February 2025
This issue of the Asian Cinema Digest highlights fresh, alternative ways of looking, interpreting and engaging with cinema, from online streaming and community film clubs to agony aunt columns and meta-cinema discussions.
TO SEE
Image still from Wadjda (2012, Haifaa al-Mansour)Asian Film Archive: Look/See: The Female Gaze in Cinema
In tandem with International Women’s Day, Look/See: The Female Gaze in Cinema invites you to step into the shoes of unique female filmmakers, writers, protagonists from all walks of life, in diverse journeys of chasing desire, contemplation, self-discovery, understanding.
Look/See runs from 8-30 March 2025 and includes classics, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne DIelman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), hard hitting dramas, Wadjda (2012), Archaeology of Love (2022), Saint Omer (2022), and ethereal documentaries, Mother and Daughter, or the Night is Never Complete (2023) and Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (2023).
The programme also has a special feature on The Cross-Cultural Gaze in three of Kimi Takesue’s playful, experimental films, reflecting the act of visiting, touring, exploring – another form of look-see, or perhaps in Singlish, to ‘see see look look’. A casual, instinctive look can sometimes unearth more than a deeply focused one.
Image still from The Sky Is Blue, My Lung is Smiling (2024, Riskya Duavania)Objectifs LENScape: Documentary shorts from Southeast Asia
Curated by In-Docs, Objectifs and Thai filmmaker Komtouch Dew Napattaloong, LENScape surrounds the creative spirit of Southeast Asian documentaries. 14 shorts will be presented, split into three themes: Capitalist Dreams: Profit or People?, Remnants of Time, Murmurs of Kinship. Screened in Indonesia from November 2024 to February 2025, the selected short films will be screening in Singapore throughout March at Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film.
Image still from Kamen Rider (1971-1973, Shotaro Ishinomori)TokuSHOUTsu: Kamen Rider Original Series
Campy grasshopper motorcycle hero Kamen Rider (1971-1973) is often remembered for kickstarting a resurgence of the tokusatsu sub-genre in Japanese live-action TV. TokuSHOUTsu, a live streaming channel accessible in the USA and UK, has made all 98 episodes of the original Kamen Rider series available on their Youtube channel. The channel is also home to a number of other cult series and films, including newer reboots of the Kamen Rider franchise and Mach GoGoGo (1967-1968).
Image still from Night of Peacemaking (2022, Tao Hui)e-flux: Dear Mom, Dear Dad
Queer Strategies and Tentacles is online on the e-Flux Screening Room, with a second section entitled The Poetics of Disguises: Fake it! Not Because I Want to Make It. The ongoing programme Dear Mom, Dear Dad, is a triple bill of films that tackle the survival strategy many queer people turn to: “passing” as conventional, heteronormative or otherwise to protect oneself from marginalisation and persecution. As stated, “The films reach out, like tentacles, to make what seems so straight-wardly and unquestionably authentic, if not fake, at least queerly vague.”
TO ATTEND
Image still from Dance of a Humble Atheist (2019, Toh Hun Ping)Objectifs Film Club x Walter Benjamin Reading Group
Opportunities to read and discuss critical film discourse are far and few between, so literary cinephiles in Singapore might be glad to find Objectifs Film Club back with a second intertextual cross with Walter Benjamin’s writings. Toh Hun Ping’s mesmerizing and unsettling Dance of a Humble Atheist (2019) is paired with Walter Benjamin’s similarly winding and bewildering essay One-Way Street. Both fragments of a whole, joined in uncertain collages, without beginning and end.
Toh’s film is available for rent on the Objectifs Film Library, while Benjamin’s essay can be accessed from the Film Club’s page. Participants can RSVP to a discussion session of the two works, which will take place on 28 February 2025 at Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film.
TO READ
Cynthia Syukur Purwanto, writer and Liaison Officer for the Disabled for Gusde, providing live audio description for a film during Minikino Film Week 10’s closing nightMinikino Film Week: Dear Me, Let’s Continue to Nurture Inclusive Environments
Cynthia Sukur Purwanto documents her candid experiences at Minikino Film Week 10 in an open letter urging for the normalisation of amenities and consideration for disabled audiences. She recounts vulnerable yet tender moments as a ‘Kawan Pembisik’, whose role is to verbalise the films to visually impaired audiences, and as a Q&A moderator paired with sign language interpreters. While recognising the tremendous institutional changes we must surmount to have inclusive and accessible cinema spaces, Surwanto asserts that everyone deserves a level playing field, and we can “still make a difference by being attentive, offering help when needed and possible, and simply speaking about the importance of inclusivity.”
Image still from Dragnet Girl (1933, Yasujiro Ozu)Film Comment: You’re Projecting #2
The second edition of Film Comment’s agony aunt column for cinephiles answers two woes. The first from a young film programer who worries that they will lose their love for cinema, and the second a request for fashion recommendations that spell confidence on screen. For this, contributor Imogen Sara Smith recommended Kinuyo Tanaka in Dragnet Girl (1933), for her office flair and spunky gangster attitude, among others.
As a note, the recent fashion themed programme, Styled & Sutured: Fashion on Screen at the Asian Film Archive also features some lovely apparel inspirations!
Image still from The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959, Nobuo Nakagawa)Cultural Gutter: Tamiya Iemon is the Worst: Ghost Stories of Yotsuya
Carol Borden, editor of The Cultural Gutter, leads a deep dive into the stage to screen adaptations of kabuki play Yotsuya Kaidan (1825). The play, adapted and revised countless times since its first production, surrounds a despicable ronin named Tamiya Iemon who severely wrongs and becomes haunted by the ghost of his disfigured and vengeful wife, Oiwa.
Borden’s witty exposé on Iemon’s sins is feathered with historical nuances of Japan’s feudal society and gendered politics, as well as quips on the play’s legacy till now. She compares the discourses that have survived or been discarded in three most referenced adaptations of the text: Keisuke Kinoshita’s The Ghost of Yotsuya: Part I and II (1949), Nobuo Nakagawa’s The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959) and Takashi Miike’s meta-reimagining Over Your Dead Body (2014).
TO LISTEN
Image still from Salam Cinema (1995, Mohsen Makhmalbaf)Cinema Rex – Iranian Cinema Podcast: Salam Cinema
Iranian-Canadian filmmakers and Cinema Rex hosts Kaveh Mohebbi and Faran Moradi discuss Salam Cinema (1995), a meta hybrid of documentary and fiction. In the film, director Mohsen Makhmalbaf holds an open casting call for 100 actors. When thousands of auditionees show up, causing a riot, he turns the chaotic auditioning process into the film itself. Amidst Makhmalbaf’s intense treatment of the auditionees, goading them to cry on command, berating and manipulating to force a performance, Mohebbi and Moradi take a look back at filmmaking practices in 1990s Iran, questioning Salam Cinema’s worrying flitting between problematizing and perpetuating the exploitative artifice of cinema.
TO SUBMIT
Call for Submissions: 32nd Women Make Waves International Film Festival
The 32nd Women Make Waves International Film Festival is accepting films directed by at least one female-identifying director completed no earlier than 1 March 2023. For queer films, directors of all genders are welcome to submit. The rules and regulations can be found here, and the deadline for submissions is 3 March 2025.
Call for Submissions: 27th Taipei Film Festival
The 27th Taipei Film Festival is accepting films eligible for their International New Talent Competition. Films must be a minimum of 70 minutes and must be the director’s first or second feature. The rules and regulations can be found here, and the deadline for submissions is 14 March 2025.
Call for Submissions: 25th Korea Queer Film Festival
The 25th Korea Queer Film Festival is accepting films that bring light to queer issues produced outside South Korea and after 1 January 2024. The rules and regulations can be found here, and the deadline for submissions is 9 March 2025.
Call for Projects: National Arts Council Singapore Sustain the Arts (stART) Fund
The stART Fund is calling for innovative projects from arts organisations that engage audiences and encourage engagements with Singaporean cultural identity. The rules and regulations can be found here, and the deadline for submissions is 7 March 2025.
Call for Projects: Docs by the Sea Marche du Film Showcase
Docs-in-progress 2025 is calling for Asian documentary project submissions for the Docs by the Sea showcase at Cannes in May. The project duration must be over 60 minutes, still in-progress and ready to be distributed in 2026/2027. The rules and regulations can be found here, and the deadline for submissions is 3 March 2025.
Call for Papers: Launch Symposium of the Association for Curators and Programmers of Asian Cinemas (ACPAC)
The Association for Curators and Programmers of Asian Cinemas (ACPAC) is accepting abstracts and papers for its launch symposium, Rethinking Film Curation in Asian Cinemas. The event hopes to ignite discourse between film curators, scholars and industry professionals, and will be co-hosted by AFA in September 2025. The rules and regulations can be found here, and the deadline for submissions is 15 April 2025.
This edition of the Asian Cinema Digest was compiled by Renee Ng. The Asian Cinema Digest is a monthly compilation of content taking place internationally involving Asian cinema and the moving image. Featured programmes are not representative of AFA’s views and are unaffiliated to the AFA unless otherwise stated.
