Russell Adam Morton

Stranded in the Philippines during World War II, a young girl finds that her duty to protect her dying mother is complicated by her misplaced trust in a beguiling, flesh-eating fairy.

After the mysterious disappearance of their baby daughter, a young couple receives strange videos and realizes someone has been filming their daily life — even in their most intimate moments. The police set up surveillance around their home to catch the voyeur but the family starts to crumble as secrets unravel under the scrutiny of eyes watching them from all sides.

Life is not the most fulfilling for sixteen-year-old Meng: Lounging at home with his grieving father on a daily basis, being excluded from his family’s past, and forced into bullying other kids at school. Everything changes when he is thrown into a life-altering adventure that propels him into an exciting unfamiliar landscape.

A rich teenager runs away from home and joins a group of street hustlers who go on a road trip to fulfill the final wish of their dead friend.

A Youtuber posts an irreverent video trolling a megachurch pastor, in defence of his gay twin brother. He is vilified by society, tried in court, and pitted against a culture that threatens to destroy his family.

Commemorating Singapore's 60th year of independence, Kopitiam Days is a stirring anthology film that weaves together six interconnected stories of human connection, reconciliation, and the enduring spirit of Singapore. More than just a setting, the humble kopitiam becomes a living symbol of community and memory, reflecting our past, anchoring our present, and looking towards our future.

Deep in the tropical rainforest of Southeast Asia, a series of incantations invoke the spirits of yore, including those of the nimble, tricksy Kancil (mouse-deer) and the ferocious Buaya (crocodile). The ancient animals enact their folkloric vendetta in a furious dance of dominance, yet long-overdue vengeance is shrouded in smoke. Meanwhile, an effigy of a tree is burning, summoning a whole other host of spectres and ancestors. Conceived during the month of the Hungry Ghost Festival in 2019, while large-scale fires were consuming the forests of Indonesia, Yeo Siew Hua’s An Invocation to the Earth confronts climate collapse through the lens of pre-colonial folktales and animistic rituals. Through spoken spells and bodily entanglements, the video conjures up the fallen environmental defenders of a region ridden with ecological threats in the hope that their spirits will be reborn once again.

Something has gone wrong for a typical Singaporean family. After a man loses his job and the respect of his wife and teenage son, he tries to reconnect with his family by taking them on a trip to visit a childhood haunt. Now abandoned and falling apart, the place is nothing like he thought it would be—especially not the ghosts of his past lying in wait. 

Donna Ong is an installation artist, best known for her evocative and thought-provoking and often complex environments made from furniture, found objects and original artwork.

Enter the world of the Killuminati, the Hong Kong secret society of vampires that has existed for centuries.

Alone on her farm, Raudha is stalked by a terrible Pontianak. With her sharp nails and ghostly pale face covered by long dark hair, will she hunt Raudha down as her next victim?

In the forest of copper columns, a man performs a ritual of cleansing.

Narrated in Kristang, a critically endangered creole language of Portuguese Eurasians, Saudade reimagines rituals of early Eurasian kampongs to tell a story of loss and displacement.

A young kid in the 1980s finds a polaroid camera that lets him take pictures of the Upside Down. Tie-in promotional film for Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights' Stranger Things house.

"Dancing with the Ghost of My Child in 33 steps" is an aging man’s increasing desire and longing for an inspiration, for a life, for a child that he pains to father, and be a father to. In this dance, a man dreams of invoking the ghost of a child, his child, who has not yet been born into the world. This man lays his prayer across time and space. He prays for what love has yet to conceive. He hopes that if the ghost of his child is lost, the child may hear his voice, and find a path back to him. This dance leads the man to a moment in his life where perhaps he might begin to believe again.

An electrician, a cardboard lady, a dwarf and a crippled chicken rice hawker. Together, they dance with seven legs. These are the nameless bodies only known by their vocation and physical handicaps. They were immersed in oppression and yet developed a dispassion towards evil. They carry evil in their bodies but were not evil themselves. Rather, evil had been done to them and had marked their bodies with its effects.

This is a film, not an idea. Rather, it is the euphoric sensation of receiving an idea.

Completed during the residency, Russell Morton‘s latest short film revolves around the eclectic and versatile figure of Mohammad Din Mohammad (1955 – 2007). Artist and mystic, traditional healer and idiosyncratic collector of Southeast Asian cultural items, Mohammad Din Mohammad was also an actor and a silat master. Playfully disclosing the production limitations imposed by the pandemic, the film evokes Mohammad’s multifaceted personality through the faces, voices, and memories of the artist’s family members and an experimental process where affects and sounds are mediated by technology. As it unfolds, the film grows into an upbeat stream of visuals and sounds mixed by Momok, a computer algorithm created by artist bani haykal.

Approximities presents us with a series of seemingly everyday vignettes. However, as the characters move in and out of the frame, the scenes increasingly gain an air of artifice.

After drowning a bag of kittens, Oliver finds himself haunted by feline apparitions out for furry vengeance. What starts out as an almost playful tease escalates into a neverending cycle of terror. Nowhere is safe, and he will eventually meet his fate in the Chamber of Ox.