Category / Writings

by Eternality Tan

Musings #2: 5 Great Singaporean Films of the 2010s (so far…)

(This article was first published for CatchPlay on 7 Aug 2017)

The 2010s has been a strong decade for Singapore cinema, with the emergence of younger talented filmmakers, and established voices holding the fort. We are probably witnessing the biggest wave in recent years, not just because of the work of one or two trailblazers, but a group of directors whose eclectic output suggests an assured future for our country’s increasingly vibrant film industry. This article traces five key Singaporean films—and great ones to boot—of the 2010s, well, so far…

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by Eternality Tan

“Hero”: Placing Asian Cinema Within National and International Boundaries

(Written in 2013, and first published on 1 Jan 2014)

Zhang Yimou remains to be the most famous of mainland Chinese filmmakers working today, yet his greatest works were made during the early phase of his career in the early 1990s with critically-acclaimed sociopolitical films such as Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991) and To Live (1994).

In 2002, two years after the international success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Zhang released Hero, his first-ever martial arts film starring some of the biggest names in Chinese cinema, including Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi.

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by Eternality Tan

Musings #1: Commercial Censorship of Movies in Singapore

This personal opinion piece was first published on 10 February 2018.

UPDATE (as of 13 February 2018): Lady Bird will be released theatrically in M18 (Nudity & Sexual Scene) – Passed Clean

There are two main kinds of film censorship – artistic and commercial.  In Singapore, whenever there is Artistic Censorship (AC), we are happy to push the blame to our local classification (read: censorship) body. 

Almost all the time, the censors get it wrong.  There had been so many cases – too many to name.  Some cases were very infuriating, not least because it conflated political censorship with AC.  The most recent example was Radiance of Resistance (2016), pulled from the Singapore Palestinian Film Festival last month.

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