12th Biennial Association for Southeast Asian Cinema (ASEACC)

This conference report provides a survey of the recent 12th Biennial Association for Southeast Asian Cinema (ASEACC) at Chiang Mai University, Thailand. The conference coalesced around the theme ‘Sustainable Futures: Ecologies, Kinships and Communities in Southeast Asian Cinemas’. The report gives an overview of the content of the conference, detailing the activities, presentations, film screenings and discussions across the four-day event. It summarizes key arguments and conceptual framings from delegates’ presentations on contemporary scholarly and creative developments in how Southeast Asia is imagined/performed through cinema. The report outlines several insights from the conference about the way cinema from this region reckons with contemporary challenges such as the ongoing legacy of imperialism and capitalism’s extractive relationship to the environment. Finally, the report points to several areas of enquiry that emerged as promising sites for future research and potential new directions for the field.