(blank) Experimental Film Festival:
Student Category & Panel Talk (03)

Film Screening - Student Category

The best experimental films by Southeast Asian students

PG Consumer Advice: Some Disturbing Scenes

The freshest and wildest new voices in Southeast Asia and two from Spain, our Student program spotlights emerging filmmakers trying out new techniques and means of storytelling in new bold ways. This is where the next wave of experimental cinema starts.

Portrait of Tin's Family (2026) by Legawa Allit
The Escape Artist (2025) by Parapas Sornpromwiset
Hemovision - Art and Science Through the Blood (2024) by Nurin Nora Mato
Gecko (2026) by Owen Effendi
aspaltong lasang (urban jungle) (2026) by Xander Delola
highways (2024) by Raquel Angulo

With post screening Q&A with filmmakers and programmers, Exyl and Sub+ Youth Curators, Phyllis Chan and Goh Cheng Hao

Panel Talk - part of Gathering Ground 2026

What inspires filmmakers? What compels their practice in Singapore? What are their reflections on the local scene?

Come find out at this panel! Organised in conjunction with (blank) Experimental Film Festival, this talk features Singaporean filmmakers Nelson Yeo, Daniel Hui and Chew Tze Chuan on their practice in experimental filmmaking.

Gathering Ground is The Substation’s annual anniversary season of pop-up events and community gatherings.

Moderated by Sub+ Youth Curators Phyllis Chan and Goh Cheng Hao

About the Panel Speakers

Daniel Hui is a filmmaker and writer. A graduate of the film program in California Institute of the Arts, he is one of the founding members of 13 Little Pictures, a critically acclaimed independent film collective in Singapore. He has made four feature-length films — Eclipses (Pixel Bunker Award for International New Talent, Doclisboa IFF 2013), Snakeskin (Special Jury Award TFFDoc, Torino FF 2014; Award of Excellence, Yamagata IDFF 2015; Special Jury Mention, RIDM 2015), Demons (In Competition, Kim Jiseok Award, Busan IFF 2018; Berlinale Forum 2019), and Small Hours of the Night (Rotterdam IFF 2024)

Nelson Yeo is a Singaporean filmmaker. His latest feature, The House on the Moon, premiered in the main competition at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2026. Dreaming & Dying premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2023, where it received the prestigious Golden Leopard – Filmmakers of the Present and Swatch First Feature Award. The film went on to screen at numerous international film festivals and received several additional awards.

In 2025, Nelson’s short films Durian, Durian and Through Your Eyes premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Berlin International Film Festival, respectively. His other short films have also been selected for prominent festivals, including Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, Cairo International Film Festival, and New Directors/New Films

Chew Tze Chuan or t.c. is a self-appointed "montage engineer" since his early filmmaking adventures in 1993. his experimental approach to film editing and 16mm cinematography led to a longtime friendship with the late indie filmmaker and musician Abdul Nizam. their short film collaboration, Datura, won Best Short Film at the 1999 Singapore International Film Festival.

in 2010, t.c. spent days and months watching his little terrapin grow, meditating on his failed attempts on “genres”, "art",  "experimental", "underground", and “personal” filmmaking for the past decade, and decided to shield himself from further analysis paralysis, and started calling his works “(The) Lesser (Cinema)” — not knowing his days as a legit filmmaker were numbered.

Lesser #10, a homecoming project shot in Singapore between 2021 and 2022, was premiered in a private screening space attended by 6 Filipino and 1 Singaporean kind souls in Manila, October 10, 2024, before finding its way to another permanently awkward silence.