DOUBLE BILL: QUEEN’S PALACE & TIMESTAMP
About the Films
QUEEN'S PALACE
By Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing
Queen’s Palace portrays the experiences of a group of women activists and artists from Myanmar who have sought temporary asylum at a shelter in Mae Sot, a border town in Thailand. Having been profoundly affected by the military coup and subsequent protests in 2021, they fled their homes for safety but now find themselves in unfamiliar territory, waiting for permission to make the journey to yet another country for refuge.
Filming with limited equipment, director Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing nonetheless manages to convey the complexity of the situation in which the women find themselves. Besides physical displacement, many struggle with psychological distress from intrusive memory flashbacks, survivor guilt, and a deep sense of abandonment. One woman asks, “What language should I speak so that the world hears us? I want to speak that language.” She learns to sing a Ukrainian folk song, and in doing so, performs an act of calling for aid, by association.
TIMESTAMP (STRICHKA CHASU)
By Kateryna Gornostai
In battlefield medicine, a timestamp is used to record the time that a tourniquet is applied on a limb, and thereby alert medics to any prolonged use that would bring about permanent tissue damage. Quietly assertive, Kateryna Gornostai’s Timestamp chronicles the state of learning in school classrooms across Ukraine today, as the country defends itself in war. Rather than focusing on the actual combat, this observational documentary follows its relatively unseen impact on the daily lives of children and teachers at different educational levels—from kindergarten to high school—as they exist in a continuous state of emergency.
Shot in 2023 and 2024, the vignettes of school life presented in the film unfold to form a mosaic of a larger collective reality. The children and teachers appear to be unfazed by the challenges posed by the fighting: they continue with online lessons amid building wreckage, and patiently bear with the constant interruptions from air raid sirens and national moments of silence alike. But every so often, real loss and emotional trauma become palpable. In one scene, a little girl heads into her school library, only to suddenly burst into tears when she sees a photograph of her father alongside those of other fallen soldiers. Yet minutes later, in the company of her teacher and classmates who immediately rush to comfort her, she manages to resume her composure, and her reading. It soon becomes evident that such empathy and resilience emanating from the stories constitute the essence of the film, speaking to the true mettle of a people who continue to transcend extraordinary circumstances.
Timestamp was selected for the Competition section of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival (2025).
Related Activites
Hear directly from filmmaker Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing in this conversation.
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Opening Film
Magellan is an intimate portrait of the 16th century Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, starring Gael García Bernal in the titular role.
Art History, Co-authored
Art History, Co-authored presents films that explore seminal moments in art and film history.
Artist Films
Presenting films made by artists, this year includes an emphasis on early documentaries by Southeast Asian practitioners and a full-length movie independently made during the Marcos regime in the Philippines. National Gallery Singapore commissioned the digital restoration of two artists’ films on 16mm, Virgilio “Pandy” Aviado’s 1978 Footages and Briccio Santos’ Damortis, which are world premiering at Painting with Light.
Exhibition Readings
Exhibition Readings presents film programmes conceived in response to the art in the Gallery’s ongoing exhibitions.
Southeast Asian Shorts
Southeast Asian Shorts presents short films on the stories of Southeast Asia. This year’s programme is co-curated by independent programmer Viknesh Kobinathan, and festival curator Pauline Soh.
Movement Pieces
Movement Pieces celebrates the visual poetry found in moving image art. It features short films that convey meaning through non-verbal modes of communication, like gesture and musicality, in lieu of dialogue.
Closing
We Are Toast is an expanded cinema performance by Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen that utilises multiple 16mm film projectors to create a live film.