7 Letters Trailer

“The omnibus commences fittingly with “Cinema”, from Singapore’s leading auteur, Eric Khoo (“In The Room”, “Be With Me”). It’s a rhapsodic paean to the magic of the medium, complete with a cameo appearance by a famous French actress. More importantly, it reps a sublime homage to the golden age of the Singaporean film industry in the ’50s, which pool together the multicultural clout of Chinese producers, Indian technicians and Malay creatives – as exemplified by “Pontianak” (1957), which jumpstarted the Southeast Asian horror genre.

Like a noir siren, actress Nadiah M. Din casts a darkly irresistible spell on viewers in a film-within-a-film invoking the Pontianak, a mythical Malay spirit who terrorizes men for stealing her infant. Brian Gothong Tan’s smooth lensing glides from onscreen fiction to open-air screenings and back to drab modern reality, and “Cinema” itself rotates through camp, farce and melancholy before culminating in a triumphant expression of movie love and filmmaking camaraderie.” Variety