to gertjan (mr. g)

Gertjan Zuilhof (1955–2025)

Gertjan Zuilhof, or mr. G as i called him, the preeminent programmer of Asian and African cinema and a burgeoning filmmaker himself, passed away on 3 March; i didn't find out till the middle of the month over coffee with a friend.

IFFR, the film festival he was "the heart" of programming at for a long time, paid tribute to him, and i can only add a few words:

mr. G and i met in 2018 at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF); i knew of him as the programmer almost all independent SEAsian filmmakers had showed their films to first, and admired his curation over the years, especially Forget Africa (what a title!). i had also seen his cameo in Tan Chui Mui's short "A Night in Malacca" (2013) and immediately recognised his shock of hair in real life.

over Covid, job losses and gains, and an endless stream of pictures, mr. G and i stayed in touch over Facebook and caught up at festivals, bars, and cafes in Tokyo, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Berlin. we originally met at his curated programme SEA of Sadness, which travelled, in sensitively modified form, to my $ingapore in 2019. beyond the great title again, the landmark programme opened my eyes to the cinemas of Roxlee, The Maw Naing, and Ismail Fahmi Lubis, as well as reaffirmed my love for Thunska Pansittivorakul, Ho Yuhang, and Edwin—experiencing Edwin's Hortus (2014) on 16mm is up there for me with encountering Jarman on the big screen.

mr. G and i last saw each other in 2022, when we visited the Rijksmuseum's REVOLUSI! exhibition. i recall being stimulated and endlessly going on about anticolonialism, but it was mr. G who spotted the error in the exhibition's map, labelling the entire Borneo as Indonesian territory. "not everything is about colonialism, you know," he said over drinks. i was going to make a video essay in response to that... maybe one day.

besides programming, mr. G was also a special artist. his sketches, like the one he sent me above, captioned "Hair has little to do with identity," picture discordant, animal-like shapes taking over sense, lines, and emptiness. i still have one of his original drawings, done on hotel stationery, somewhere precious. mr. G was also actively beginning to make and write films: his debut feature premiered posthumously at BAFICI in April.

discussing SEA of Sadness with another friend in 2018, the question came up: Do we need another white guy programming our films? i think mr. G was acutely aware of his positionality, particularly when it came to pan-African cinema, and at least for this programme, his outsider-insider nature and extensive friendships in the region helped cast a light on otherwise easily overlooked films. who else could have programmed Khavn's confrontational Alipato: the Very Brief Life of an Ember (2016) next to Liryc dela Cruz's Notes from Unknown Maladies (2017), a B&W observation of his grandmother dying? Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004) is a given, but who else would not have dismissed Aline Magrez's short "No'I" (2016) as a tourist film, and shown it for the minor revelation it is?

i'm sad we never got to say a proper goodbye; i'm thankful we got to be friends. thank you, mr. G, for the visions.

the last two pics we exchanged. i was in Manila (left), mr. G was in Berlin.

remembering laichan

Goh Laichan (1962–2025) [FOTOS: laichan_official/Instagram, Freestate Productions; Courtesy of Channel NewsAsia]

a belated remembrance: i interviewed fashion designer Goh Laichan at his boutique for a magazine about 20 years ago, around the time of Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love. amid the cheongsam hype, he stood out to me for quietly continuing, in a fabulous hat, an East Asian tradition with his modern grace, tailoring effortless and comfy spins on the mandarin gown. we never stayed in touch, but these memories (and how i wanted to fit into LAICHAN's “man-pao”) came flooding back in 2017 when i watched 邓宝翠 Eva Tang's short《柳影袈裟》("The Veiled Willow"), as part of Royston Tan's anthology 667, for which Mr. Goh was the costume designer. in a way only Eva can, the film gloriously celebrated myriad facets of Cantonese culture: food, humour, love, language, music, repression, set in an era when the Speak Mandarin Campaign was sewing up expression.

Mr. Goh passed away in April at 62 years old—quietly, of course. Eva has kindly made available her short, here, for streaming for 100 days, the traditional mourning period. do try to watch it and look out for the veteran couturier's creations at every turn. there'll never be another quite like Laichan.

Still from Eva Tang, 《柳影袈裟》("The Veiled Willow"), 2017

PS: Eva's docu《從維多利亞街到宏茂桥》 (From Victoria Street to Ang Mo Kio), one of my faves of 2019, leaves streaming on Netflix today!

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the long day closes

Terence Davies was easily “Britain's greatest living film director,” as the Evening Standard recognised: from his transcendental trilogy of shorts, to his pointilist, absolutely essential pair of debut features, interrogating familial memory, religion and sexuality, and the adolescent self, plus his lyrical documentary on his city, Liverpool; from, more recently, his adaptations of classic novels and plays, which stick out in time, to his still highly personal biopics of poets. his passing, at 77, aches as hard as Abbas Kiarostami's (who was 76), because they both still had so much more to share—Davies just released a short film last month, entitled "Passing Time".

i first watched his cinema, on DVD, at 18 and i still think of certain fades, musical sequences, and even wallpaper patterns, half a life later. he was a true auteur; pure poetry and passionate pain on screen. he arrived without precedence and leaves without a successor. his epitaph quotes Horace: “Pulvis et Umbra Sumus” (“We are but dust and shadows”). vale, maestro.

'The Long Day Closes,' 1992