NEW FILM
STAYING COUNTRY
26/07/26
I edited this film together from videos I took upon travelling to Singapore earlier this year within a 16 hour layover. Singapore makes it easy for majority of global citizens to visit their country, and so a layover of this duration was welcome to me. The intensity of the time also motivated me to try capture some of what I saw.
Upon leaving the airport at 6AM local time, I found a cheap-ish place to store bags in Chinatown and travelled there by train. Truthfully I knew nothing about Singapore and don’t do prior research on places I visit both out of laziness and for the fun of being a spontaneous tourist without any spoilers. As such I was not expecting just how westernised and specifically anglicised it would be. Highlights of my day thus became observing the contrasts of cultures coming together in this tiny nation, between Chinatown to Little India and the clearly European modelled city-centre. A low of my day was the humidity, the heat of which I had not been anticipating, even coming from South African summer. In the “cooler months” of January and February, the warm climate was still unbearable, and only made worse by the refrigeration of every building I went into. It reminded me of the phenomena of going into buildings with central heating in UK winter, where one gets a temperature whiplash. As jetlag and sleep deprivation set in, I was struggling to stay awake during my afternoon, and ventured out to East Coast beach. It was here I went for a swim in the ocean, it seemed a must as a tourist to swim in a new country’s ocean, no less because of the heat and my aversion to using an airport shower. It was here that I met Anton and Habeeb, who star in the would-be film. At the time they were with other friends fishing into the sea, and gradually I worked up to making conversation with them. I was surprised to find they were my exact age, and as such very easy to talk to. They shared some of the chicken they had been cooking over an open fire, calling it a certain name I can’t now remember, but certainly reminded me of South African braai meat. I then tried to make my way back to Chinatown—getting very lost—before finding my bags, and heading back to the airport for the rest of my journeying.
Singapore was a privilege to visit and document, with a rich cultural fusion and vibrant diaspora of people. However it also radiated a sadness from all of its newly constructed high-rises, with its capitalist sterility. Very much a 21st century nation, for better or worse.