‘Small Hours of the Night,’ Film About Censorship, Banned in Singapore and Pulled From Festival
variety.comPatrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Small Hours of the Night,” by Singapore director Daniel Hui, has been removed from the lineup of the Singapore International Film Festival.
The city-state’s authorities have refused the film a release certificate, meaning that it is effectively banned and that the festival cannot go forward with the docu-drama’s planned screening in its Undercurrents section.
The festival has made no public statement, but its website shows the film as not available for screening. In the early years of Singapore’s independence (from the British Empire in 1963 and from Malaysia in 1965), Tan Chay Wa had been an armed activist, possibly a Communist, who rejected the two countries’ separation.
By the time that authorities caught up with him in 1976 he was working as a bus driver. He escaped from Singapore, but was caught with a loaded gun in Malaysia and was hanged in 1983. “Small Hours” involves a real-world court case that followed Tan’s brother’s attempt to follow Tan Chay Wa’s last wishes and have a revolutionary poem inscribed on his grave.
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