Gerald Sim discusses his new book, Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability, with documentary filmmaker Tan Pin Pin. It is an interdisciplinary journey through a refreshing set of unique aesthetics from Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. These expressions in form reflect Southeast Asia’s distinctive relationship to colonialism and transcend popular postcolonial tropes such as hybridity and mimicry. The book engages with Tan’s films at length. Across two chapters, the book discusses how their sensibility exemplifies Singapore’s singular preoccupation with space, geography, and cartography.
