Contesting spaces within Singapore cinema.

• Main Author: Ng, Yiqin.
• Other Authors: Brian Keith Bergen-Aurand
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Mass media::Broadcasting::Motion pictures and films
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/46375
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In a country where popular mediums like print, film, television and radio are either state controlled or heavily regulated, the notions of how dominance and resistance interact with each other need to be more closely studied. To discuss Singapore Cinema, we must first interrogate how dominant discourse and peripheral perspectives influence the way local cinema is produced, distributed and received. In order to do so, I propose that Third Cinema is a useful strategy to broaden the spectrum of understanding Singapore Cinema as it can allow us to reclaim marginal narratives in relation to pervasive dominant state discourse. By rethinking how the notion of Singapore Cinema has arrived in today's context, we contest what has been normalized and accepted as dominant structures in the constructions of local film culture. In this paper, I attempt to investigate how Third Cinema offers us insights that are often overlooked from the perspective of the dominant narrative in Singapore Cinema, addressing gaps that are ignored during the course of understanding. As an economically progressive country with a repressive political culture, it is important to recognize how this critical framework offers us a closer look at what is often dismissed, excluded and ignored in Singapore‟s national narrative. Through explicating the often submerged peripheral narratives, we reclaim forgotten perspectives and mobilize others to recover and express their experiences. By critiquing and decentering privileged structures, Third Cinema in turn opens a dialogue between the oppressed and the privileged.