Coming (to The End) of Age
Asian Film Archive
by Natalie Ng
1y ago
by Goh Yu Ke The period of time between coming-of-age and the end of an age is long, but the experience of either is perhaps not that different at all. Between Cheryl Wong’s Stigma, Style (2021) and Giselle Lin’s Time Flows in Strange Ways on Sundays (2021), we find that to grow and to stumble is a process that never ends; acceptance and memory take centre stage here, imbuing in these shorts a sense of universality as they explore the weight of connections between people. Stigma, Style (2021) Wong’s film is, most compellingly, an honest portrait of being young, awkward, and curious. The depict ..read more
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Rotting fruit: The rat race built on erased knowledge
Asian Film Archive
by Natalie Ng
1y ago
By Mysara Aljaru Still from Buah Dahsyat (Fantastic Fruits) (2022), dir. Khairullah Rahim We have been taught from a young age to place our value on achievements. Every award ceremony, tuition class and examination, is tied to what the outcome will be. We celebrate when we have achieved the intended outcome. We are consistently reminded to work hard to ‘enjoy the fruits of our labour’. But what exactly is this fruit of labour, and who gets to define what labour is? Buah Dahsyat by Khairullah Rahim and TAMAN HUTAN Chapter 4: The Wound Response by ila­—two films from the Singapore Shorts ’22 pro ..read more
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Liminal Thoughts in a Permanent Place
Asian Film Archive
by Natalie Ng
1y ago
by Lily During my first week of internship at the Asian Film Archive, Mr Matthew Yang, Archive Officer, taught me how to clean 35mm film reels and shared the basic standards and practices when handling analogue material. After unwinding the reel on the film table, he handed me a magnifying glass to inspect the image. Under the glass, the picture was vivid and clear. A man walking. A garden. Blue sky. A cat. I wound the film back, snug and tight around the core. It looked like a block of shiny black liquorice.  Mr Matthew handed me tape to seal the film leader to the reel. He said, “This i ..read more
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Asian Cinema Digest #31
Asian Film Archive
by Natalie Ng
1y ago
The latest edition of the cinema digest welcomes the Lunar New Year with online screenings of Chinese and Taiwanese cinema, an action-packed podcast on classic Hong Kong blockbusters and a riveting portrait of one of Hong Kong’s Second Wave directors.  Watch Image still from Mountains May Depart (2015, dir. Jia Zhangke) Metrograph At Home: Lunar New Year In celebration of the Lunar New Year, Metrograph At Home launches a special collection of independent Chinese cinema. Eschewing conventional blockbusters and feel-good family dramas in favour of tackling themes of solitude, home, migratio ..read more
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Liminal Thoughts in a Permanent Place
Asian Film Archive
by Natalie Ng
1y ago
by Lily During my first week of internship at the Asian Film Archive, Mr Matthew Yang, Archive Officer, taught me how to clean 35mm film reels and shared the basic standards and practices when handling analogue material. After unwinding the reel on the film table, he handed me a magnifying glass to inspect the image. Under the glass, the picture was vivid and clear. A man walking. A garden. Blue sky. A cat. I wound the film back, snug and tight around the core. It looked like a block of shiny black liquorice.  Mr Matthew handed me tape to seal the film leader to the reel. He said, “This i ..read more
Visit website
Asian Cinema Digest #31
Asian Film Archive
by Natalie Ng
1y ago
The latest edition of the cinema digest welcomes the Lunar New Year with online screenings of Chinese and Taiwanese cinema, an action-packed podcast on classic Hong Kong blockbusters and a riveting portrait of one of Hong Kong’s Second Wave directors.  Watch Image still from Mountains May Depart (2015, dir. Jia Zhangke) Metrograph At Home: Lunar New Year In celebration of the Lunar New Year, Metrograph At Home launches a special collection of independent Chinese cinema. Eschewing conventional blockbusters and feel-good family dramas in favour of tackling themes of solitude, home, migratio ..read more
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2022 Year in Review
Asian Film Archive
by Natalie Ng
1y ago
AFA turns 18 today and there is no better opportunity for us to take stock of the past year. 2022 saw us stepping out of the shadow of the pandemic and a return to in-person live events. As we continue to bring you quality programmes that inspire and provoke, we thank everyone for sticking with us and continuing to support and explore Asian Cinema. We hope you will bring many more people to our programmes and advocate with us to preserve Asia’s cinematic heritage.  Deputy director of the Thai Film Archive and co-curator of the Reciprocal programme Sanchai Chotirosseranee joined AFA virtua ..read more
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Echoes, Embers: From rural revolution to metropolitan malaise
Asian Film Archive
by Natalie Ng
1y ago
by Elizabeth Ang “Instead of invading Vietnam with a kind of generosity that makes things unnatural, we let Vietnam invade us” — Jean-Luc Godard in Camera Eye (1967) To date, persisting images of a war-torn Vietnam in popular media seem to obscure the rich yet abridged archive of Vietnamese films stemming from the mid 20th century long before the country’s reunification in 1975. This very motif of “Vietnam”, or at least the image of, had assailed the psyches of French filmmakers of the time, galvanising Left Bank filmmakers Agnes Varda, Alan Ranaise and Chris Marker to join forces in ‘Far from ..read more
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Rotting fruit: The rat race built on erased knowledge
Asian Film Archive
by Natalie Ng
1y ago
By Mysara Aljaru Still from Buah Dahsyat (Fantastic Fruits) (2022), dir. Khairullah Rahim We have been taught from a young age to place our value on achievements. Every award ceremony, tuition class and examination, is tied to what the outcome will be. We celebrate when we have achieved the intended outcome. We are consistently reminded to work hard to ‘enjoy the fruits of our labour’. But what exactly is this fruit of labour, and who gets to define what labour is? Buah Dahsyat by Khairullah Rahim and TAMAN HUTAN Chapter 4: The Wound Response by ila­—two films from the Singapore Shorts ’22 pro ..read more
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Asian Cinema Digest #30
Asian Film Archive
by Natalie Ng
1y ago
December’s edition wraps up 2022 with a slate of films and documentaries that foreground women’s long-standing struggle for political freedom, social-realist dramas by acclaimed political filmmakers and retrospectives of iconic Filipino independent filmmakers Kidlat Tahimik and Mike de Leon. Riding on international trends, The World Cup makes its way on-screen with two streaming collections dedicated to the sport.  Watch Image still from Dryads in a Snow Valley (2016, dir. Shiegeru Kobayashi) JFF+ Independent Cinema Free Online Screenings Streaming from 15 December 2022 – 15 June 2023, T ..read more
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