A culmination of the 2025 Objectifs x Asian Film Archive Film Programmers' Lab, programmed by Pan Jia Qi and EXYL

Held in conjunction with the Objectifs x Momo Film Co Short Film Incubator and FreshTake! 2025 Main Programme

Chapel Gallery, Objectifs
19 Jul 2025

Ticket prices (per screening programme)
Single concession ticket (student) – $6 (please note that ID may be verified at the door)
Single general ticket – $10
Pair general tickets – $18

Watch All 4 Programmes Package!
Single concession ticket (student) – $20 (please note that ID may be verified at the door)
Single general ticket – $35

This year, FreshTake! will include a Special Programme – Kopi O Kosong. This screening is one of the culminating outcomes of the 2025 Objectifs x Asian Film Archive Film Programmers’ Lab, and was programmed by Pan Jia Qi and EXYL.

Click here to find out more information about FreshTake! 2025 – Main Programme.

Overall Screening Schedule

I. Beneath the Noise (Wed 16 Jul, 7.30pm – 9pm | Programme rating: TBC)

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II. Myth & Mayhem (Thu 17 Jul, 7.30pm – 8.30pm | Programme rating: TBC)

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III. Love in Frame (Fri 18 Jul, 7.30pm – 9pm | Programme rating: TBC)

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IV. Special Programme – Kopi O Kosong (Sat 19 Jul, 5pm – 6.30pm)

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Find out more information about the Special Programme below.

SPECIAL PROGRAMME – KOPI O KOSONG | 19 JUL 2025, 5PM to 6.30PM

Image credit: EXYL & Pan Jia Qi

Your hands are shaking. You’re sweating. Your breath is sour. Your guts churn.
But your headache is gone.
You’re awake again.

Coffee is a ritual of survival; it is a daily fix that keeps our overworked bodies whirring just long enough to clock in again. In a system that treats bodies as batteries, coffee becomes fuel and fog. It keeps us awake – but at what a cost?

Kopi O Kosong is a film programme about caffeinate survival under Southeast Asia’s many machines of exhaustion. The films examine our relationship to work and coffee as we trudge through 45-hour work weeks. In Singapore, where ambition feels automated, we encounter surreal portraits of self-alienation. In Thailand, political despair unravels through absurdist hymns and symbolic collages. In the Philippines, the frustrations of minimum-wage works explode in bursts of punk anarchy and rage.

Together, these works form a visceral map of survival. Bodies pushed to their limits. Nations kept upright by stimulants and sacrifice. Coffee becomes an essential stimulant that puts us back in action, even when our bodies want to rest.

Structured like a caffeine high, Kopi O Kosong follows the arc from 8AM alertness to 3AM hallucinations and then to 11PM shutdowns. Amidst the bleary swirl of burnt beans and bitter aftertastes, we think about coffee, work, and the mundane violence that binds them all. We are awake – but when will we be awakened?

The Cup by Mark Chua & Lam Li Shuen / PG / 17 mins / 2020
In a surreal tableau, a man with a brewing machine for a head, discontent with the bland taste of the brew from his own body, attempts to do what he can to improve its flavour.

Shot during the circuit breaker period in Singapore, The Cup is a meditation on being in the world, against the flattening out of life as we know and image it.

Break by Ryan Benjamin Lee / Rating TBC / 5 mins / 2021
A ‘break’ can be a moment of rest, a violent act or a deviation from routine. This film attempts to encapsulate the sights, sounds and smells of the local Kopitiam in Singapore. It’s a space for togetherness, conversation or maybe just lunch. Images of consumption and decay flicker against arrhythmic, chattering texture.
The Growth by Sarah Cheok / Rating exemptible / 8 mins / 2019
An ambitious young boy is eager to grow up so he can experience the world outside of his kelong house in the middle of the ocean. Eventually he musters up courage to persude the old man, but was faced with disapproval. Being young and ambitious, the boy decides to go anyway.
Jodilerks Dela Cruz, Employee of the Month by Carlo Francisco Manatad / PG13 / 20 mins / 2017
Jodilerks, a gas station attendant is on her last day of duty. (The Night Is Young, Just So You Know).
Karaoke: Think Kindly by Chulayarnnon Siriphol / Rating TBC / 5 mins / 2009
Blessing for people who are suffering from political problems in Thailand.
Hock Hiap Leong by Royston Tan / PG / 8 mins / 2001
Hock Hiap Leong pays tribute to this a 55-year old coffee shop on Armenian Street that has been an incessant inspiration to many people. The urban re-development board’s demolishing plans in 2001 inspired the filmmaker to capture this epitaph of history.

 

About Pan Jia Qi
Pan Jia Qi is an aspiring writer and curator in Singapore. He graduated from Yale-NUS College in 2023, with a major in Literature and a minor in Philosophy. His research interests are literary modernisms, love, and affect theory. Currently, he is working as a curatorial project officer with the Asian Civilisations Museum.

Admittedly, while he wasn’t the largest film-consumer as a child, watching only whatever was on television, it all changed when he saw In the Mood for Love–the film that got him into film–and he was instantly in love with the yearning and the transience and Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung. Since then he has been transfixed with the whole medium, voraciously consuming yet forever hungry.

Other than films, he loves reading and playing jazz. He is also a big consumer of video essays.

 

About EXYL

Exyl is a filmmaker and educator working under the umbrella of experimental animation. Their films have screened at Slamdance, SGIFF, Singapore Shorts, Encounters, Eyeworks, Fantoche, London Short FF and more. They were awarded the Terri Schwartz Asian Film Award at Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2023, Best Animation at Mammoth Lakes FF in 2024, Best Animation at NYFA in 2022 and Director’s Special Mention at NYFA in 2023. They were also awarded the Singapore Gold Award at the 25th DigiCon ASIA Awards.

They were awarded residencies and fellowships with Ox-Bow School of Art, I-Park Connecticut, Dirt Palace, and the Film Studies Center Harvard. They were a programmer for the Slamdance animation block in 2024 and a co-conspirator with Jonni Peppers in organising Transfiguration International Film Festival. They have also collaborated with Dirt Palace (Providence, RI) to put on themed screenings of independent animation.

After a 6 year jaunt in Providence, they are back in Singapore for good. These days they’re interested in hanging out, and they’re trying to be easily pleased.