Being both an NTU student and resident of Singapore’s east means I am no stranger to a protracted, time-sucking commute. I usually try to squeeze all the productive work possible out of my close to 2-hour journey back home—since entering university, I have become the seasoned practitioner of a precarious one-woman, posture-wrecking, laptop-on-knee balancing act.
A documentary film which charts the final days of the eponymous Bangkok theatre, Scala delves into the personal histories of the in-house workers and director Ananta Thitanat herself, who spent her childhood on the grounds as the daughter of a nearby theatre worker. The film’s languorous, persistent shots and steady angles demonstrate a preoccupation with encapsulating interactions between people and space as they unfold organically, observed through the lens of a distant camera.