Chrystal Ng (Nanyang Technological University)
Established in 1987, the Singapore International Film Festival (SIFF, now SGIFF) has been providing filmmakers and cinephiles in Asia with a space to share and experience cinema in the region. SIFF was the first to champion SEA films in the region through programming retrospectives of key filmmakers such as Usmar Ismail (Indonesia) and Ishmael Bernal (The Philippines), while creating a space for SEA filmmakers to showcase emergent works to new audiences.
SIFF also focused on Asian Cinema—its programming slate consistently featured films from East Asia. In 1991, SIFF shifted from a non-competitive film festival to one that had a competitive section that included Asian Feature Films, formalizing its commitment to Asian Cinema. Scholars have addressed SIFF’s niche in SEA film and its role in the international film festival circuit as an early champion of Asian cinema. Discourse regarding SIFF’s SEA perspective vis-à-vis film programming and Asian cinema have also been observed within the film studies community.
This emphasis on Asian cinema was not independent to SIFF. Regional politics in East Asia vis-à-vis festival networks have been discussed in relation to HKIFF as a key site of encounter for Asian and East Asian cinema and its significance as a means to negotiate politics within the Sinosphere. In spite of the political intricacies of the region, there have been no known studies on film festivals and their significance as sites of encounter for transnational media flows between SEA and East Asia, and the film festival space as a means to negotiate regional cultural politics.
Surveying the first decade of the Festival, this paper suggests that SIFF provided the foundational infrastructure for film festivals in Asia to function as a crossroads for inter-Asia cultural exchange between SEA and East Asia. Noting Singapore’s unique economic and political position in ASEAN and East Asia, this paper also proposes that SIFF functioned not just as a space for the presentation of SEA and East Asian films, but as a physical site of negotiation for East Asian and SEA cultural politics through film.
Chrystal Ng is a film and humanities educator in Singapore. She holds a B.Comms and M.Comms from WKWSCI, NTU, specialising in Film Festivals. Her dissertation, Sensorium R(A): The Singapore International Film Festival (1987 – 2000) focused on the impact of Singapore’s cultural policy on the programming history of SIFF. Currently, she is an Adjunct Lecturer for the Puttnam School of Film and Animation at the LASALLE College of the Arts and Nanyang Technological University. She was also the Project Co-ordinator for SGIFF’s Youth Jury and Critics Programme from 2014 to 2017.