Being and Becoming Chua Ek Kay

The film offers exclusive and intimate insights into how and why the classically trained artist risked rejection to revolutionize the traditional Chinese ink art form in Singapore.

Carlos Sainz: The Operator

Class Acts

Class Acts is a feature-length documentary tracing the genesis of Singapore's creative scene in the '90s through intimate conversations with its pioneering personalities. These are the stories of individuals who started creating with nothing, who push Singapore’s creative standards even today. The ones who went on to inspire a new generation of musicians, designers, and street artists.

Shirkers

In 1992, teenager Sandi Tan shot Singapore's first indie road movie with her enigmatic American mentor Georges – who then vanished with all the footage. Twenty years later, the 16mm film is recovered, sending Tan, now a novelist in Los Angeles, on a personal odyssey in search of Georges' vanishing footprints.

Singapore and Jahore

A visit to Singapore, an essential port city in Britain's empire, established in 1813 when Raffles negotiated its separation from the independent Malay state of Jahor. The camera observes Singapore's traditional neighborhoods, trade, and small craft, which are dominated by people of Chinese ancestry. Then, we drive the modern causeway to Jahor's small capital, Johor Bahru, for a look at imposing buildings and a visit to the grounds of the sultan. The sultan's son invites the crew in, and we meet the sultan, "H.H." himself. The narrator relates the sultan's commitment to commerce, economic well-being, and tolerance, stemming in part from his European education.

The Fall of Singapore: The Great Betrayal

This landmark documentary film by Paul Elston tells the incredible story of how it was the British who gave the Japanese the knowhow to take out Pearl Harbor and capture Singapore in the World War 2. For 19 years before the fall of Singapore in 1942 to the Japanese, British officers were spying for Japan. Worse still, the Japanese had infiltrated the very heart of the British establishment - through a mole who was a peer of the realm known to Churchill himself.

Im Luxuszug durch das Herz Asiens

Singapore GaGa

Singapore GaGa is a 55-minute paean to the quirkiness of the Singaporean aural landscape. It reveals Singapore's past and present with a delight and humour that makes it a necessary film for all Singaporeans. We hear buskers, street vendors, school cheerleaders sing hymns to themselves and to their communities. From these vocabularies (including Arabic, Latin, Hainanese), a sense of what it might mean to be a modern Singaporean emerges. This is Singapore's first documentary to have a cinema release. With English and Chinese subtitles.

Modern Heroes Modern Slaves

Each day, thousands of people leave countries like the Philippines to seek work abroad. They work as nannies, domestics, clerks and labourers for low wages and with few rights. What little money they earn they send home to their families. This contribution to their country’s economy has prompted the Philippine government to call these contract workers “modern day heroes.” But that’s only half the story.

One or Several Tigers

1987: Untracing The Conspiracy

In 1987, the Singapore government, using the Internal Security Act, arrested 22 people in what was called "Operation Spectrum". These people were held indefinitely without trial, physically and mentally tortured, and coerced into admitting that they were guilty of a "Marxist conspiracy" on public television. In this film, ex-detainees share what they experienced during that time.

While You Were Sleeping – The Documentary

"When I first started to photograph in dark and unfamiliar places all over Singapore in 2003, I had no idea that those images I made would come to define me as a photographer. Born out of a curiosity of the unknown, as well as a young photographer’s restlessness, While You Were Sleeping grew to say as much about our country as it did of me. Eighteen years, two books and two exhibitions later, Singapore is now a very different place. Many of the locations I visited in the early 2000s, once alien, are now completely transformed." – Darren Soh, photographer

泰美酒庄

An intimate portrait of an inter-generational family as they bid farewell to the common ground that binds them together.

Unknownature

A wildlife enthusiast, Jean-Pierre Bosquet brings us on a journey to Singapore's Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve to uncover some of the unknown nature in the midst of our metropolis city. Subaraj Rajathurai, a veteran wildlife consultant speaks on behalf of these animals and the threats they face.

Singapore On Film

Rare archive footage reveals what Singapore was like dating back to 1900, showing coolies sharing lunch, rickshaw pullers, a grand Peranakan funeral, and more.

Sementara

Amid the noisy spectacle of Singapore’s golden jubilee celebrations in 2015, filmmakers Chew Chia Shao Min and Joant Úbeda conduct casual interviews with people from different walks of life, each with their own set of values and beliefs. The subjects share deeply personal stories and their perspectives on issues such as religion, race, identity and mortality. Unhurried interviews are interspersed with highly recognisable local scenes, and at times punctuated with serendipitous poetic moments.

1-DAY ADULT

So, essentially, from what I can glean, the “Minions” are a series of films about these little yellow creatures, a sickly old man and also his wife (?). They sing and dance to popular songs and they have all been very friendly to me. This is a film about a theme park in Singapore.

書人頌

Booklovers, booksellers, storytellers and writers can easily squeeze into various demos of important issues. This documentary brings this group of people in the limelight, discussing the value of art space in bookshops. The book-loving director Kong King Chu visited independent bookshops in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia for three to four years, tried to understand how a bookshop can become a dynamic, inspiring and heartwarming space, even these booksellers carry different attitude towards life, books and community, as well as management beliefs. These booksellers do not care about the commercial value emphasized by the capitalist society and they are content in their own way by sharing their enthusiasm about books with the others in spite of all difficulties. Thus, they keep trying new methods to sharpen their touch on social issues and become an important starting point for the general public to reflect upon conflicts in our society.

Bukit Orang Salah

At various points in its history, tiny St. John's Island was where Singapore's colonial founder Sir Stamford Raffles docked his ship upon arrival, a quarantine centre for immigrants and pilgrims returning from Mecca, a penal colony for political detainees and secret society leaders, and a sleepy holiday resort. Unlike its neighbouring islands, however, St. John's was never fully developed. It occupies an in-between space, the vestiges of its history scattered around the land. Its indeterminacy stands in sharp contrast to Singapore, where land use is meticulously planned to fulfil economic and social functions. In this film, St. John's Island - otherwise known as 'Bukit Orang Salah', a nickname coined by the people who were quarantined there - becomes a site of and for reflection, prompting questions about our history, heritage and identity.

The Last Artisan

Dismembered limbs. Topless mermaids. Crabs with human heads. These Chinese folklore-themed statues, in all their surreal, grotesque glory, are seared into the mind of Singapore's Haw Par Villa. But no one knows them as well as Teo Veoh Seng. Decades ago, he started out as an apprentice at the park, which opened in the 1930s; now, at 83, Teo has finally decided to retire. Though his successors prepare for his departure, what will be lost when the master craftsman steps down? Interspersing interviews with animation, this documentary weaves personal and national histories into the portrait of an unlikely Singapore hero. It sheds light on an artisan whose quiet dedication has preserved a uniquely charming slice of a city hounded by rapid urban developments.