This fireside conversation brings together two Singaporean lesbian filmmakers whose work has moved audiences across borders and generations. The session explores how film is craft, archive and an act of liberation.

Madeleine Lim, filmmaker behind Sambal Belacan in San Francisco, reflects on documenting queer lives in the diaspora and the role of film in capturing intimacy, community, and belonging beyond the nation-state. This personal memory chronicle stands as an early and vital record of queer Southeast Asian presence on screen; a history that might otherwise be forgotten.

Kirsten Tan, the award-winning director of Pop Aye, shares insights from her filmmaking journey and discusses her upcoming feature Crocodile Rock. Through her craft, she examines how tenderness and humour can open space for reflection and collective imagination and tell the stories of overlooked lives.

Together, they consider what it means to make queer films from—and about—Singapore, shaped by constraint and care and how memory travels across time and geography.

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About The Speakers

Madeleine Lim (She/her)

Originally from Singapore, Madeleine Lim is an award-winning filmmaker with 30+ years of experience as a producer, director, cinematographer and editor, based in San Francisco. Her films have screened at sold-out theaters at international film festivals around the world. Her work has been featured at universities and museums like the de Young, and Asian Art in San Francisco, and Crocker Art in Sacramento, and broadcast to millions on PBS.

Madeleine is the Founder and Executive/ Artistic Director of QWOCMAP – Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project. Founded in 2000, QWOCMAP builds narrative power by transforming film, the world’s most expensive art form, into a tool for liberation.

Madeleine’s award-winning documentaries include Jewelle: A Just Vision (2022); The Worlds of Bernice Bing (2013); and Sambal Belacan in San Francisco (1997), which continues to be banned in Singapore.

Kirsten Tan (She/her)

Kirsten Tan is a New York–based Singaporean filmmaker whose work is socially engaged and formally adventurous, with a focus on overlooked lives and spaces. Her debut feature Pop Aye made history as the first Singaporean film to receive major awards at the Sundance Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam, and was selected as Singapore’s official entry to the Academy Awards.

She is currently developing two feature projects, Crocodile Rock and Higher. Beyond film, she has helmed branded campaigns for fashion houses and cultural institutions including Giorgio Armani, Marina Bay Sands, and National Gallery Singapore.

A Cannes Cinéfondation and Sundance Institute Fellow, she holds an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, supported by the Tisch Fellowship. She is a recipient of Her World Magazine’s Young Woman Achiever of the Year, a nominee for The Straits Times Singaporean of the Year, and was featured on CNN International’s Ones to Watch.

Worms Virk (They/she/he)

Worms is a thing-maker, body-shaker, rule-breaker. In a previous life, they headed marketing at indie cinema The Projector. Worms now manages cultural projects and events full-time & moonlights as burlesque performer Lychee Bye.