DOK Industry Podcast · DOK Leipzig – International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film

Short Films, Big Questions: Intercultural Exchange in a Polarised Era

·37 min·16 clips

Kila Gill opens the conversation by naming the problem directly. She introduces herself as a programmer for the Singapore International Film Festival, a member of the selection committee for Berlinale Generation Shorts, part of the London Film Festival Experimental section, and an associate programmer for the London Short Film Festival. Pui follows. She says she is a film programmer and arts manager based in Singapore, working at Objectives, where she handles film-related programmes. Nihan then joins the room. From there, the talk settles into the question of how to navigate cultural exchange for short films in the current political climate. The speakers keep returning to aesthetics. One of them notes that people in the UK can now know the aesthetics of Berlin without traveling there, which changes what access means. That shift pushes the discussion toward the difference between seeing a film and meeting the people around it. The panel keeps asking what is actually offered when programmers and cultural workers receive artists and filmmakers. Kila presses the idea of radical thinking of aesthetics. The point is that exchange may now happen through circulation and conversation as much as through travel. Pui brings the matter back to Singapore and to the practical work of promotion and reception. She asks, in effect, what can be brought back from those encounters. The conversation also notices how institutions shape who gets access and when. At one point, the speakers talk about enabling and care in the same breath. That leads to a quieter consideration of self-care. The ending feels modest and direct, with thanks to Doc Lipsick, first-time public-speaking nerves, and a shared sense that the room had done its work. It leaves the subject open rather than resolved, which suits a conversation about how people, films, and institutions meet.

As heard by us

A calm discussion of short films, care, and what cultural exchange still asks of programmers.

The strongest sections return to care, access, and self-care, and to the question of what a cultural worker can still add when aesthetics are already available online.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For when you want a reflective conversation about cultural exchange in short films, with care and self-care kept in view.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from DOK Industry Podcast