Foray into the cinematic world of Qiu Miaojin's legacy
Sat 4 Oct 2025, 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Chapel Gallery, Objectifs
Rating: M18 (Mature Content)
Ticket prices (per screening programme)
Single concession ticket (student) – $8 (please note that ID may be verified at the door)
Single general ticket – $10
Pair general tickets – $18
Watch All 3 Programmes Package!
Single concession ticket (student) – $20 (please note that ID may be verified at the door)
Single general ticket – $25
Known as one of Taiwan’s most innovative queer modernist writers, the counterculture legacy of Qiu Miaojin (1969 – 1995) continues to be celebrated, especially in the Chinese literary and LGBTQ+ community. Her novels, Notes of a Crocodile (1994) and Last Words of Montmartre (1996), which are now considered cult classics, explore lesbian identity at a time when homosexuality was not widely understood and accepted in Taiwan. While in Paris for her graduate studies, she committed suicide at the age of 26.
Having previously expressed her admiration for filmmakers Theo Angelopoulos and Andrei Tarkovsky, much of Qiu’s writing is also influenced by cinema. The only short film she ever made, Ghost Carnival, was produced after she took part in the Video Communication Arts Talent Workshop Film Creativity Class in 1990. Based on one of her own short stories, ‘Carnival of Ghosts’, and co-directed with Lin Hsu Wen-er, this story was chosen as they felt its plot was suitable to be adapted into a film.
Carnival of Solitude: The World of Qiu Miaojin features Crocodile Journals by Yeo Lee Nah, a short film inspired by Qiu’s novel, ‘Notes of a Crocodile’, followed by Ghost Carnival. Screening for the first time in Singapore, come experience the otherworldly presence of the only film Qiu made during her brief life.
A post-screening discussion between curator Hsu Fang-Tze and multi-disciplinary artist Amanda Ruiqing Flynn will take place right after the screening.
This screening is part of Objectifs’ biennial Women in Film and Photography showcase.
Click on the following links to find out more and buy tickets for the other Women in Film screenings:
A crocodile lives in disguise every day in the human world. All goes well until he decides to reveal his true self at a masquerade party.
ADVISORY — This film contains themes and portrayals of self-harm, suicide, and sexual assault.
鬼的狂歡 (Ghost Carnival) is a fragmented, stream of consciousness narrative about a young woman who commits suicide after experiencing sibling rape. Her brother is haunted by memories of her in the days approaching his twentieth birthday.
About the speakers
Hsu Fang-Tze currently serves as a curator at the Singapore Art Museum. Her research interests encompass the formation of acoustic modernity, Cold War aesthetics, and memory studies. Her recent curatorial projects include “Singapore Biennale 2025: pure intention” (2025-2026), “Lost & Found: Embodied Archive” at the Singapore Art Museum (2024), “Art Histories of a Forever War: Modernism between Space and Home” at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2021-2022), “Fistful of Colours: Moments of Chinese Cosmopolitanism” (2021-2022), and “Wishful Images: When Microhistories Take Form” at the National University of Singapore Museum (2020). Hsu’s recent academic publications are featured in Performing Homescapes (2025) from Springer, The New Television: Video After Television (2024) from No Place Press, and the journal “Cultural Politics” (2023) from Duke University Press.
Amanda Ruiqing Flynn is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice spans visual art, prose, poetry, and translation. Her solo exhibitions, Everything I Know About Love and Talking Trash, were held in Taiwan and explore the complexities of human connection as well as our relationship with the wider environment. Amanda’s stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Eunoia Review, This is Southeast Asia, and Alluvium: The Journal of Literary Shanghai. Her short story “Wordlessly” is forthcoming in Best New Singaporean Short Stories Volume 7, published by Epigram Books. She has worked with National Taiwan Museum of Literature on numerous literary translation projects. She has also served as a judge for the Bai Meigui Translation Competition.
Amanda holds a BA (First Class Honours) in Chinese and Development Studies from SOAS, University of London, and an MFA (with Distinction) in Art and Design from National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan. Raised in Kent, United Kingdom, and having lived in Taiwan for seven years, she now resides in Singapore, her birthplace. She moonlights as a librarian at Casual Poet Library and can also be found at @amandas.paint.and.pen and amandaruiqingflynn.com.
For the rest of our Women in Film and Photography 2025 programme, click here.