#cinematic representations

Opening just before World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, the Asian Film Archive will be presenting the second edition of Monographs, presented in the form of an exhibition and film programme. The interactive exhibition will feature the commssioned video essays that make use of often, archival footage, and the film screening programme will consist of films related to the written essays, including The Cloud Capped Star (1960, Ritwik Ghatak). 

Monographs is a series of video and text essays on Asian cinema commissioned by the Asian Film Archive (AFA). Initially conceived during the outbreak of COVID-19 when physical screenings were disrupted, Monographs offers a critical platform for writers and thinkers to discourse upon the moving image beyond the walls of the cinema. The second edition of Monographs consists of 13 commissioned works—seven video essays and six written essays—produced in consultation with filmmaker/editor Daniel Hui and researcher/curator Matthew Barrington.

Responding to changing geological and socio-political landscapes, Monographs 2023: sinking, shifting, stirring interrogates how the environment, climate, and human and non-human relationships might be re-imagined. Evoking cycles of geological transformation, the anthology explores how cinematic representations of the environment move through cycles of dissolution, transformation and rebirth.

Asian Film Archive (affiliated to AMIA, FIAF, SEAPAVAA)  Monographs 2023. 26 October - 08 December 2023 Oldham Theatre, National Archives of Singapore Building, 1 Canning Rise, Singapore 179868 Singapore, Singapore.