Category: Events

  • Above And Below The Ground (2023)

    Film Review by Zhi Ming Sim

    Screenshots from the trailer

    On 4th April 2025, Function 8 hosted the screening of Above and Below the Ground, a powerful film directed by Emily Hong, documenting the everyday lives of communities implicated by the Myitsone Dam in Kachin. The screening was followed by a Q&A session with the director, offering insights into the creative and political reflections behind the documentary.

    The film opens with an image of Myanmar rendered as a thumping heart of Southeast Asia. The Irrawaddy River pulses through the landscape, representing both a figurative and literal source of culture, sustenance, and life for communities. The film features indigenous women and environmental activists who are challenging the construction of the dam—a joint venture between Myanmar’s military junta and a Chinese-owned megacorporation. The dam has since displaced thousands, removing them from their livelihoods, and bound to submerge villages, causing ecological damages along the Irrawaddy.

    Capturing ongoing local resistance through music and karaoke, everyday conditions, protests, and legal confrontations, the film offers a poetic and political disruption to extractive narratives of hydro-dam projects that often position indigenous communities as idle and necessitating modernization. The film importantly puts its audience into rethinking the wider consequences of green developmental projects in the region, and how transnational capital and global corporate interest work at the expense of life.

    During the Q&A session, participants asked about how Singaporeans can show solidarity with the environmental movement in Myanmar, especially in the aftermath of the earthquake that rattled through Sagaing and Mandalay. Director Hong emphasizes the possibilities and importance of transnational solidarities and getting engaged with local initiatives that support communities on the ground. In reflecting on the dialogues from the session, Singaporeans must ground solidarities through active accounting for and refusal of our own complicities in extractive investments and to center indigenous voices as vital sources of knowledge for shaping regional projects.

    from FreedomFilmFest 2024 programme booklet

  • The Future of Singapore

    Tan Tee Seng

    On Friday, 7 March 2025, Function 8 organised a talk at The Arts and Civil Space (TACS) by Ar Tay Kheng Soon on his latest book, Future of Singapore? This event marked the first installment of Function 8’s “Changing Worlds” series for the year.

    The book’s provocative title, Future of Singapore?, is fitting for an author like Tay Kheng Soon. A pioneering architect from Singapore Polytechnic’s first architectural school cohort in 1964, he was adjunct professor of National University of Singapore, a practicing architect, and a public intellectual known for his radical and critical views in a highly conservative society.

    This edition of his book is unconventional, reading like an anthology of ideas gathered from his 60 years of experience in urban planning, architectural design, and intellectual activism. His career has closely paralleled Singapore’s nation-building journey. During the two-hour session, the audience was given a thought-provoking history lesson, exposing perspectives rarely found in school textbooks and challenging mainstream narratives. For instance, he questioned the relevance of modern education and highlighted the deficiencies of Singapore’s system in preparing for the future.

    One of the most compelling ideas he put forth was his philosophy of education: the need to develop the head, the heart, and the hands in unison. Singapore’s education system primarily rewards those who excel at rote memorization, filtering out “elites” through high-stakes examinations while neglecting emotional intelligence and practical skills. This narrow approach is increasingly inadequate in the age of artificial intelligence and raises concerns about Singapore’s future competitiveness.

    Tay also proposed transforming Singapore into an “enterprise city”—a hub that attracts the best and brightest from the region to live, learn, and innovate. He explored ideas on how Singapore can truly become a smart city with intelligent, creative citizens. His book is filled with bold and thought-provoking concepts that deserve serious consideration, perhaps even as part of our school curriculum.

    Tay Kheng Soon’s insights challenge us to rethink fundamental aspects of Singapore’s development. If we are to secure a resilient and dynamic future, we must embrace innovative and holistic approaches to education, urban planning, and social progress.

  • War And Justice

    On 7 Feb 2025, we re-started our FreedomFilmFest Fringe Screenings Series with the documentary War And Justice directed by Marcus Vetter and Michele Gentile. It was a private event where only friends were invited.

    We had, in collaboration with our Malaysian partner, Freedom Film Network, held our Freedomfilmfest at The Projector in November 24. Our Fringe Screenings Series is a continuation of our FreedomFilmFest.

    WAR AND JUSTICE documents the history of how and why the International Criminal Court was established. Benjamin B Ferencz, the brilliant American lawyer and investigator of Nazi war crimes played a very important part in its founding which took decades. One hundred and twenty countries finally adopted the Rome Statute in 1998 and the ICC was established. The court began operation in 2002 with Luis Moreno Ocampo as its first prosecutor. Today it has 125 members.

    The film directors had access to excellent footages of trials and atrocities committed by warring parties. The documentary showed briefly, the first trial of the court – Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. He was found guilty of using child soldiers in war.

    War and Justice also addressed criticisms that the ICC is a biased institution in that it failed to prosecute American leaders while pursuing others including Saddam Hussein and President Vladimir Putin. It attempts to explain the complexities of international law and the limitations of the ICC

    The ICC is under tremendous pressure today. President Trump has signed executive orders and sanctions have been issued against the ICC. Can the 125 countries in the world withstand such challenges and threats? Will there be unity and strength to stand up against the big powers?

    No one wins by conducting wars. What is important is justice for all.

  • Book: THE MIGHTY WAVE

    Function 8 has published The Mighty Wave by He Jin as an e-book.

    Download for free here or use the link below

    Mighty Wave is a novel written by He Jin who was a student involved in the crucial student protest against compulsory national service under colonial rule in 1954. This incident was recognised by the Late Mr Tan Jing Quee as the turning point in the history of Singapore’s anti colonial struggle. It was this incident that brought the Chinese Middle School students to the attention of the English educated university students who were also involved in the anti colonial struggle. Tan Jing Quee was the first self taught historian to recognise the importance of this book. Though he was already ill with cancer and suffering from blindness, he was determined to bring this important novel written in Chinese to the English audience.

    The translation by the three editors, Tan Jing Quee (lawyer), Hong Lysa (historian) and Loh Miao Gong (elected member of legislative assembly who was deprived of her seat) may not be perfect. The translators have explained the process of how they translated the book in their Introduction. Nevertheless they give us an insight into the struggle of Chinese students against oppressive colonialism. Many of them, including He Jin, suffered immense setbacks in their lives and were forced into exile.

    https://bookfies.com/ebook/963/the-mighty-wave Note: Please click on “Find a Store” button which will then present you with different formats for most devices.

  • Book Launch: A Shift In The Wind

    In the 1980s, Singapore’s first opposition member of parliament since 1966 was elected. A group of political observers sensing this “shift in the wind”, decided to lay bare the ideological threads that linked the PAP’s policy choices, governance approach, and by extension, the current social structures formed by the ruling government.

    The result was a book providing an overview of the local socio-political landscape. Written almost 40 years ago when a historical shift in Singapore’s democracy seemed imminent, the same hope echoes today as we see the opposition gaining more seats in Parliament after the recent 2020 General Election. The critiques of the government’s authoritarian tendencies and elitist meritocracism are even more relevant today, after more than 58 years of nation building under one party.

    Purchase book

  • Book Launch: Ridiculous — Untold Tales of Singapore

    Function 8 will be launching our new book, Ridiculous: Untold Tales of Singapore, in a hybrid event at 7:30pm on 30 March 2022. The livestream will be available on Function 8’s Facebook page, as well as the Transformative Justice Collective’s YouTube page. If you would like to attend the event in person, please write to us at 2010Function8@gmail.com for reservation of seats by Monday, 28 March 2022.

    The launch event will include a panel discussion moderated by lawyer Jeannette Chong-Aruldoss. The panellists are: playwright Alfian Sa’at, SDP leader Dr Chee Soon Juan, journalist and activist Kirsten Han, and actor Lim Kay Siu, covering a range of experiences and encounters between civil society, the media, the arts, and organs of the state.

    Ridiculous: Untold Tales of Singapore is a new collection of never-before-told stories and personal insights into our socio-political landscape. The book also contains a collation of past events involving the curtailment of civil liberties, and judicial decisions with an impact on public interest and civil and political rights. By recounting these experiences and milestones, the book seeks to highlight the ways that Singaporeans’ access to fundamental rights and freedoms have been excessively curtailed over the years, and reflect on how such repression has affected us as a people.

    Coverage of the launch event is welcome. 

    Media Contact:

    Chan Wai Han at 98183992
    Teo Soh Lung at 92960031