Social & External
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.
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.
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.
A documentary directed by Winding Refn's wife, Liv Corfixen, and it follows the Danish-born filmmaker during the making of his 2013 film Only God Forgives.
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.
Bomb Hunters is an engrossing examination of the micro-economy that has emerged in Cambodia from untrained civilians harvesting unexploded bombs as scrap metal. The film explores the long-term consequences of war and genocide in an attempt to understand the social, cultural, and historical context and experiences of rural villagers who seek out and dismantle UXO (unexploded ordnance) for profit. Part of a global economy, these individuals clear UXO from their land in order to protect their families from harm and to earn enough money to survive. Bomb Hunters is an eye-opening account investigating the on-going residual, persistent effects of war experienced by post-conflict nations around the globe, and the complex realities of achieving "peace".
A musical, visual journey. Recorded and filmed on location, it resurrects ancient and forgotten folk music from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Maldives, India and Myanmar. The experience is brought to life for a contemporary audience through a minimalist orchestration of modern electronic waves and flows, thereby preserving the integrity of the music. The musicians come primarily from the coastal communities, towns and villages practically wiped of the world map by the Tsunami of December 26, 2004. It's beauty lies in it's purity and simplicity, a non-judgmental point of view. For the international team who came together, Laya Project is a personal and collective tribute to the resilience of the human spirit.
In this travelogue, actor David Suchet journeys across Europe aboard the world famous Orient Express train, as he prepares to play Poirot in an adaptation of Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express".
I AM GOLDEN KAREN is a coming-of-age story of Thaawa, a Karen refugee in search of his identity as a migrant in Thailand. In between puberty and adulthood, he nurtures a strong desire to return to his motherland, Karen State, Burma.
There are only 320 Mlabri people left on this planet. They came out of the jungle in Northern Thailand on the border to Laos one generation ago. The Mlabri people used to be hunters and gatherers. Today they scrape out a meagre existence at the bottom of society working as day labourers for the Hmong farmers, and living in shacks on the outskirts of larger Hmong villages. The Mlabri people are currently going through a transformation process, which has taken many other people thousands of years. Now the young people are faced with the choice of staying with their families in the village or adapting to the Thai society. How do they experience the meeting between their own culture and the local, regional and national majority cultures? In this film young Mlabri tell about their past, present and future as they see it; all expressed in their unique and expressive Mlabri language.
Born a conjoined twin due to the effects of Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War, Duc Nguyen, now a father and husband, seeks the truth about his past and contemplates the future.
As an omnibus of short films, Art Through Our Eyes is inspired by the art collection found at the National Gallery Singapore. Each of the five directors – Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Brillante Mendoza, Eric Khoo, Ho Yuhang and Joko Anwar – handpicked a masterpiece from the 19th and 20th century as inspiration for their short films.
She now lives many miles away from her mother, who is waiting to hear from her. It is a bittersweet, restless, nostalgic moment, and she remembers those vanished years.
The Golden Kingdom of Thailand is home to some of the most pungent and spicy fresh ingredients in the world. Regarded as the world's fourth most popular cuisine, Thailand is valued for its low fat content and health enhancing properties. Join Merrilees as she visits paddy fields and aircraft-hangar sized rice barges, shops in the floating markets of Bangkok and the night market in Chiang Mai and discovers beautiful fresh fruit and the notoriously smelly durian fruit.
From love pride parade to the strain hunters of Thailand. A vlogger makes its journey from the side hustle streets of Bangkok, covering the lost gems of Pattaya beaches and the mystical wonders of valuable antiques, amulets and significant temple paintings.
An investigation into the nature of the sex trade in Thailand.
Rare archive footage reveals what Singapore was like dating back to 1900, showing coolies sharing lunch, rickshaw pullers, a grand Peranakan funeral, and more.
The next best thing to being there is to experience The Chronicle Travel Library with its most comprehensive collection. Chronicle Videocassettes brings the Orient Express to you.
An intimate portrait of an inter-generational family as they bid farewell to the common ground that binds them together.
