A Short Film on the May 13 Generation (2014)
Director: Jason Soo
Runtime: 19 min
Country: Singapore
Language: Mandarin, English with English subtitles
Rating: TBA
Synopsis
On 13 May 1954 at the foot of Fort Canning, hundreds of Singaporean Chinese middle school students gathered to call for the postponement of a national service ordinance issued by the British colonial government. They were met with harsh action from riot police, resulting in arrests and injuries.
Jason Soo’s commissioned short film to commemorate the 60th anniversary of this incident dramatises events that followed, during which students occupied Chinese High School for three weeks and organised themselves for communal living in an extraordinary show of anti-colonial defiance.
Exchange Student Chua Swee-Lin (1965)
Original title: 留学生チュアスイリン
Director: Noriaki Tsuchimoto
Runtime: 51 min
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Rating: PG13 (Some Mature Content)
Synopsis
In 1964, at the request of the Malaysian government, the Japanese Education Ministry ceased the scholarship of Singapore university student Chua Swee Lin for engaging in ‘anti-Malaysian’ and ‘anti-national’ activities. Chua’s subsequent expulsion from Chiba University and potential deportation galvanised the rest of the student body who organised and rallied behind him at a time when Japan’s post-war youth were undergoing a political awakening.
Radical leftist turned filmmaker Noriaki Tsuchimoto’s Exchange Student Chua Swee-Lin is considered to have played a key role in inspiring independent documentary filmmaking in Japan at the time.
Coming of Rage: Asian Youth & Politics on Screen runs from 2 – 25 June 2023. See the full programme here.
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