A History of Forgetting (2025)

Films as Social History—P. Ramlee’s “Seniman Bujang Lapok” and Malays in Singapore (1950s–60s)

2005

Despite their sheer importance in portraying the social conditions of Malays in post-World War II Singapore, Malay films of the 1950s and 1960s are still in the margins of what is perceived as other important historical sources at that time. As Anthony Milner has observed, such negation is a product of the methods and sources

Book Review: Khiun and Teo (eds), Singapore Cinema: New Perspectives (2017)

Asian Cinema, 2020

Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance andthe National

Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 2019

Singapore's 'Cinema-Age'of the 1930s: Hollywood and the shaping of Singapore modernity

Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 2012

Cinema-going was the most popular form of entertainment in 1930s' Singapore, with an estimated 8000 viewers filling 20 screens each night in the city by 1936. About 70% of films screened were American and many large Hollywood studios had distribution offices in Singapore. A entire supporting field consumption shaped by film fandom culture emerged, from film magazines to sales in gramophone records and wireless broadcasting of popular soundtracks and live performances in dance halls at entertainment parks, called the ‘Worlds’—such as Great World and Happy World. There were diverse reactions to this social phenomenon from different quarters. The colonial government was alarmed at the perceived influence of decadent Hollywood films on a native audience in terms of moral vices and crime. Religious bodies and older members of the local non-European community were brought in to sit on the Cinematograph Films Censorship Annual Committee. Drawing from the Anglophone print media, this paper aims to document local audiences' voices in the highly-debated topic of censorship. The existence of a large corpus of English-language publications produced in inter-war Singapore for a local, non-European audience is testimony to the depth of the domestic, English-language public sphere, which cut across diverse ethnic backgrounds and was based upon a common framework of English-language education and cultural references. This paper will argue that America films played a crucial role in influencing social changes in Singapore, particularly amongst young people and women, as well as in shaping the identity of Singapore as a distinctly modern city.

The Construction of 'Singapore' in Singapore Cinema

The IAFOR International Conference on the City 2017: Official Conference Proceedings, 2017

Supported by interviews from my documentary on the same topic, this paper will explore how race and language are addressed in Singapore through the incorporation of 'Multiracialism', and how filmmakers negotiate these issues in their films in constructing the Singapore identity on screen. Singapore is a heterogeneous society with various ethnic groups. This cultural mix and the constant migration of people make the idea of a unified Singapore identity very challenging. Through promoting 'Multiracialism' and various language policies, the Government has tried to construct this unified identity, while maintaining the individual racial, linguistic and religious boundaries of each official racial group. This in itself is at odds with each other and is an ongoing challenge to the present day. The complexity of race and language issues in Singapore has created a cinema with fragmented cultural identity, one that is racially and linguistically divided. This is further complicated by censorship on both race and language. Filmmaking in Singapore is thus a constant negotiation of remaining culturally authentic to appeal to local audiences and censorship constraints that directly challenge this.

Desiring Nanyang, Nation, and Home: Fictions of Belonging in Two Rediscovered Postwar Films from Singapore

Routledge Companion to Asian Cinemas, 2024

Before they were located in 2016 by the Asian Film Archive (AFA) in the China Film Archive (CFA), Huaqiao xuelei (Blood and Tears of the Overseas Chinese, dir. Tsai Wen-chin 1946), and Haiwai zhenghun (Spirit of the Overseas Chinese, dir. Wan Hoi-ling 1946), were believed to be lost. Produced by Zhong hua dianying zhi pian chang (Zhong Hua Film), Huaqiao xuelei and Haiwai zhenghun are Singapore's earliest postwar Chinese-language feature films from an understudied time in the island nation's film history. According to Chew Tee Pao, archivist at the AFA, the archive had "put out several calls for film elements during the AFA's Lost Films Search (2006) and Save Our Film campaign (2010) to the public and through the AFA's professional networks but to no avail" (Chew Tee Pao, email to author, March 9, 2021). It was only when Chew attended a training course at the British Film Institute and connected with members of the CFA, that the prints of the two films were finally located. Both films were then restored by the CFA and subtitled by the AFA. Independent of the AFA's efforts, the CFA provided the Hong Kong Film Archive (HKFA) with a reference disc copy of Haiwai zhenghun in November 2013 and the HKFA screened the film on March 15th, 2014 in a program titled "Re-discovering Pioneering Females in Early Chinese Cinema." Frank Bren cites Wan Hoi-ling as "the territory's first-known homegrown female film director," of whom much remains unknown (2014, 173). Within this claim of "homegrown" status lie Wan Hoi-ling's contributions to cinema and a transnational trajectory across China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. A key concern of this chapter is the possibility of thinking "home" capaciously, beyond the index of national cinema. Bren notes that while most of Wan Hoi-ling's filmography is lost, a collection of her film scripts remain at the New York State Archives (NYSA) in Albany, New York (2014, 175-83). Narratives of Wan Hoi-ling's life are often traced through her work and life with the groundbreaking film theorist, novelist, and director Hou Yao. In 1940, Hou and Wan, partners in work and life, moved to Singapore from Hong Kong and produced seven Malay-language films for the Singapore-based Shaw Brothers Limited. They were in captivity from 1942 to 1945 during the Japanese occupation of Singapore. Hou was executed during that period. After her release, Wan made Haiwai zhenghun (1946) and Nanyang xiaojie (Miss Nanyang, 1947), and the latter film remains to be found.

Film and the "Other" Singaporean

Kinema: A Journal for Film and Audiovisual Media

The history of Singapore's film industry is marked by two distinct periods. The first period, which lasted from the 1950s to the 1960s, is considered the golden age of Singapore films due to the prolific outpouring of primarily Malay films produced by the local Cathay and Shaw studios. The second period, which began in the 1990s, constitutes a revival of sorts for Singapore film, and is marked by the recent spate of local productions that began with Medium Rare in 1991 and continues to the present. What is interesting about this current "resurgence" of local films is that while these films have resuscitated the previously dormant film industry in Singapore, and can, therefore, be considered a "revival," they are in fact very different kinds of films from the ones that were made during the golden age, just as the current constitution of the industry is also no longer recognizable as a legacy inherited from that age.

Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Malay Film Music of the Independence Years by Adil Johan, and: Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National by Edna Lim

Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2019

Voices of Malaysian cinema

Accessed on Sept, 2005

Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Malay Film Music of the Independence Years by Adil Johan, and: Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National by Edna Lim (review

Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Volume 92, Part 1, No. 316, June 2019 pp. 118-119, 2019