Russell Adam Morton
History
Russell Adam Morton makes films, performances and is a professional cinematographer. He is a graduate from the Puttnam School of Film, LASALLE College of the Arts (2010) and obtained an MA in Fine Arts from Camberwell College of the Arts, UAL (2012).
His first film, The Silent Dialogue of All Artworks was screened at the National Museum of Singapore’s 10th Singapore Short Cuts, the Substation’s 4th Experimental Film Forum and the Thai Short Film & Video Festival 2014. The film went on to win Best Experimental Film at the 5th Singapore Short Film Awards. His second film, The Forest of Copper Columns won the Cinematic Achievement Award at the Thessaloniki Short Film Festival 2016 and was selected for several festivals including the Thai Short Film & Video Festival, Jogja Netpac Asian Film Festival, SEAShorts and Short Shorts Film Festival 2017. Russell was also the director of photography for Ang Song Ming’s Recorder Rewrite, Singapore’s entry to the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. In 2020, the Asian Film Archive commissioned Russell to make Saudade, a short film set against the exultant Eurasian imaginations about the loss and displacement of the community's language, Kristang.
Cinematography
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.
Director
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.
Cinematography
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.
Co-Director
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.
Editor
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.
Cinematography
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.
Music
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.
Editor
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.
Cinematography
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.
Editor
"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.
Cinematography
"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.
Director
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.
Director
In the forest of copper columns, a man performs a ritual of cleansing.
Director
This is a film, not an idea. Rather, it is the euphoric sensation of receiving an idea.
Director
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.
