November 2025
This issue of the Asian Cinema Digest showcases writings and profiles that push the boundaries of filmmaking and archiving. Delve into interviews with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Sylvia Chang, and Sepideh Farsi, along with a round-up of regional festival highlights and calls for submissions.
TO SEE
Image still from Dream of the Red Chamber 1977 (1977, Chiu Kang-Chien)Various Southeast Asian Film Festivals
Regional film festivals are back to round off the festival year, including Qcinema International Film Festival, Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF), and Jogja NETPAC Asian Film Festival. Look out for their official selections of the region’s best features and shorts, exciting premieres of international titles, and rediscovered gems.
SGIFF and Asian Film Archive co-present Landmark, which showcases recent restorations of international classics. This year’s line-up for Landmark includes a focus on Indian-born Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta and an exciting world premiere of the newly-restored Dream of the Red Chamber (1977), Chiu Kang-Chien’s reimagining of the classical Chinese masterwork set in 1970s Singapore.
Image still from Raving Iran (2016, Susanne Regina Meures)Asian Film Archive and MixMag Asia: Pulse/Drift
MixMag Asia and Asian Film Archive present Pulse/Drift, a diverse curation of Asian shorts and features, narrative and documentary, which celebrate the sonic architects in the region’s evolving audiovisual and underground cultures.
Pulse/Drift features a double-bill of Gakuryu Ishii’s ambient, meditative Mirrored Mind (2005) and Koji Yamamura’s experimental animation Dozens of Norths (2021). Be sure to catch Raving Iran (2016), a defiant documentary about Iran’s underground electronic music scene led by DJs Anoosh Rakizade and Arash Shadram, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), which combines surreal visuals and hypnotic soundscapes in a landmark of Southeast Asian arthouse cinema. Tickets and more info here.
Image still from Full Circle (2021, Yeow Su Xian)Objectifs: Short Film Night | This Warm Living
Screening in conjunction with a duo-artist exhibition by Chuen Kah-Jun and Tay Yiling, Objectifs’ short film night brings together five films which trace the human search for meaning in shades of playfulness, wit, honesty and longing.
The film lineup includes Wayne Lim’s Fading Frequencies (2024), which follows a field recordist in Iceland who endeavours to reconnect with nature and Yeow Su Xian’s Full Circle (2021), an animated short combining poetry, documentary, and philosophy to explore the relationship between the Moon and Earth.
TO LISTEN
Handbill for Agitation (1976, Samuel Khachikian)Cinema Rex: 055 – Agitation and Film Farsi (ft. Sina Dolati)
Hosts of Cinema Rex podcast Kaveh Mohebbi and Faran Moradi are joined by Sina Dolati to discuss Agitation (اضطراب) (1976), a film focusing on an ex-con whose peaceful family life is derailed by a racket of deceit and blackmail. Using Agitation as an example, they delve into the “Film Farsi” genre, Iran’s own B-movie scene which drew heavily on Hollywood blockbuster influences.
As the founder of Rangarang, an archival institute dedicated to unearthing Iran’s lost pre-revolution art and culture, Sina also shares about the process and challenges of running an online platform reviving and sharing restored Iranian films.
TO READ
Image still from Daughter’s Daughter (2024, Huang Xi)Metrograph: Interview with Sylvia Chang
Ryan Swen interviews Sylvia Chang about her latest award-winning role in Huang Xi’s sophomore feature Daughter’s Daughter (2024). Chang plays Aixia, a Taiwanese woman navigating her relationships with her mother and two estranged daughters as she is forced to confront her past failings.
Swen and Chang look back on her illustrious career, discussing her past films including collaborations with Jia Zhangke and Edward Yang. Chang also reflects on the process of working with Huang Xi to bring Aixia’s character to life, and hints at her upcoming directorial project.
Image still from Memoria (2021, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)Rough Cut: “Cinema as a Recorder of Humanity”: An Interview with Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Oscar Bloomfield speaks with Thai filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer Apichatpong Weerasethakul about his elusive debut short Bullet (1993) which screened at Sydney Opera House in October as part of Music, a curation of ‘sound’ movies presented by Garden Reflexxx.
30 years on, Weerasethakul shares his reflections on the abstracted work, which was his first foray into experimental filmmaking. Weerasethakul and Bloomfield also discuss the prominent themes within his vast oeuvre, including the intersection of sound and visuals, known and unknown, presentness and memory, specifically in relation to Memoria (2021), a trance of sound and silence through the perspective of a Scottish woman who experiences a mysterious sensory syndrome while traversing the jungles of Colombia.
Image still from Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (2025, Sepideh Farsi)Reverse Shot: Interview with Sepideh Farsi
Nick Kouhi speaks to Sepideh Farsi, an Iranian filmmaker whose fiction and documentary works speak to the necessity of human intimacy amid geopolitical strife. Her latest documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (2025) is constructed almost entirely out of her video correspondence with photojournalist Fatma Hassona. Through the photographs Hassona captured of the people and places in Gaza, as well as the poetry and music she created, Farsi presents a stirring portrait of the artist as activist.
Farsi shares about her process of connecting virtually with Hassona to collate photographs and footage, shedding light on their shared impulse to document. Despite the inadequacy of the captured image to fully account for the violence and the subjects’ lived realities, Farsi’s commitment to honouring Fatma’s life and work through film is a testament to her search for truth and an ethical filmmaking practice.
Seen: CAMP, a Mumbai Artists’ Collective, Redefines the Archive
Writing for Seen, Bedatri Datta Choudhury profiles CAMP, a Mumbai artists’ collective which counters centralised archival practices through autonomous and open-sourced projects. This includes Pad.ma, short for Public Access Digital Media Archive.
Pad.ma is an online archive which catalogues over 8,000 videos in public domain, allowing users to search for material through keywords, sources, places, and themes, rather than author and director. The platform also allows users to annotate the archived footage, writing one’s own context and history onto the image, redefining the relationship between archive and viewer.
Choudhury situates CAMP’s artistic practice within India’s sociocultural context and politics of feminist care, crafting a compelling piece on CAMP’s efforts to create communal and equitable knowledge systems.
Image still from Singapore: Refugees from Indochina Find Sympathetic Reception in Model Camp (1979)NTU Exposure: Excavating The Hilton Hotel of Hawkins Road
Yu Ke Dong from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Film Society investigates film-as-archaeology through Singapore: Refugees from Indochina Find Sympathetic Reception in Model Camp (1979). Narrated by reporter Peter Muckton, the three-minute film documents the vibrant Hawkins Road Refugee Camp, which at the time hosted thousands of Vietnamese refugees fleeing Saigon after the Vietnam War.
Yu turns a critical eye (and ear) on the contents of the film, contrasting Munckton’s glib narration and cheery images of the refugees with his own cultural and political research into the subject, interspersing his analysis with a narration of his exploration of the present-day Hawkins Road site. By taking on the role of writer, historian, and archaeologist, Yu’s piece encourages exploration and rumination on past sites, using sensorial knowledge to reimagine and relive history not as we know it, but as experienced and embodied.
TO SUBMIT
Call for Submissions: 4th Niigata International Animation Film Festival
Back for its 4th edition, Niigata International Animation Film Festival (NIAFF) strives to bring together animation culture and industry, fostering creativity and collaboration. The festival accepts short animations (15 – 40 minutes) and feature animation films (over 40 minutes). The application guidelines can be found here, and the deadline for submissions is 30 November, 2025.
Call for Submissions: 15th Taiwan International Documentary Festival
Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF), organised by the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute, is one of the major documentary film festivals in Asia which promotes outstanding Asian documentaries and fosters networks among filmmakers in the region. Submissions for the TIDF are open to all subject matters, forms, styles, lengths, and formats. The application guidelines can be found here, and the deadline for submissions is 4 December, 2025.
Call for Submissions: 9th Nepal International Film Festival
Nepal International Film Festival (NIFF) is Nepal’s main annual film event which strives to connect filmmakers from different countries and support the film industry in Nepal and abroad. The festival accepts feature films (60 – 120 minutes), documentaries (over 30 minutes), and short films (under 30 minutes). The application guidelines can be found here, and the deadline for submissions is 15 December, 2025.
This edition of the Asian Cinema Digest was compiled by Kuo Yi Quan. 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.
