Synopsis:

Falling in Love with the Enemy: Images of Colonialism in Postcolonial Southeast Asia explores films produced by Southeast Asians that capture their postcolonial fears and fantasies at the nexus of their shifting relations with their former colonisers. Using films from a wide array of genres, romance, comedy, and war films like Magkaibang Lahi (Of Different Races, 1947), Labu dan Labi (Labu and Labi, 1962) and Pagar Kawat Berduri (Barbed Wire Fence, 1961), the talk will navigate the complicated stories of love, hate, and compromise between Southeast Asian states and their former colonisers and remind the audience how this oscillating relations persist until today.

About the series
Shadows After Dark: Uncovering Post-Colonial Southeast Asian Cinema is a new lecture-film series, conceived with Dr Darlene Machell Espena, that follows a chronological development of Cold War cinema in post-colonial Southeast Asia. Consisting of six parts, this series will attempt to uncover trajectories and examine the visual culture of the period. It is organised from the discussions around the exhibition "Who Wants To Remember A War": War Drawings and Posters from the Dato' N. Parameswaran Collection.

About the speaker
Dr Darlene Machell Espena is a Research Fellow at Singapore's National Institute of Education (NTU). She earned her PhD in Southeast Asian History (2017) and MSc. in Asian Studies (2012) from Nanyang Technological University. Her research includes cinema, culture and politics in Cold War/postcolonial Southeast Asia and political and cultural discourses on Singapore education and economy. She has held teaching positions at De La Salle University and the Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines.