April 23, 2019

Pontianak (1957), the first of the Pontianak series of horror films, was first screened here at midnight at The Cathay on the 27^th of April, 1957. In Malayan myth, a pontianak is the vampire ghost of a woman who died during childbirth. The film was very successful, playing at major cinemas for almost two months. However, after half a century of independence, Singapore’s cinematic history remains fragmented and sparsely charted. Rectifying this, Senior Lecturer Dr Edna Lim (NUS English Language and Literature) authored the first full length critical study of Singapore cinema, Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National (Edinburgh University Press, 2018).

Tracing Singapore’s cinema history from the 1950s to the present, Celluloid Singapore attempts to answer the question of what makes films of each of three major periods considered to be Singaporean, and whether these films can be thought of as specifically national. Exploring ideas of nationhood and historicity, it reflects on how these notions are performed in and through film. The book focuses on the golden age of the 1950s and 60s, the post-studio 1970s, and the revival from the 1990s onwards. It presents films of each period as offering different representations of Singapore, showing how the films form a national cinema through their portrayal of Singapore. Going beyond simply offering a chronological outline of Singapore cinema, Dr Lim establishes a critical framework for understanding the historical complexity behind these films. She reveals a cinema history inextricably tied to Singapore’s development and the notions of the national.

Get the book here.