IPS-SAM Spotlight on Cultural Policy Series Nine: Roundtable on Growing Singapore’s Film Industry: Projecting From the Past and Present into the Future

Singapore has been putting efforts into developing its home-grown film industry since the setting up of the Singapore Film Commission in 1998 and the Media Development Authority (now the Infocomm Media Development Authority) in 2003. The key policies that have emerged include the initiatives contained in the 2012 report of the Arts and Culture Strategic Review (ACSR).
 
Since then, films like Ilo Ilo, Apprentice, Pop Aye and A Land Imagined have won awards at critically acclaimed film festivals, while the Ah Boys to Men series has scored at the box office.
 
This roundtable is aimed at the following questions: What is the current state of the film industry and what are its future prospects? What has been the impact of the policies? What further needs to be done?

This is the ninth in a series of roundtable discussions jointly organised by IPS and SAM about cultural policy in Singapore. To allow for free and frank exchange, this will be a “closed-door” roundtable held under the Chatham House Rule.

About the IPS-SAM Spotlight on Cultural Policy Series

The IPS-SAM Spotlight on Cultural Policy Series is a space for frank, robust and collegial discussion of the issues and challenges related to arts and cultural policy in Singapore. Each discussion will gather members of the arts and creative community, policymakers, academics and other stakeholders working across different fields, to discuss a specific, timely topic about the arts and cultural policy landscape in Singapore. The goal is to assess current policies and offer recommendations for the future. The Singapore Art Museum (SAM) is the venue sponsor for the 2015–2018 series.

The seminars in the series are: