O for Opium

As part of the filmmaker's metaproject The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, the film takes the letter 'O' to poetically conflate 'Opium' and 'Ocean'. It revisits the opium trade that underpinned British colonial expansion, contending with how opium may be understood, perceived and represented. Found footage and layered voices link Singapore's port history to narcotic economies.

Ho Tzu Nyen: 'O for Opium unfolds through poetic conflations of opium and oceanic drifting, contending with the multiplicity of ways in which opium may be understood, perceived and represented. Melding found footage with texts related to the history of the opium trade during the British colonial era, the work assumes the perspective of opium itself as a material continually transmuted across time, forms and boundaries.

The resulting hallucinatory images are occluded by an index of objects tied to the production and consumption of opium: opium pipes, spirit lamps, poppy flowers and clipper ships, for instance, emerge like shifting clouds of smoke drifting over the dreamlike sequences of imagery. The work is sonically animated by an intoxicating mix of voices that narrate, whisper, sing and speak simultaneously across histories of opium from a clashing constellation of divergent positionalities.'