This past September and October, the Asian Film Archive, Singapore screened a collection of films by our Kaori Oda as part of ‘RADICAL WHISPERS: Asian Shorts and Documentaries’

Description:

Bringing together documentaries and short films from Japan, India and Myanmar, represented by filmmakers Kaori Oda, Payal Kapadia and filmmaker-curator Moe Myat May Zarchi, RADICAL WHISPERS explores how whispers—in the form of love letters, secret conversations, journal entries and hearsay— are amplified and transformed into potent sources of political action in film. Through a diverse range of ephemera and story-telling devices, including iphone footage of strangers, 16mm family videos and text messages between friends, the clandestine is made communal, allowing access into the deeply intimate subjectivities of filmmakers and the communities they are part of. Stories of lost love and intergenerational trauma become intertwined with social movements and transnational connections. The boundaries of private and public, solitude and solidarity, secret and overt are re-negotiated. The films offer a provocation into the role of film in disseminating and organising, in connecting and healing.