saw my first film at the projector: riri riza’s sokola rimba (semi-documentary (neo-realist, protests the director), semi-biopic of butet manurung and her work teaching reading and writing to indigenous children in the jungles of sumatra.) it was being presented at the singapore international film festival, and had been made with an almost entirely non-professional cast of endearing children from the jungle tribe they lived and filmed with, respectful and never patronising(a beautiful animation sequence midway to depict the sacred rituals they were not allowed to witness or film,) and an utterly believable lead actress in prisia nasution (submerged beauty, rising in her moments of radiant kindness and fierce belief.)

also, in part because the mother lived in beach road as a child and still think of the area as ‘my old home’ and ‘by the sea’; in part because i was actually brought here when i was little girl for the occasional performance (a memory — genuine? — of being led down the front steps of golden mile tower by assorted aunts, even as late as in my pre-teens), i feel inordinately gleeful and yet inexplicably sad to be at the projector for the first time. it is, as my friend attilio says, “more than just a new cinema but a time-voyage to the seventies.” indeed i nearly laughed aloud when the youngsters in the row in front of me (they look like jc students, or not much older) inquired of each other ‘what is akan datang?’ — theirs is the generation of monolingual cinema trailers.