out of my comfort zone and into this community of cinephiles. I might make a habit of it.

Minutes from an Unserious Conference

Lu Ann

What does it mean to commune? It sounds like a lofty term, but one definition of communing is simply to exchange intimate thoughts and feelings, to be part of something. The word was first introduced during “A Contrary Communing of Cinema”, a roving film tour around Chinatown that sought to capture the histories and lived experiences of the neighbourhood. Long after the tour, I still have a distinct impression of the films, though like Rafy, I didn’t feel a rapport with the communities we passed through. Communing seemed to have its limits, existing more as a sentiment than a reality.

I thought again about communing as I sat next to strangers in Goethe-Institut’s basement, waiting for the Very Serious & Democratic Film Deep-Dive Conference to begin. While it would have required time, and perhaps linguistic mediation, for us to connect deeply with the older folks who live and work in Chinatown, communing might be more readily conceivable with a gathering of young cinephiles, a self-selected group who already have common interests and a shared pool of cultural references. After all, FFIGS had originally been imagined as a playground for film lovers, “a safe and flexible space for all our cinephile shenanigans”, as Renee wrote last year. I wondered how this event could draw us into communion — an elusive goal, to be sure.

Conferences are typically dry, stuffy affairs, but FFIGS upended this expectation altogether. Two of the organisers, Renee and Daryl, opened with an introduction to FFIGS that parodied a corporate performance review. But instead of discussing KPIs, they highlighted fun facts and quirks about the collective. Renee wore a brown blazer over an all-black outfit, topped with a sparkly, gem-studded lanyard in lieu of an employee ID. (She was promptly nominated for the “Best Dressed Award for Cuntiest Office Attire.”) Departing from the formality of a professional conference, they fostered a relaxed atmosphere where everyone could be candid and playful with each other.

This openness extended to the wide range of presentations, which covered everything from blockbuster movies to fan edits. Elliot Wong, the first presenter of the night, proposed that we should all watch less film — an opinion that landed a little awkwardly, in a room full of cinephiles. When he struggled to get his point across, Yang Vicki, another FFIGS organiser, gently invited him to suggest alternative activities for those who wanted to go out and “touch grass”. Such interventions reminded us to be patient and open-minded, even when it came to perspectives we might not immediately agree with. I found myself trying to emulate that generosity as presenters courageously put themselves out there, sharing deep dives and hot takes.

While this was a platform to make impassioned arguments, presenters also acknowledged the validity of differing opinions. Midway through the evening, Renee came up once more, to make her case that the middle seat in the second row from the screen was the best seat at Oldham Theatre. She explained her preference, telling us that she finds comfort in the immersive viewing experience of being so close to the screen. At the same time, she acknowledged why front row seats are often disliked, noting that height determines how much you have to crane your neck to see the screen, and towards the end, observed that cinema accommodates the diverse preferences of moviegoers. Our shared love of film was expansive enough to bring us together, holding space for even unpopular opinions and eccentric views.

A conference might be an unlikely setting for communing, but this was a conference unlike any other. The goofy proceedings and casual format let us skip past the small talk and polite conversation, plunging right into the kind of unfiltered discussion that creates a sense of fellow-feeling. Amidst the riotous laughter, we turned from strangers into comrades, as if we were in on a joke nobody else would get.

Lu Ann is a writer and art enthusiast who is broadly interested in how images circulate across different cultures and spaces.

Rafy Michael is a Fine Arts student with an interest in experimental storytelling and a love for artful experiences that ignites passion and curiosity. Beyond work as a set designer, you can find him painting at home or reading at the beach with an aperol spritz in hand.

Dear reader,

In a happy coincidence, we published two articles this month about the collection and preservation of audiovisual materials, while audiovisual archive conferences were taking place throughout the region. At the 30th Southeast Asia-Pacific Audiovisual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA) Conference held in Ipoh, Malaysia, archivists and film scholars gathered to discuss issues around the theme, “Redefining Audio Visual in Archives – Relevancy, Technology and Unity”. Topics ranged from the use cases of AI to the need for collaboration between communal archives and national institutions. This was followed by the 3rd Global Audiovisual Archiving (GAVA), hosted by the Thai Film Archive. The panels were inspired by Filipino film scholar Bliss Cua Lim’s manifesto for poor archiving, “a distinctly scrappy affair that involves collective efforts to make the best of meagre resources”. They shone a spotlight on guerrilla archiving practices and the survival of orphan films, as practices that “must be defended rather than patronised”. Both conferences explore how personal and community archives co-exist with, and complement, institutional archives — an idea that resonates with the pieces we’ve released.

In our first profile, film critic Ivan Chin brings attention to a passion project by film educator, producer, and filmmaker Tang Kang Sheng. The self-professed “hoarder” has spent almost two decades building a small, private collection of Singapore’s film materials. His position as a filmmaker with extensive contacts and networks in the industry puts him in a unique position to rescue production materials like costumes and storyboards that are on the verge of being thrown away. Kang Sheng has even put together his own computer set-up for converting multiple tape formats into digital files, so he can help friends and colleagues digitise their old films when they want to screen or share their works. Until an institution has the capacity to store, preserve, and make these materials publicly accessible, he has undertaken the Herculean task of saving films and slowing the deterioration of artefacts.

Our Roving Correspondents also encountered older formats of filmmaking when they returned to Goethe-Institute for “Camphor, Menthol, Jungle, Claw: Performance, Screening & Rave”, the third event in FFIGS’s 2026 line-up. In their second dispatch, Rafy writes about Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen’s 16mm expanded cinema performance, noting the paradox between Singapore’s eager reproduction of the tiger imagery in logos, and our systematic annihilation of tigers from our natural landscape. Lu Ann reflects on the various forms of violence that surfaced throughout the performance, and the whiplash she felt as the programme swiftly transitioned into lighthearted entertainment with a rare, 16mm film screening of Ward Wing’s adventure film, Samarang (1933). The film screening was hosted by Malaysian private collector, Iman Yahya, who had travelled from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore with his projector and film reels specially for the programme.

Since the transition from film to digital projectors in the 2000s, most screenings in commercial theatres have only been available in digital format. But Yahya’s acquisition of deaccessioned 16mm film collections from school libraries and the estates of other film collectors, coupled with his maintenance of film projectors, means a new generation of audience members can experience the thrill of watching a film on celluloid.

Like Yahya, who takes on the role of a mobile cinema projectionist, and Kang Sheng, who serves as a resource person to his community, Mark and Li Shuen have helped keep the 16mm film format alive in Singapore. Their artist-run lab, Film Nerve, offers 16mm camera rentals and analogue filmmaking workshops, and hosts curated screenings. Operating outside of institutional frameworks, these independent collectors and artists keep older and often, more obscure moving image works in circulation, through their assiduous efforts and generous sharing of resources.

With all the recent discourse about archives, we hope the pieces published this month will extend the conversation around how films and material artefacts are preserved for posterity, and how younger audiences can engage with physical film mediums. We salute the custodians of our cinematic heritage and the individuals saving physical film from obsolescence. 📮

With love,
The CORRESPONDENCE Team

Of Monsters and Men

Rafy Michael

On the last Saturday of May, we made our way back to the Goethe-Institut at 136 Neil Road for FFIGS’s third installment of their 2026 season. “Camphor, Menthol, Jungle, Claw: Performance, Screening & Rave” featured an expanded cinema performance by FilmNerve, comprising the filmmaker-artist duo Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen, and a showcase of Malaysian print collector Iman Yahya’s 16mm film collection.

Inspired by the former Tiger Balm factory on Neil Road, Mark and Li Shuen’s performance was centred around “the image of tigers, imagining phantom spirits of wild tigers to think on their presences and absences”. From the state crest to iconic local brands like Tiger Balm and Tiger Beer, these feline symbols loom large in our cultural imagination, celebrated for their associations with vitality, swiftness, and ferocity. Yet no living tigers remain on our island, not after they were displaced from their natural habitats at the end of the nineteenth century, and brutally culled for endangering the local population.

In their performance, Mark and Li Shuen conjure the large cats that once roamed freely in Singapore, taking their audience on a sensory journey of “cinedreaming through time and space”. When evening fell, the strong scent of camphor and eucalyptus accompanied the appearance of the performers on Goethe-Institut’s rooftop. With Tiger Balm smeared over their arms, they began to set up their equipment. Mark held a DIY portable projector through which two 16mm film strips of a tiger were projected at once. Two tigers appeared before us, approaching from different angles. Meanwhile, Li Shuen operated a small synthesiser and amplifier through which bassy thuds and scratchy sounds issued, producing a discordant, arrhythmic soundtrack as the creatures prowled.

Their projections evoked the presence of jungle animals camouflaging in the bushes, as tiger stripes flit across our bodies and danced over the walls. Guiding a large group of spectators from the rooftop, through the building, and out onto the street, Mark and Li Shuen seemed to be leading us on a hunt for the elusive tigers. Without any ushers for crowd control, the audience was often caught in a jam, stuck between corridors and office spaces, or crammed shoulder to shoulder on staircases. We craned our necks to catch a fleeting glimpse of the tigers as they sprang up on different surfaces, disappearing in mid-air, then reappearing on the ceiling. We surged forward when the tigers leapt from the Goethe-Institut to the building opposite. There was something frenetic, even predatory, about our movements, as we strained to keep the tigers in view.

Through the duo’s performance, a creature of the past returned as an apparition in our contemporary urban setting. This resurrection of tigers as an insubstantial, fugitive image, which cannot cause any real harm, reflects the paradoxical relationship between humans and tigers in Singapore. We happily reproduce the image of these majestic beasts for commerce and profit, even though we have annihilated the species because we fear the very strength and prowess that make them so majestic. In Singapore, the tiger is allowed to exist as spectacle, as logo, product and even household name, but not as a physical reality, an animal with the potential to hurt us.

Wild Leaps

Lu Ann

A pair of tigers darted around, as if waiting to pounce, while taking care to evade us. Mark and Li Shuen’s projections of the tigers were punctuated by streaks of red, recalling the spilled blood of both man and beast. At the height of our violent clash with these ferocious animals, hundreds of people were killed and in turn, the animals were hunted to extinction.

Towards the end of the performance, the audience was led to the basement of Goethe-Institut. As we settled into chairs, I saw a black smudge flashing across the projection. At first, I thought it was just a passing shadow. Then I realised the smudge was actually a message: “Iran hurts. Palestine hurts. Sense hurts.” The psychedelic soundtrack crescendoed into agonising screeches, and crimson light filled the screen, flooding the basement in red. The pungent scent of Tiger Balm that had followed us all evening suddenly felt suffocating. Up to that point, we had been drifting in a jungle reverie, but these words immediately brought to mind urgent global crises, including war and genocide.

After these lines appeared, an oily, orangey glow began to spread across the image, as the performers coated the film strips with a thin layer of Tiger Balm, an ointment used to alleviate physical pain and discomfort. Here, the use of Tiger Balm seemed like an attempt to soothe the world’s political ills. But the relief that Tiger Balm provides is at least partially illusory. Its ingredients act as counterirritants to “stimulate nerve receptors in the skin to create sensations of warmth and coolness” and “distract the brain from pain signals”. A similar distraction was offered right after Mark and Li Shuen’s gesture of solidarity, as the chairs were moved aside to make way for Iman’s 16mm film projector. I watched the projector whir to life, showing the title card for “Malaysia”, a travelogue entry to the Van Beuren Corporation’s Vagabond Adventure Series (1930–1935). A Western narrator commented on the social practices of kampong-dwelling Malays, eliciting childish tittering among the audience when he used the word “gay” as a synonym for joyful.

Next up was a silent adventure film, Samarang (1933), by American director Ward Wing. Shot in Singapore and set in the fictional island of Samarang, the film follows the trials and tribulations of a couple, comprising fisherman Ahmang (Captain A.V. Cockle) and the village chief’s daughter, Saiyu (Theresa Seth). Featuring Bangsawan performers and Orang Asli as extras, the film pretends to be an ethnographic work, but is really a cheap comedy that peddles stereotypes for the amusement of viewers. In a problematic courtship sequence, Ahmang corners Saiyu in the toilet, a scene met with giggles from the audience. Later, the couple is beset with misfortunes, including a cunning business owner who abandons them to cannibals. It was not clear whether audiences were laughing at these outdated and ridiculous tropes of indigenous communities, or if they were actually laughing along with the film, sympathising with a pair of lovers struggling to survive amongst uncivilised tribes.

Over the course of the evening, we were reminded of different kinds of violence: ecological devastation, war, occupation, and racism. But we never got to discuss these issues and their interconnections. The programme lunged awkwardly from Mark and Li Shuen’s message of shared heartbreak to a lighthearted romcom, ending the night on a note of merriment that rang hollow. Escapist entertainment functioned as a kind of balm, diverting attention from the wounds of the world, for which it is certainly no cure.

Lu Ann is a writer and art enthusiast who is broadly interested in how images circulate across different cultures and spaces.

Rafy Michael is a Fine Arts student with an interest in experimental storytelling and a love for artful experiences that ignites passion and curiosity. Beyond work as a set designer, you can find him painting at home or reading at the beach with an aperol spritz in hand.

Dear reader,

This is our first newsletter since we wrapped up The Daily, our guerrilla festival publication, last year. We’ve been quiet online, but behind the scenes, we’ve been busy developing our long-term plans and new projects.

The Daily was phenomenal, and we were personally moved by the interest and love that people sent our way. It brought together a wide range of voices, and the sheer diversity of topics and writing styles was one of the most beautiful things about that project. But the process was, frankly, less than ideal. We only started about two weeks before the festival, and every day, we rushed down to the printers to get each issue out. Our contributors really stepped up: they were ready with ideas for articles; helped us secure image permissions; and were on standby to address our comments, late into night. Still, within a compressed timeline, it was not always possible to have the kind of unhurried conversations that can yield new insights, or to mull over small but significant details, like a particular turn of phrase that can introduce a different meaning altogether.

Reflecting on our first project, we agreed that the editorial process must be a focus over the course of the year, when we do not have the pressure of churning out articles every day. We also recognise that the survival of CORRESPONDENCE cannot depend on the momentum of a festival alone, and hinges on our establishing a clear editorial direction. Sustaining a film writing platform, when so many others have closed, means addressing the larger structures and cultures surrounding arts writing in Singapore. Ambitious as it is, we have to attend to both demand and supply: we need to cultivate an audience, while nurturing a pool of writers and putting out a steady stream of quality writing.

This year we’re introducing two projects in service of these goals. The Longform, an ongoing series led by Tracey, includes responses, interviews, profiles, and essays, all related to cinema in Singapore and Southeast Asia. These formats give our contributors the space to flesh out an argument and express their perspectives fully. Our call for pitches is open to everyone, including those with no prior experience in writing. With more AI-generated articles being released, our goal is not simply to produce a polished piece, but to underscore the humanity in writing. To us, if a piece can only be written by that individual, with their particular subjectivity, personal values, and unique brand of humour, it is a success.

Our series begins with a superb example of this — a personal essay by writer Sim Jia Ling on her evolving relationship with cinema. Jia Ling opens up about her discomfort with the term “cinephile” and the kind of sophisticated taste or exclusivity it connotes. Her piece will resonate deeply with anyone who has ever struggled with imposter syndrome.

In line with our mission to nurture film writing in Singapore, we also launched our first writing workshop, Roving Correspondents. Led by Sasha, the workshop is designed for emerging critics to immerse themselves in film culture and hone their personal voice. On top of penning traditional reviews, writers will track and document the evolution of a different community, space, or festival each cycle. This time, two selected writers, Lu Ann and Rafy Michael, will be attending a slate of regular programmes organised by the FFIGS collective, giving them an opportunity to consider how the experience of film can extend beyond the cinema.

In the spirit of a call-and-response, our young writers will both reflect on the events and participate in an ongoing dialogue with each other. Their first dispatch on “A Contrary Communing of Cinema: Cruising Through Chinatown” was just published. In “Leaving the Movie Theatre”, Lu Ann provides an account of her heightened wariness while watching films in public. Rafy continues with “Brief Encounters”, charting his growing awareness as an outsider of the communities featured in the film walk.

Our latest pieces were developed independently, but a common point of discussion arose between them: the film scene can, admittedly, be quite exclusive. Even for cultural workers in the industry, many of us have felt at some point that we haven’t watched enough canonical films to earn our “cinephile” stripes, as Jia Ling notes. And as filmgoers, we might emphasise the representational value of media, without actively engaging the subjects represented onscreen, a point made by our Roving Correspondents. These pieces push us to think critically about the attitudes or conditions necessary for films to truly connect people, within and beyond the film community.

None of this is possible without financial backing, of course. We’re grateful to have secured funding from the National Youth Council, which is kindly sponsoring this year’s Longform series and Roving Correspondents workshop, allowing us to pay our writers and illustrator. A champion of our publication since day one, Phoebe Pua is also supporting us through her Not Boring Microfund. Her support means a lot to us, as The Daily was in a sense, the spiritual successor of Atlas, which she edited between 2022 and 2023.

We’re proud, and incredibly privileged, to help keep film writing alive in Singapore. 📮

Until next time,
The CORRESPONDENCE Team

Tucked away in an unassuming storeroom within an office building is a treasure trove of materials from Singapore’s film history. Inside, there are towering piles of books, posters, DVDs, CDs, tapes, and various memorabilia. These include: pamphlets from the first Singapore International Film Festival; early 2000s evangelical movies featuring Mediacorp actors; even a singlet worn by the main character in Eric Khoo’s iconic film, Mee Pok Man (1995). The storeroom is cramped. Every surface has been maximised for storage, and there is barely enough room for one person.

Since 2022, Tang Kang Sheng has come here regularly to digitise films and check on the collection under his care. A film educator, producer, and filmmaker, Kang Sheng is by his own admission, a bit of a hoarder. He began collecting all kinds of paraphernalia as a film student in Ngee Ann Polytechnic in 2005. Over the years, as he attended screenings and built relationships with filmmakers, he would hear about their plans to throw away materials related to their productions, due to space constraints. Finding it a pity that these materials could be so easily discarded, he would offer to save them instead, storing the items in his parents’ place where he lived. During his Master’s in the US, he reached out to the film community in Singapore, hoping to access local films, only to realise that many were lost. His preservation efforts began in earnest upon his return to Singapore in 2022. That same year, Kang Sheng rented the storeroom to house his growing collection and to contain the spread of mould on paper materials.

I first met Kang Sheng when I reviewed his short film, Back to One (2021). I started following his social media updates closely and learnt about this passion project through his Instagram stories documenting various artefacts. I wondered what motivated him to start this collection and how it had ballooned to its current state. When I finally got the chance to visit, Kang Sheng pulled out several items to show me, including Khoo’s original storyboard for Mee Pok Man. Given to Kang Sheng by the lead actor, Joe Ng, the storyboard consists of bound A4 pages, with scenes drawn in black marker, notes scribbled in the margins, and arrows indicating how shots would be sequenced in post-production. He told me Khoo had started out as a comic artist and put a lot of thought into the storyboard. Kang Sheng expressed hope that with Khoo’s permission, this could one day be published for the public to enjoy.

At one point, Kang Sheng retrieved the magnetic tape of Gloria Chee’s Smell of Rain (2006), which she had rediscovered years after the DVD went out of circulation. He has digitised the tape, and the film, once thought lost, can now be played on a computer. Kang Sheng actively seeks out films made between 1990 and 2010, a period which saw a surge of works by independent filmmakers like Tania Sng, Kan Lume, Pok Yue Weng, and Han Yew Kwang. Their works had circulated primarily through DVDs, the most widely available format then, but with DVDs now obsolete, such films are at risk of being forgotten, simply because they cannot be watched without the requisite media player.

Making films available as digital files improves accessibility, but digitising films is a monumental effort, and even harder without specialised equipment. To the left of the store room is a stack of analogue media players with a monitor perched on top, and beside it, a bulky, rugged computer that looks straight out of the 90s — all part of a setup that Kang Sheng has painstakingly scavenged and cobbled together. Everything had to be built to specifications so each format can be played back and recorded according to the standards of the era. To get the highest quality playback, Kang Sheng sources the best possible hardware to extract and make digital copies of a tape. Right now, his setup is capable of digitising a range of tape formats like VHS, VHS-C, Hi8, MiniDV, and Betacam. He aims to digitise DVcam, a variant of the Digital Video tape format, next.

The digitisation process is equally intricate, involving a VCR player hooked up to a computer. A FireWire cable is typically used for data transfer, but certain players require an additional analogue-to-digital converter as an intermediary. Kang Sheng will play a tape and capture the live playback on an editing software. Back in school, he had learnt to operate these media players, a skill no longer taught to film students. Even then, piecing together a computer out of spare parts was never part of his curriculum, and he had to figure it out himself by tinkering around. Kang Sheng’s embodied knowledge is indispensable to this project, allowing younger generations of cinephiles, like myself, to enjoy older films.

I ask Kang Sheng why he has taken on the colossal task of digitisation. He says he had started as a volunteer for the Substation Moving Images programme between 2015 and 2017, offering to digitise and catalogue films because he wanted to watch them. The Substation’s subsequent closure in 2021 came as a shock; he doesn’t know which organisation now has possession of the hard drives containing the nearly 3000 films he had digitised. “That was a few years of my life, and nobody can tell me where they are,” he sighs.

While the fate of the hard drives remains unclear, he continues to help friends and fellow crew members digitise tapes, and connects them with filmmakers whose works they are interested in. Many filmmakers pass their tapes to him for digitisation, but not everyone retains, or can locate, their own digital files. In these cases, Kang Sheng sends them a digital copy whenever they want to share or screen their films. Working in an individual capacity, he has become a resource person within the film community, providing access to films from his private database.

The Memory Keeper

Kang Sheng is not alone in preserving Singapore’s film history. Institutions like the Asian Film Archive (AFA) are part of that ecosystem, each with their own mandate. While AFA has an open call for filmmakers to submit films for preservation, their collection guidelines include several criteria for determining which films they will accept, such as the quality and significance to Asian cinema, the level of care the materials are receiving, and whether they are at immediate risk of deterioration or loss. Upon enquiry, AFA shared that they also accept film-related paper and digital records, depending on whether they provide historical context, cultural insight, or research value alongside the filmic works themselves. AFA does not currently collect props, costumes, or large items like equipment.

Although his work also involves preservation and digitisation, Kang Sheng doesn’t view himself as an archivist. Unlike organisations that have to assess which artefacts to prioritise for conservation, and whether a film merits a place in the archive, Kang Sheng doesn’t discriminate. He accepts materials that are “on their way to the trash”, as he puts it. To him, every film and artefact is an integral part of Singapore’s film history, worthy of being seen and talked about regardless of artistic quality or production value.

Protecting these physical artefacts without purpose-built infrastructure demands plenty of resources: Kang Sheng pays monthly rent for the storeroom, stores certain items in ziplock bags, and keeps the dehumidifier running constantly. He also worries about the building’s limited air-conditioning, which is switched on only between Monday and Saturday. Conscious that these are not optimal conditions for physical preservation, Kang Sheng would happily pass everything to any institution that might be interested to take over from him.

By rescuing all these paraphernalia and digitising as many films as he can, he hopes others might be able to “connect the dots” in the larger network of artists, filmmakers, and crew members involved in film production. According to Kang Sheng, the 90s independent film scene also had ties to the music industry. He gives the example of Joe Ng, who played Johnny in Mee Pok Man, as one of the creative forces behind the soundtrack of another beloved local film, Eating Air (1999, Kelvin Tong and Jasmine Ng). If such connections are identified, the film renaissance of the 1990s can be contextualised within Singapore’s larger arts scene. “We have become hyper-focused on directors and their body of work,” he lamented, and this fixation on auteurs means we might lose sight of the collaborative nature of filmmaking. Kang Sheng hopes that as more films from the past come to light, the film community will be able to appreciate the interdisciplinary cross-pollinations behind these films.

Given Singapore’s short film history, he thinks it is possible to comprehensively document everything, at least up to the mid-2010s, when the social media boom and phone cameras led to a proliferation of videos and digital content. The importance of documentation was underscored when Kang Sheng learnt that the cast and crew involved in earlier productions had sadly passed on. He had managed to interview Catherine Tan, who played a bar hostess in Perth: The Geylang Massacre (2004, Djinn), just before her passing. As he says, the preservation of our film history is a race against time, and our cultural memories need to be chronicled before it is too late.

Kang Sheng has emerged as an independent, temporary custodian of Singapore’s cinematic heritage, uniquely positioned to catch the films, objects, and documents that might otherwise fall through the cracks. While archives have an important role in preserving our cinematic heritage, he has intimate knowledge of, and immediate access to, local filmmakers. He hears directly from them when they need to declutter, and can step in quickly to rescue artefacts. Although institutions have more appropriate facilities to store and preserve these films and artefacts, it’s not hard to see why a filmmaker might find comfort in leaving their materials with a trusted friend who is personally invested in their work.

There is something romantic, and tenuous, about the whole undertaking. As I learned about the time and effort he puts into this project, I can only describe it as a Herculean feat. Despite his best efforts, without extensive resources or a trained team to support him, Kang Sheng’s project is a fragile bulwark against the vagaries of time.

At present, he has sufficient means to maintain his private collection, which is open only to friends and colleagues who are interested in visiting the space. One day, if the opportunity arises, he hopes these films and memorabilia can be publicly showcased. “There are already initiatives promoting local film,” he notes, “but a permanent space, like a museum with dedicated movie theatres, could bring together the fragments of our moving image history in a more comprehensive manner.” If a local museum like this ever comes to pass, Kang Sheng’s collection would be a critical contribution. For now, it is a time capsule of Singapore’s cinematic past, a constellation of memories waiting for someone to connect the dots.

All photos were taken by the author.

Ivan Chin is a film critic who has written for Singapore Film Society, Sinema, and Asian Film Archive. He has a particular interest in films from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. In his articles, he hopes to expose the rich histories and cultures that they represent.

Leaving the Movie Theatre

Lu Ann

On the last Saturday of April, Rafy and I joined a youthful crowd in FFIGS’s “A Contrary Communing of Cinema”, a walk that explored the lived and historical realities of Chinatown across six site-specific film experiences. As the programmer Daryl Cheong led us around with a portable projector in tow, there was something familiar about the way we walked from place to place, instinctively forming two straight rows, as if on a school excursion. But unlike a sanctioned outing, there was a sense that we were engaging in an illicit activity, assembling to watch films in public.

We began at the arts enclave, Pearl’s Hill Terrace, in Cheong’s studio, with Seth Cheong’s Dogma 65 (2025), which starred and was produced by the programmer himself. Featuring the struggles and rivalry of two young filmmakers in Singapore, the film made inside jokes about cinephilia and the local film industry. Our very presence became a meta, existential point of reflection on the transient nature of space in Singapore, especially in light of the next film. Projected in the corridor at Cheong’s studio, Tan Wei Ting’s Still Standing (2019) reimagined the design and subsequent demolition of Pearl Bank Apartments despite 92% of residents voting against the en-bloc. It was a sobering reminder that Pearl’s Hill Terrace is also set to be redeveloped in 2028.

The walk extended to Sago Lane, where Wong Chen-Hsi’s Conversations on Sago Lane (2010) was projected in a quiet walkway. The documentary featured oral accounts of the elderly who lived through the war and their life along the “death houses” or funeral parlours on the street — memories at risk of being lost, without an effort to record or revisit them.

Also bringing visibility to the marginalised, Fadzli Jambari’s The Art of Cruising (2025) operates on codes legible only to the gay community. Standing on a grass patch between Ten Mens Club and a cruising site, a western voice recounts their experience of cruising practices in the UK and Singapore. The foreign accent and my unfamiliarity with local cruising sites created a doubled sense of dissonance; the film seemed to trust me with a well-guarded secret.

My anxiety about whether anyone might stop us or ask for a permit was heightened at an alleyway beside 99 Old Tree Durian, where I spotted a CCTV in a corner. There, we watched two friends in Nelson Yeo’s Durian, Durian (2024) lie in the shade of durian trees to plot their exit from life. My fears did not come to pass: nobody approached us except to watch the film, and I soon relaxed. It had been unbearably warm the entire evening, but as I bit into a durian choux puff, the cool sweetness of durian momentarily dispelled the heat.

The walk concluded at Goethe-Institut’s terrace with three colonial-era films. Shot through an ethnographic or propagandistic lens, and now housed in colonial archives, these newsreels updated the empire of its thriving colonies and ostensibly captured scenes of daily life. One reel, showing coolie boys diving for coins, was in fact staged: the coins were thrown into the water to create this scene of economic desperation. Behind us was the glittering skyline of Singapore’s financial district, a fitting backdrop for films which marketed the colonial regime’s modernising mission, a narrative of economic prosperity also promoted by Singapore’s post-independence government. But what inconvenient truths lurk beneath this facade of riches, like coins thrown into the water?

As we tucked into grass jelly and soy milk laid out for us by the FFIGS collective, I thought about how the walk was designed to bring us closer to the communities and into the very spaces we saw onscreen. Compared to the sedentary comfort of a dark, air-conditioned cinema, walking in the heat while worrying about our unauthorised public screenings was surprisingly invigorating. We were trying to recover perspectives relegated to the margins — even if it meant skirting the borders of legality.

Brief Encounters

Rafy Michael

To tune out the rest of the world, I have a ritual of ensconcing myself in the darkest room of my house, jealously guarding my solitude whenever I’m reading or watching something. My preference for privacy was challenged during this site-specific film walk, as we entered the spaces that people inhabit and watched films while they went on with their various activities. Like Lu Ann, who discussed the relationship between the films and screening sites, I was struck by how the intersection of architecture, movement of pedestrians, and weather contributed to the “lived-in” quality of the experience. I became acutely aware of my surroundings, and my position and responsibility as an audience member.

Near Sago Lane, we watched Conversations on Sago Lane, an oral history of the titular street by its elderly residents. Projected on a wall between two shuttered shops, the film was screened in the neighbourhood it had taken as its subject, amidst the flow of daily life. Passersby walked past the projector’s beam, holding groceries, or strolling after dinner, their silhouettes forming dark shadows on the projection. At one point, as the interviewees in the film recounted their memories of the war and reflected on mortality, an elderly woman in a colourful shirt walked over to see what we were up to.

As she stood with us and became a fellow audience member, I wondered what she might think about the recorded interviews, or if she might have known any of the subjects onscreen. She had joined us in the middle of the documentary and stayed for the rest of it. At the end of the film, we left for the next location. She did not follow us on the walk. The experience of moving between venues, as an audience member in transit, made me the true passerby there.

On their Instagram post for the event, FFIGS proposes that “MOVIE magic is ALLLL AROUNDDD YOUuuUUuuu! who say cinema can only be experienced in theatres or quote-unquote ‘legit’ spaces.” Taking film projection to the streets certainly creates the possibility for anyone to spontaneously encounter these films. During the screening, several onlookers expressed curiosity, and the programmer, Daryl, would approach them to explain what was happening. But we did not stay long enough to converse with them, nor did we actively seek out their opinions on the films. Their participation was limited by the itinerant nature of the programme, and did not extend to the discussions we had at the Goethe-Institut, amongst those who had signed up for the film walk.

As someone who typically enjoys films alone, this programme led me to question how audiences with different relationships to a film’s themes and settings would respond to it. How would a film, shown in the same spaces it represents, speak to members of the local community, instead of an outsider like myself? I got a glimpse of the estate’s history through Conversations on Sago Lane, but never found out how this documentary, made over 15 years ago, might resonate with those who live and work there, who have a personal attachment to the site and a stake in its future. Without audiences engaging with current residents and business owners, the film remains a document of what was, and a missed opportunity to discuss what is, or could be.

Lu Ann is a writer and art enthusiast who is broadly interested in how images circulate across different cultures and spaces.

Rafy Michael is a Fine Arts student with an interest in experimental storytelling and a love for artful experiences that ignites passion and curiosity. Beyond work as a set designer, you can find him painting at home or reading at the beach with an aperol spritz in hand.

“What is love? Every day, in a movie, a book, or a drama, I feel love; I learn about love. My heart keeps beating as if it’s my own story; it pounds and swells with hope — I want to know so bad.” — “What is Love”, TWICE.

From August 2023 to August 2025, I was, briefly, a “Film Professional”. At least, according to my pass at the Cannes Film Festival. Attending world premieres at historic venues like the Grand Théâtre Lumière might seem like a bucket list item for a film lover, something a true cinephile might work towards and plan for far in advance. In fact, I had ended up in Cannes more by chance than through any calculated career move, the same way I had found myself working in “the film industry” through a serendipitous turn of events.

In 2017, I was fresh out of Junior College with half a year to kill before university. On a visit to the National Library, I was riding the escalators up floor by floor on a whim when I stumbled upon the Asian Film Archive (AFA). AFA, I would soon learn, is a Singapore-based non-profit organisation with a mission to save, share, and explore the art of Asian film. It holds a collection of mostly independent films, including all surviving classic Malay films by Cathay-Keris Films (one of two dominant film studios in 1950s–1960s Singapore), films funded by the Singapore Film Commission, and works by notable filmmakers from Southeast Asia like Mike de Leon, Tan Chui Mui, Eric Khoo, and Midi Z. Its office walls are plastered with posters of famous Asian classics — Pyaasa (1957, Guru Dutt), Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujirō Ozu), Yellow Earth (1984, Chen Kaige) — and the doors are almost fully frosted, except for a tantalising band of clear glass. This was the first time I had heard of AFA. Out of sheer curiosity, I rang the doorbell and asked if they needed volunteers.

For four months, I visited the AFA office around twice a week to check that their DVDs were functioning properly and that backup copies of each film were available. Tasked with playing through the DVDs, I watched more than a hundred films during my time there, mostly the early works of independent Southeast Asian filmmakers. These tended to have a slower pace than Hollywood blockbusters and were by no means an easy watch — the storytelling was often non-linear and the dialogue scant, while the scripts engaged with complex sociopolitical issues that defied easy resolution. A few films were just plain “weird”. Have you ever watched a camera zoom out of a cup of coffee, revealing the white flakes falling in it to be dandruff, not milk powder? Or seen a Ronald McDonald statue catapult out of the sky into a hut? These scenes from Indonesian director Edwin’s short films harnessed the bizarre as metaphors for ruptures in the fabric of Indonesian family life caused by gentrification and urbanisation. Yet, while these films posed an intellectual challenge, I also found in them a comfort I had never experienced before. Many featured familiar languages and accents, and were set against recognisable landscapes like mangroves and tropical forests. They included characters who rode the same mopeds as my Malaysian relatives, who sported the same Tat Sing rubber slippers I wore. I had never felt more connected with the worlds I saw onscreen, and these films were formative to my understanding of cinema.

Still, they didn’t immediately change my life trajectory. At the end of those four months, I went to China to study international politics as planned, with DVDs stowed in my luggage. I’d brought along Glen Goei’s Forever Fever (1998) and Woo Ming Jin’s Woman on Fire Looks for Water (2009), a couple of favourites from my time at AFA, to introduce to my university friends, but they weren’t very interested. Perhaps I could have promoted them better, or checked out the China Film Archive’s screenings. In any case, I was busy finishing coursework and wasn’t watching films as regularly as before. Film remained a peripheral, if comforting, part of my life through university, graduation, and my first job.

Then, in June 2023, I got a newsletter from AFA, announcing that they were looking for a new archive officer. I had initially intended to keep working in a field related to my studies, but when this opportunity arose, I took the leap. I got the job and settled into a routine: first, a teh bing from the Old Chang Kee on Level 1; then, emailing filmmakers to archive their films, checking and transferring film files for upcoming screenings, cataloguing films and making DVDs available for free on-site viewing at the Reference Library. Now, I was surrounded by colleagues who were interested in the same films as I was, and we would go for screenings together after work. Working full-time in AFA’s collections team was a kind of homecoming, a return to the place where my love of film had taken root.

It was also in this role that a new existential crisis was born. I knew I was behind others in my film knowledge when I joined AFA, but I hadn’t realised how much time, effort, and stamina it would take to catch up. I had some understanding of AFA’s collection from my volunteering experience, and like every self-styled arts kid, could form “critical thoughts” about films after watching them, though my knowledge of the “film canon” was sorely lacking. I worried constantly that someone would realise I did not deserve my job at the archive. The solution seemed simple — just watch more films, which I did. I got a Projector membership; I went for AFA’s screenings at Oldham Theatre up to six times a week (staff got free entry; my favourite perk). Even then, I couldn’t keep up with the pace at which people around me consumed films — my colleagues, the regulars at AFA’s screenings, even a new friend who’d said he was only just getting into films but whose “watched” count on Letterboxd soon surpassed mine. They were at the same screenings I went to, and watched even more films at home. They could trace the influences of earlier works in films I’d found so original, and wrote intellectual reviews on Letterboxd, commenting on creative choices and situating films within an auteur’s body of work. Meanwhile, my reviews read: “no logic just vibes 🍳” — on Gudetama: An Eggcellent Adventure (2022); “I felt it!! The Magic of Cinema!!” — on Amélie (2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet); and “How does someone think of a story and write a script like this??” — on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry).

Surrounded by film buffs, my imposter syndrome deepened and I eventually latched onto the “cinephile” as a model for who I thought I should be, as an archive officer at AFA, and wasn’t sure if I really was.

On Cinephilia

Taken at face value, the word “cinephilia” is a portmanteau of “cine” and “philia”, an ancient Greek word for love. It means “love of cinema”. If a cinephile is a lover of cinema, then shouldn’t it be obvious if you’re a cinephile? After all, how can you not know when you’re in love? And cinema is easy to love. Nothing quite matches the magic of film, especially on the big screen. A film can immerse you in a world that would otherwise be inaccessible. Through sight and sound, it can evoke a range of other sensations: you can almost feel the heat rising from a shimmering beach in Iran while you’re seated in an air-conditioned Singapore theatre; you can practically smell the rot as a globule of flesh drips off a man morphing into a fly. You can lose yourself in a reel world that feels utterly real.

I caught all these feelings while watching films, but as with any relationship, love isn’t only about emotion; it needs to be supported by action. In her influential 1996 think piece, “The Decay of Cinema”, cultural philosopher Susan Sontag asserts that there is a “distinctive cinephilic love of movies that is not simply love of but a certain taste in films” (emphasis mine). Sontag mourned the cinephilia of the 1960s and 1970s, embodied in the zealous moviegoer who simply devoured films, frequented cinematheques and film clubs, and read magazines like Cahiers du Cinema. By the time she was writing, that era of passionate cinephilia had passed, and big-budget “hyperindustrial” movies dominated the market. Sontag advocated for a more engaged, discerning cine-love to support cinema’s survival as an art form. Her call seems even more urgent in our own age of franchise films, amidst the growth of streaming platforms and ongoing closure of cinemas. Given finite resources like time, money, and attention, it follows that if we claim to love film, we should be going to the theatres and buying tickets to arthouse films.

There’s nothing wrong with Sontag’s argument, except it fails to acknowledge questions of accessibility. Her version of cinephilia involves watching films in cinemas and appreciating “the Greats” — a decidedly Eurocentric and retrospective canon of films. However, depending on where one lives, one might not have access to a variety of independent films and restored classics, nor the optimal conditions for watching them. What if local theatres are only screening remakes and blockbusters? What if these “hyperindustrial” films are drawing people to cinemas in the first place and sustaining the movie theatres? Now, as I engage with different film cultures, I observe how cinephilia can take many forms.

Having left Singapore and AFA to teach English in rural Japan, my own relationship with film has changed radically. My town has only one cinema, a commercial multiplex that usually screens animated movies and the latest Japanese idol vehicles, but it seems to be well-attended by local residents, including my students. Moreover, fan culture here is active in a way I haven’t witnessed elsewhere: whether there’s a buzzy new title or a quieter release, there will often be related products available for sale, from A4 files to movie pamphlets containing interviews and film stills. Japanese audiences eagerly collect all manner of merchandise, and will snap up the free eiga chirashi, movie flyers featuring beloved actors. I’m not sure they would consider themselves cinephiles. Sontag probably wouldn’t. Still, there is enough love to keep cinema alive, even in this small town.

When it comes to a shared love of cinema, I find there are enough similarities to rejoice over, and no need to split hairs over differences. In conversations with the colleagues and friends I had felt like an imposter around, I realised we had more in common than I’d thought. I once told a director over coffee that I felt guilty for watching cheesy manga adaptations instead of brushing up on the works of highly acclaimed auteurs like Andrei Tarkovsky, because I couldn’t find uninterrupted stretches of time nor the right headspace to do justice to his cinematic masterpieces. She confessed she had never watched Tarkovsky either, and suggested we watch his films together in a more relaxed atmosphere — over a “Tarkoffee”, if you will.

Another of my guilty pleasures was watching films on my tiny, cracked iPhone screen; I had a theory that a good film would captivate you whether you saw it on a small screen or a big one. When I shared this with a film-obsessed friend, she exclaimed and showed me a video of the famed director David Lynch going, “It’s such a sadness that you think you’ve seen a film on your fucking telephone. Get real.” I thought I was being outed as an unserious film lover, but later sensed that she was mostly excited to show this legendary interview to another person; she wasn’t actually policing my screen size. Sometime later, while watching Wong Kar-Wai’s lusciously saturated, wide-angle Fallen Angels (1995) on a small screen, I decided I would indeed prefer to watch certain films on a bigger screen, and invested in a projector set-up. Not because I felt obliged to, but because I now wanted to.

Even at Cannes, where there are various classes of accreditation like “Film Professional”, “Cinephile”, and “Press”, and your relationship with (or economic interests in) film is a condition of access, no one cares whether you “truly” love film. People are too busy doing business, and those without business have too many films to catch. I had a whale of a time, watching all the films I wanted without the pressure of having any work to do, seeing film star EDDIE PENG (!!!) IN THE FLESH (!!!) WITH HIS DOG (!!!!!!). These memories still bring on a rush of dopamine two years after my trip, as I recall the energy of the festival, the thrill of spotting celebrities, the joy of walking the red carpet in an evening dress my aunt had altered, and making new friends while waiting in line. No one grilled me on the depths of my film knowledge. They probably had lists of films others told them they should watch, that they hadn’t gotten to either. One thing I’ve noticed from my encounters with film lovers: the deeper someone gets into film, the less they’ll care about what you haven’t watched, and the more excited they’ll get about what you can watch for the first time.

These days, I no longer qualify for an industry pass, and the films I choose to watch, or not, are unrelated to my job. Yet, the question of whether I am a genuine cinephile, or a fraud, still makes me uneasy because the archetype of the cinephile doesn’t quite capture the shifting, amorphous nature of identity. There’s 17-year-old me, stepping into AFA for the first time, without so much as a working DVD player at home. Then there’s 27-year-old me, leaving AFA behind for a new country with its own rich and unique film culture, now the proud owner of a projector, with plans to visit more film festivals. Who knows how 37-year-old me will engage with film? As my relationship with cinema evolves, I’ve come to see that love doesn’t have to be measured by how refined our taste is, how extensive our knowledge, nor how elaborate our home theatre set-up. It can be as simple as continuing to show up, wherever and however we can. When I think about all the films I have yet to discover and fall in love with, my heart pounds and swells with hope — I can’t wait to learn what’s there.

Sim Jia Ling was a poet in her teens and is currently going through a transitional phase of life. This is her first published piece of film-related writing.

Last Saturday evening, the editors of CORRESPONDENCE crowded into the back of a small classroom at the Goethe-Institut. We joined a full house for “A Tactile Gastronomical Encounter”, the first event of the 2026 season hosted by independent film collective FFIGS. Donning a towering chef’s hat, the programmer shared the inspiration behind his curation: the effects of the environment on his body during long walks around his neighbourhood. By pairing short films about Singapore’s physical environment with snacks of related taste and texture, he sought to turn the viewing of films into an embodied experience, expanding what it means to “consume” media.

The first course was a rainbow kueh lapis served with Ben Tan Kai Xiang and Grace Cheu Li Qing’s prismatic animation Mountain Mountain (2025). The film opens with two siblings in a cable car ascending to the peak of Mount Faber — a misnomer, since Mount Faber is, technically, a hill. Like a child stretching out the pleasures of a dessert, the film peels back layers of memories, as the characters recall their childhood longing to see actual mountains in all their majesty. The nostalgic treat returned us to our younger selves, our yearning to scale the grandest heights and stand before vast vistas of possibility.

The theme of innocence lost, and rediscovered, continued with Joshua Ashley Pereira’s Cloudy (2023), a short animation about a lonely man who befriends a little cloud and finds renewed purpose in sustaining his new companion until it rejoins its parent cloud. This film was accompanied by cotton candy, the fluffy pink confection reminiscent of the film’s titular character. But the soft pillow of sugar had crystallised into rock candy by the time it was handed to us, reminding us of droplets gathering into clouds, or grains of sand coalescing into solid ground. An inadvertent metaphor for sedimentation and solidification, which turned out to be the perfect segue into the next film, Carin Leong’s Sandcastles (2024). The documentary parallels the fates of two Singapores: Singapore, Singapore shores up its progress through land reclamation, while Singapore, Michigan, a once-prosperous 19th-century lumber town, is now buried under sand dunes caused by soil erosion from prolonged deforestation. This cautionary tale came with a side of peanut muah chee, glutinous rice cakes coated in ground peanuts, of the same colour and gritty mouthfeel as sand. The crumbs slipped between our teeth, reflecting the futility of keeping up with Singapore’s endless pursuit of territorial expansion and economic growth.

Given Singapore’s rapid urban redevelopment, our relationship to our neighbourhoods and the natural world often becomes collateral damage — the focus of Like Shadows Through Leaves (2021) by Lucy Davis and the Migrant Ecologies Project. Introducing the film, FFIGS passed around the final course of crispy mealworms and tom yum-flavoured crickets to loud gasps in the room. Despite the initial hesitation, the audience was soon knocking back handfuls of insects as the documentary transported us into the forests around Tanglin Halt, a vacated housing estate that echoes with the symphony of birdsong and the stories of former residents. The earthy scent of the crickets and mealworms made us feel like a flock of birds, anticipating a not-too-distant future where bugs might well replace popcorn as a default movie snack.

With our media diet largely comprising content from social feeds and streaming platforms, our visual and auditory senses are constantly engaged. “A Tactile Gastronomical Encounter” enlists the other senses — smell, taste, and touch — by finding edible equivalents to the moods, images, and characters onscreen. As we bit into keuh lapis and munched on mealworms, the films took on a physical form, meeting our tongues and passing into our bodies, to be digested more fully.

This season at FFIGS will continue with more exciting offerings, from screenings to performances, powerpoint parties to industry sharing sessions. If you’re an aspiring critic keen to document these off-beat events, apply to our first writing workshop, Roving Correspondents. The programme will be run by film writer Sasha Han, who has been part of critics labs in Locarno Film Festival, Far East Film Festival, and the Singapore International Film Festival. Her writing has been published by the Asian Film Archive, Documentary Magazine, Film Comment, Literary Hub, MARG1N Magazine, Mekong Review, and the Singapore Film Society. Her film programmes have been presented in Festival Film Dokumenter and Queer East.

Selected writers will be guided to produce short-form writing in response to a series of community events.

You can find more details on the programme here. Applications close 17 April 2026, so register your interest now and help us spread the word!

CORRESPONDENCE welcomes applications to our first writing workshop, Roving Correspondents. Over a period of six months, two young writers will have the opportunity to develop critical responses to a series of film events. Selected participants will receive editorial support and exposure to the process of pitching, writing, revising, and preparing a piece for publication.

The programme will be run by film writer Sasha Han. She has been part of critics labs in Locarno Film Festival, Far East Film Festival, and the Singapore International Film Festival. Her writing has been published by the Asian Film Archive, Documentary Magazine, Film Comment, Literary Hub, MARG1N Magazine, Mekong Review, and the Singapore Film Society. Her film programmes have been presented in Festival Film Dokumenter and Queer East.

For the inaugural edition of Roving Correspondents, participants will be attending a total of five monthly community events hosted by FFIGS, a collective of programmers, artists, and community-builders. Please refer to the schedule below:

These community events will be held on the last Saturday of every month. For timings that are TBC, please keep your whole day free until timings are finalised; participants will be notified as soon as possible. A discussion with the editors will be scheduled the day after, on the last Sunday of every month. Participants are required to attend all events, as well as the editorial discussions the following day.

After each event, participants will be guided to write a short response (400–⁠500 words) reflecting on their experience. They will get hands-on practice in documenting and providing commentary on cultural events, producing five pieces of writing by the end of the workshop.

In the spirit of a call-and-response, participants will be put in conversation with each other and their writing will be published as a pair every month. Throughout the programme, they will have the opportunity to develop their own style and express their point of view as an individual writer, while engaging in a constructive dialogue with their fellow critics.

We invite applications from aspiring writers and cultural critics between 18 to 25 years old. No prior experience as a writer nor formal training in film is necessary; interested applicants are only required to fill up a short questionnaire to register their interest.

Participants will be provided with a stipend in recognition of their time and effort.

Applications to Roving Correspondents have closed. If you are interested in the programme, please look forward to the next iteration and apply again.

Dear readers,

We hope you’ve been able to rest and recover after the whirlwind of the festival.

In our round-up issue, we look back at the themes and subjects across the articles published in The Daily. As the year draws to a close, we find it opportune to revisit the questions and concerns which surfaced during the festival, and which will remain pertinent as we prepare for the year ahead.

In a special piece, film programmer Renee Ng reflects on her experience at the FFIGS Lounge, how it became a home for spontaneous interactions and expanded the possibilities of what a film festival could be.

With that, the inaugural edition of The Daily comes to an end. We are giving away one last complete set of print copies, including an exclusive print issue with our editorial round-up and Renee’s personal essay. Any Ko-fi contribution of $10 or more gives you a chance to win this limited collection — head to our Instagram to enter the giveaway:

CORRESPONDENCE will return in 2026, with more details to come.

Happy holidays to you and your loved ones!

Best,
Sasha and Tracey

The 10 days when I practically lived at the FFIGS Lounge proved to me that there was indeed a longing for such a space. Many who came were young students, critics and cinephiles whose faces or Letterboxd handles I vaguely knew and I’m glad I can finally put a name to. I was amused when the same few showed up with the express aim of clinching the latest CORRESPONDENCE issue, and when I heard of a cinephile making the pilgrimage just to find someone to rant to about a film he’d seen. At our showcases, Transgressions: Experimental Student Films from First Shot(s) X-Change and our Rejected Films Potluck, we enjoyed the spontaneity of moving images being shared and experienced together. No curation or expectation of merit; every film a pure surprise to behold. Some days were sleepy, others chaotic. While there were points I noted for improvement (more nooks and seating islands would have inclined visitors to stay), there was a sense that something was coming to life. Maybe it was the space, the furniture, our film merch trinket shelf, or the hand-drawn felt wasps crawling all over. When people chatted and napped, they gathered their own chairs and fluffed their own pillows. We were at home. It was a feeling I wanted to hold onto and remember forever.

At one of our guest lunches with friends at the FFIGS Lounge, I sat next to Ben Slater as he regaled us with histories of SIFF and SGIFF, a winding odyssey of miracles, strides, precedents, friendships, teams coming together, disbanding, and metamorphosing. All this he recounted to a circle of young-uns, myself included. I was struck by the same bewilderment I had when I read 25: Histories and Memories of the Singapore International Film Festival, to step back and see the festival (or Singapore’s film scene) plagued by the same joys and struggles, wins and losses. As if we were and will continually be subjected to a mythical constellation of pre-ordained events, doomed to an institutional amnesia that separates veterans from incoming festival staff and cinephiles. Huddled in 136 Goethe Basement Lab, it felt like an important moment of knowledge being passed down and held in our unknowing hands. I wondered if 20 years down the road, we might also regale the next generation with tales of how we pulled off the greatest prank (and party) of all time — this reverse film festival and cinephile playground, the illegitimate brainchild we christened FFIGS.

At the same time, I saw again how the 10 days we shared were marked by ephemerality. The fizzy spontaneity of randos walking in and picking up conversations; divine mages ShuaiGeCentral, Umbra, and MdmDotty who each spawned out of nowhere, generously offering their talents for free. Just as CORRESPONDENCE (and the WASSPS ON THE WALL gossip column) germinated rapidly, FFIGS was born and laid to rest (for now) within the 10 days that it festered. We made new friends and shared honest perspectives. We scrawled confessions, and film reviews ranging from raunchy to incisive and heart-wrenching into a handmade guest book I stitched together from whatever scrap film ephemera I could find in my paper tin. After our parody FFIGS x COCKEYE Awkward Awards, a cross between a neighbourhood beauty pageant and a birthday show, we held a table read of the Exquisite Corpse Screenplay with a modest but bubbly audience of 20. Written anonymously over 10 days by whoever wished to continue the story, the script organically evolved into a supernatural action-packed ensemble piece (with possible influences from the recent We Can Save The World!!!) starring SGIFF’s celebrity guests, local film personas, a personified form of The Projector, and more. It was the campiest, dirtiest, most unfiltered, laugh-out-loud script ever. As in any cult film, underneath the funny voices and laughter, was the space it held for our very real shared anxieties — the closure of The Projector, the endless tussle with bureaucracy, the constipated state of our self-censored art scene. I wondered how all this could be remembered in any ‘proper’ way. If we perished tomorrow, the only written record of us would be a string of shitposts, one F Zine article, and ominous mentions in the few A3 copies of CORRESPONDENCE in existence. As it should be.

A fig wasp’s lifespan is notoriously short. Two weeks into our social media launch, someone DM-ed us a nature documentary reel on the mutualistic relationship between figs and wasps, the crucial metaphor behind our title and logo. I watched extreme close-ups of the oddly sensual and slimy way wasps burrow and pollinate a fig’s butthole, dying dramatically after laying its eggs. As the eggs hatch, the bastard children of the dead wasp immediately engage in incest, before battling their way out into the world in search of a new fig to pollinate. There is a funny, but strangely fitting, double entendre of codependent alien-like impregnation at work here. Like the fig and wasp, our relationship with SGIFF would always be transient, codependent, playful, flirtatious, and symbiotic. Mama wasp may be dead, but pregnant baby wasps infest the skies.

FFIGS will be back.

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Renee Ng is a film programmer and video editor. She enjoys all manner of collage work and is interested in the socio-cultural relationships that films and cinephilia share with the world.

A correspondence comes into being when a writer sends their piece out into the world. Writing demands a measure of vulnerability; the writer shares their thoughts and at times, lays bare their heart, opening themselves to judgment and critique. For that, we thank our writers.

As we put together the various issues, we noticed thematic parallels and recurring preoccupations across pieces — throughlines revealing the shared concerns of critics, programmers, and film workers today.

The question of visibility and representation is intrinsically at the heart of any discussion on screen culture. Meditating on Sascha Milinski’s Sound of Falling (2025), Daniel Hui pens an ode to the spirits of the dead who linger around us, while Dora Leu writes about Alexandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf (2025), and how it brings us to an awareness of the imperceptible life deposited in every pixel. Playing on our senses, cinema draws our attention to the edge of the visible and opens up new realms in our consciousness. In her piece, Tracey Toh writes about how Julián Galay’s expanded cinema induces dreams and conducts us into a heightened state of susceptibility. Likewise, Dora’s interview with Lin Htet Aung, director of A Metamorphosis (2025), delves into the film’s capture of an uncanny feeling, that of waking up in front of the tv, mind awash with images.

With its propensity to conjure illusions, cinema lends itself to the exploration of dreams — the subject of Nurain Amin’s Proposals for the Interpretation of a Dream (2025). In the short film, a young girl, played by Nurain, tries to decode a recurrent nightmare in which she finds herself in an empty old house. When speaking to angels yields no answers, she dials a live hotline that connects her to a tarot medium, eventually leading her to a girl she finds oddly familiar. Made in the wake of her grandmother’s passing, Nurain’s film evokes the sense of helplessness that accompanies grief, the desperate search for familiarity and meaning in the aftermath of loss. Though it remains in the SINGAPORE PANORAMA section, the film was refused classification by the IMDA and could not be screened. Programmer Vess Chua writes about the conspicuous absence which arises when certain films are withheld from public viewing, compounding the crisis of visibility that short films already suffer from.

As with any programme, the silences and omissions in films are as important as what we see. Aditi Shivaramakrishnan and Saksham Mehrotra argue for the value of films that centre a specific culture, or a historical chapter, while attending to the ways these works might elide other realities.

Many writers were sensitive to these contradictions, which inhere in art, as in life. Several used films as a focal point, through which they examined the tension of being an individual while bound to a community — a tension that surfaces in fraught familial relations, as discussed by Wenxin Gao, Phyllis Chan, Morris Yang, Savunthara Seng, and Alyssandra Maxine, in her conversation with directors Grace Song and Gabriela Serrano.

Other writers approach films as a site of cultural critique, analysing how people are fashioned, or failed, by society. Amadeus Yeo puzzles over Hong Sang-soo’s latest addition to his tapestry of misogynistic men. Critic Amarsanaa Battulga and educator Teng Qian Xi observe how identities, friendships, and affection are tangled up with the extractive forces of capitalism. To survive, people resort to painful compromises, a point made by Ryan Lim, who coins the term festivality to describe the expectation that cultural workers not only show up, but match the buoyant, celebratory mood of a festival.

Even as the excitement around the festival subsides, filmmakers and moviegoers continue to confront long-term problems regarding the decline in cinema attendance and the closure of independent cinemas. Several articles in The Daily address the state of cinema in Singapore: Vincent Quek of Anticipate Pictures poses the question of how local audiences will get to watch local films beyond SGIFF, while producers Lee Yi Jia and Martin Loh share their strategies for encouraging people to go to the theatres. In their interview with Sasha Han, UNDERCURRENT programmers Sam I-shan and Gabriel Goh also open up about the challenges of cultivating an audience for experimental moving image works.

Amid a precarious climate for cinema, writing clarifies what is at stake. Reflecting on Polen Ly’s Becoming Human (2025), Saksham Mehrotra recalls a childhood spent in the communal cinemas of India, reminding us of what we stand to lose when only commercial cineplexes remain. LANDMARK programmer Alexander Lee expounds on the need to preserve our filmic heritage through restoration, while Just Another Filmmaker takes aim at the pursuit of superficial images over substantive narratives. These pieces issue a rousing call for us to fight for the spaces we cherish; to back the work we believe matters.

As cinema attempts to survive within an attention economy, a film festival becomes an even more critical locus for the industry. Several contributors reflect on the history and developments of SGIFF, as a dedicated time and space to gather as a community, and to platform promising young filmmakers. Ben Slater composes a personal microhistory that charts the evolution of SIFF to SGIFF. As the regional festival circuit continues to evolve, Jason Tan Liwag interrogates the adherence to premiere requirements, given the distinctive economy and philosophy of short-form cinema. Meanwhile, other pieces consider how a festival guides its audience and nurtures its most ardent followers. Independent programmer Viknesh Kobinathan compares the different sections in the festival to a map that bewilders rather than orientates audiences, and Benjamin Yap asks whether the Cinephile Pass truly supports aspiring critics and content creators. And what of the passionate volunteers who keep the festival running? Two dedications, by Daryl Cheong and Grace Song, shine a light on their unseen but indispensable labour, returning us to the theme of visibility, and its converse, invisibility.

Writing is an art of noticing, paying attention to what is overlooked, or putting what feels unsayable into words. In articulating an intuition, each piece of writing is an opening for a conversation. This is integral to a culture of healthy discourse, as the writer elucidates the reasoning behind their conviction and allows readers to decide for themselves. Not everyone will share the sentiments expressed, and we welcome those with a different perspective to write in and share their thoughts on the subject. Our editorial policy is to publish diverse and dissenting voices in a lively exchange with one another.

Together, these essays and conversations form an archive of ideas and experiences — lines of inquiry that are still unfurling. In writing, a film lives on, each article becoming an indelible record of the film’s existence, even beyond a screening, or despite the lack of one. Long after a theatrical run, or a festival, we hope these pieces will invite you to dwell on your encounter with cinema.

Dear readers,

On the last day of the festival, we turn our focus to the place of films within an evolving social discourse. Last night, the editors caught Lin Htet Aung’s A Metamorphosis (2025), featured in today’s issue and Gabriela Serrano’s Elenita Elena Elaine (2025), discussed in yesterday’s issue. Both are short films that explore how the psyche of a population is shaped by popular media and bleak political realities.

Our final issue tackles the politics of representation and the portrayal of history in cinema. Saksham Mehrotra writes about the controversy around Deepa Mehta’s Funny Boy (2020), and proposes ways of critically engaging with a film that misrepresents the Sri Lankan Tamil community. Dora Leu interviews Lin Htet Aung about creating work that captures the sensations of life in Myanmar under the current political regime, and bookmarking history for the future. These pieces reinforce the value of film as an important locus in ongoing conversations about representation, as well as documentation for posterity.

Our correspondence will continue with a round-up of The Daily by the editors, and a reflection by our supporters at FFIGS. The pieces will be released on 13 Dec, the same day the festival hosts its encore screenings. 📮

A Metamorphosis has a strong visual concept with dense images and references. Could you walk us through the visual codes in your film?

Lin Htet: I wanted to make a film in colour because my previous shorts had been black and white. People usually begin with objects or stories, but I started with thinking about what colours do, and more importantly, what colours I want to use.

In Myanmar, my family is working-class and while we don’t know the intellectual aspect of politics, we experience its effects firsthand as whatever happens in politics directly affects the working class. To address this, I thought about using the colours of our national flag, a combination of red, green, yellow, and white in the middle. The current flag was made by the military government, and each colour has a meaning, but they don’t really match our reality. I wanted to recreate that combination in a way that I think reflects my country’s reality.

Curtains, columns, and empty stages lend a televisual quality to your film, as if you were filming TV studios during off-air time. Were you interested in these television-like settings in relation to class?

LH: Growing up, television was the only thing we could entertain ourselves with and detach from brutal reality. Yet, television would also be used by the government. They would manipulate us with soap operas and dictators who had their own news segments. A romantic film could immediately be followed by a dictator’s speech. It was uncanny. We were used to it, but when I think about it now, it’s almost like The Ring.

There were also only two channels: one controlled by the military and the other by the government. I wanted to make something on TV that wasn’t programmed by either entity, as if we were seeing the censored bits of old shows that could not be shown on television. More than the film being about television, I wanted to recreate the sensation of the uncanny.

While we see studio backstages, we don’t see people in your film. Instead, we see more abstract images of a glass. Was there a story you were interested in conveying?

LH: The basic story of this film is about a glass cup turning into a monster. But I don’t want to make films to tell stories. The story is just… something-ness. I think when we try to tell the story of a film, it’s like betraying the film. Whenever I feel like I’m reaching some kind of story, I turn around and go another way. I wanted to make a film about the feeling of reality, memories, and the past.

What would you say you’re interested in doing?

LH: Engaging with the audience. Not teaching them how to see, but making things to exercise their eyes in different ways.

We do not see people in this film but we do hear one voice. We believe it’s human, but from what I understand, it’s not.

LH: It’s the voice of a former Burmese dictator, which I’ve regenerated with an AI software. Everyone in Myanmar who hears this voice will recognise him. It’s a kind of haunting. At the same time, he is singing a kind of lullaby, which has this controlling effect on you. In this case, by reanimating him with AI, you could ask: is he controlling us or is he being controlled? There’s still a sense that he’s brainwashing our minds with the lullaby. It’s interesting to me that film is close to poetry. Sometimes a sentence or word will be very clear — or not.

When people think of Myanmar, they remember a video of a fitness instructor unwittingly filming herself while a military coup takes place behind her. How do you position your filmmaking in relation to those kinds of images?

LH: After the military coup, we made a lot of documentaries about the situation in our country. The image you mentioned is iconic, and was featured in many films from Myanmar. For me though, I am fascinated by political elements, but not interested in using the suffering of others in my films. That’s sometimes needed to talk about certain subjects, but that’s something others already do.

I also don’t want to make films to teach political lessons. I want to make a film that stands on its own and is watched by Burmese people. I hope when they see this film that they experience and recognise something familiar, yet also reflect on their reality. That’s what I want to achieve: a political film that can be enjoyed by normal people.

Can A Metamorphosis be shown in Myanmar?

LH: Not for now, because of the dictator’s voice. But I’m not so concerned about showing it as soon as possible because I’m trying to make things that can be watched for years to come.

I make films with the intention that they will resonate when they are shown. Because I don’t have the power to stop politically repressive regimes, I always think about where I stand in relation to future generations. The only things I can leave behind are traces of my film and feelings for others to find and look deeper into to reveal the past. This is what I’m trying to create now. If my film is actively trying to teach them something, they will learn only from my film, and not look at other things. I don’t want to make a version of propaganda. I just want to leave something behind that people can encounter and be intrigued by.

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Dora Leu is a Romanian film critic, programmer, and filmmaker based in Dublin, Ireland. She spends her life in between video cassettes, punk bands, and Leslie Cheung.

First, there was casting. Funny Boy is the story of a Sri Lankan Tamil family set against the onset of the civil war in 1983, during which the majority Sinhalese perpetrated an ethnic cleansing of the minority Tamils. Yet, all the actors that play the Tamil family in the film are non-Tamils. Second, there was Deepa Mehta’s relationship with Sri Lanka. Her films Water (2005) and Midnight’s Children (2011), after being the subject of protests in India, were shot in Sri Lanka. Since then she has maintained close ties to the country — especially to the military and the former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, both responsible for human rights violations against the Tamil people during the civil war.

All this begs the question — who is this film for? For a non-Sri Lankan Tamil audience, Funny Boy is an insightful story that exposes them to the barely discussed topic of the Sri Lankan civil war. For a Sri Lankan Tamil, it is the artistic product of an outsider claiming to represent them in a way they never agreed to.

It troubled me that I had only discovered these criticisms after watching the film. I, an Indian non-Tamil man, had been fooled by Deepa Mehta, an Indian non-Tamil filmmaker, into thinking that this was an authentic representation of Sri Lankan Tamils. Unable to find a way forward, I sought perspective from a friend who had lived through the discourse in Sri Lanka at the time the film was released. She suggested that if the film’s biggest failure was misrepresentation, then there is a need to work with the film and its filmmakers. To make it better rather than to shut it down for being imperfect.

I considered if filmmaking could be a conversation as opposed to a unilaterally directed work of art that must speak for itself. What would it mean to work with Funny Boy? Now that the story has been told, what do we do with the aftermath?

I imagine, to work with Funny Boy is to demand that Deepa Mehta produce more conscientious works through a close collaboration with the people that the film is about. However, the Canadian Tamil Congress had met with Mehta to discuss these very issues after the trailer was screened; and Mehta’s retort was simply, “People just want to be offended these days.”

The problem lies in the fact that, although Deepa Mehta refuses to engage with her audience, Funny Boy remains significant because it is one of the few widely accessible films about Sri Lankan Tamil experiences. Removing it from circulation would erase the value it offers. Engaging with Funny Boy critically, through classrooms, film clubs, and curated discussions, could reframe its impact. By pairing the film with contextual materials, including scholarship and testimonies from Sri Lankan voices, and screening it alongside works by Sri Lankan filmmakers, we can acknowledge its shortcomings while using it as a tool for conversation and representation.

Perhaps my and every viewer’s responsibility lies in simply demanding better. That does not require us to be generous nor sympathetic to the art and the artists’ politics, but that does give us the freedom to acknowledge the existence of a work, interact with it, and reimagine it.

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Through his work as a filmmaker and writer, Saksham Mehrotra tries to understand the line that threads between the human desire to develop infinitely and the inherent yearning to preserve nature.

Dear readers,

Our 11th issue surveys states of mental and physical exhaustion as young girls struggle through growing pains, and the world extracts its pound of flesh in a pitiless exchange for a salary. The articles in this issue attend to the depleted and weary body, considering how bodies can retreat into self-preservation and arrive at a means of persistence.

In our first feature, writer and Managing Editor of Southeast Asian film publication MARG1N, Alyssandra Maxine speaks to directors Gabriela Serrano and Grace Song on matrilineal relations in their respective films, Elenita Elena Elaine (2025) and Hour of the Flower (2025), and the inroads they are making into regional, feminist cinema. Next, researcher and translator Ryan Lim finds parallels between his own professional circumstances and the choices faced by Fren, the protagonist of Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s Human Resource (2025).

Issue 11 will be available at Oldham Theatre and the FFIGS Lounge, Goethe-Intitut. Issue 10 will also be available at the FFIGS Lounge today. 📮

It is hard to miss the fatigue. It is also hard to find clarity — much less the language to explain fatigue — when you’re staring right down its barrel. Fren is often silent, or talked over by (male) authority figures. But it’s not certain if she wants to say anything either. Besides being either a mother or a labouring subject, what other identity can she assume? In a society where self-improvement is more urgent than world collapse, Fren intuits that there isn’t much point in speaking.

Indeed, Human Resource opens with a still image of an ultrasound scan of Fren’s unborn child. The camera lingers for two minutes. Ultrasounds reveal something beyond perception’s limits; this suspended shot may assume Fren’s gaze but the object exceeds what she sees. In the discomforting stillness, there emerges a slow but devastating split between fixed ways of life and an uncertain feeling about how one should live. It’s as if a lump is forming in her throat, and it cannot be sublimated into coherent expression. Human Resource, anchored by similar inarticulations, off-kilter gazes and inward curls, seems less interested in holding up a mirror to the conditions of work or life, than in grasping for alternative ways to process this painful doubt about the future. What if this doubt were something to tend to productively, rather than pack away or tame?

I can offer no new epiphanies, just an admission that the lump in the throat is mine too. My encounter with this film is embedded in a festival ecosystem which habitually markets its exceptionalism or announces its inclusivity. I faintly recognize Human Resource’s crushing social economy (vertical TikTok slop of employees dancing as if they were family) in this space I call festivality. It refers less to a festival’s duration or atmosphere, than to the compulsion to exhaust oneself for the urgent currency of a cause. The cultural industry requires its workers to be available in every way for everything. Festivality goes even further; it carries an implicit demand to show up with care, devotion, and gratitude — as if this energy was infinite rather than something that depletes.

Cynicism or indifference are not alternatives either. Fren’s resigned expression suggests: there is no other choice; there is work to do and to carry through. Festivality tends to reproduce itself in absurd promises that work could be play, and play could become work. Amidst our slow exhaustion, having an exceptionally festive time is a poor substitute for freedom. Could there be anything else? Against festivality, my mind wanders towards practices of introspection or ambivalent interactions. With Human Resource, I sense that means of persistence: stillness, rest, the quiet determination to stay.

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Ryan Lim (ryan.limdw@outlook.com) is a researcher, translator, and an occasional film worker.