Special Screening of Talking Leaves (2022) by Shubigi Rao

This special screening is part of the Singapore Pavilion, Pulp III: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, by artist Shubigi Rao and curated by Ute Meta Bauer, first presented at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia from April to November 2022. This screening at Capitol Theatre, one of Singapore’s finest cinemas in the 1930s and a significant player in the Malayan cinema industry in its heyday, is a reminder of Singapore’s vital film history.

Programme

8.00–8.30pm Reception

8.30–9.00pm Opening Remarks

9.00–10.30pm Film Screening

Presented as part of Singapore Art Week 2023.

Filmed over five years in various locations including Venice and Singapore, Talking Leaves highlights the tales of those at the forefront of the effort to save books and libraries through personal confidences and elegiac reflections, as well as incendiary documentary and mytho-poetic languages.

Partially filmed in Venice, a city that embodies a vital history of print and open access, the film depicts, among other stories, how books from a now-defunct archive of women partisans and genocide survivors are rescued. Those at the frontlines of saving books and libraries speak of smuggling volumes out of danger, preserving endangered languages and vanishing cultures, while sharing the sorrow of losing access to personal and collective pasts and histories.

Discussions about the historical connections of access to knowledge and political power with Italian professor of book history Mario Infelise are interwoven with conversations about the strategies of tyranny to silence and censor. Venetian librarian Ilenia Maschietto shares stories of banned books and her favourite books of resistance, while academic Marco Borghi explains how alternative archives can act as safeguards of democracy. The poet Bianca Tarozzi invites us into her library sharing the books that survived the devastating 2019 floods in Venice. Singaporean writer Melissa de Silva reads aloud from a book of idioms in Kristang, an endangered language of Melaka’s and Singapore's Eurasian communities.Retired librarian Saralee Turner recites passages from Not Out of Hate by Myanmar writer Ma Ma Lay, while another, who chooses anonymity, describes the threats to contemporary libraries and free knowledge. Through these stories, we see the book as an embodiment of collective thought, labour, and readership, and we recognise the book as an intimate holder of humanity and community.

The exhibition, Pulp III: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, takes place at ArtScience Museum from 6 to 24 January 2023.

The Singapore Pavilion is commissioned by National Arts Council, Singapore (NAC).

pulp-iii.com

Host or Publisher Artistic Team, Singapore Pavilion