Despite being the first Asian country (except for Hong Kong) to sign a film co-production agreement with China, Singapore's co-productions China so far are few and between, none of which have come under official agreement. This raises wider questions about policy making challenges small nations when driving or facilitating regional collaborations partners like China. Drawing on interviews key interlocutors in Singapore industry, this article explores how filmmakers make sense working Chinese...

Singapore is often represented as an example of a successful "postcolonial" society that transitioned into developed nation and economy. The government articulates its reliance on enlightenment ideals such reason meritocracy, separation church state, equality; but at the same time draws legitimacy from articulations "tradition" based "ethnicity" "culture." These contradictions extend to censorship, particularly since state actively censors media when it comes issues race religion whenever...

The rise of the PRC as a producer mass culture marks reconfiguration "East Asian Popular Culture" media producers are now actively seeking opportunities to enter Mainland Chinese market. While implications this trend for industries Taiwan and Hong Kong well-documented, Singapore's participation in cultural formation remains comparatively understudied. Often deemed by their counterparts lacking sociocultural capital production niches, why how do navigate ventures into market? Drawing on...

There is a long history of television and film research that highlights the essential roles audiences play in everyday production decisions. Based largely on Western media industries, these studies’ investigations producer–audience relationships have revolved predominantly around market concerns liberal models. So how do work when it comes to illiberal contexts production? Using Singapore as case study, this article argues existing approaches relations based industries like Hollywood are...

Creative labour studies has yielded much critical insights from workers’ experiences of ‘precarity’ and ‘self-exploitation’ with increasing neo-liberalization. This important work’s overwhelming focus on the critique neoliberalism based Euro American case risk overlooking that can be gained other socio-geopolitical contexts. Drawing a mix ethnographic observations interviews transnational media producers in Singapore working at margins mainland Chinese industry, this paper teases out how...

This article aims to rethink film censorship in Singapore by investigating how the agents involved Board of Film Censors imagine and represent its processes. Contrary deterministic structural approaches, I argue for consideration specific events practices articulate ways these, turn, feed back into process censorship. Using case study Ken Kwek’s Sex.Violence.FamilyValues (2012), this problematizes idealistic representations system as an efficient machine made up separate components with...

As the cinema of a small nation, Singapore punches above its weight. The series international film festival awards won by Singaporean filmmakers alongside multiple books published on since 2010s seem to signal revival industry. This editorial introduction unpacks term ‘Singapore New Wave’ as starting point for this Special Issue raise questions about changes that appear be happening in Singapore’s By situating within global cinema, article argues importance considering issue survival and an...