Projecting “healthy films”: Chong Gay Theatres, youth and Chinese cinema in late Cold War Singapore

This article examines Chong Gay Theatres’ role in circulating mainland Chinese cinema in Singapore from the 1970s to the 1980s under the leadership of Lim Djit Sun (1925–1987). Known for importing left-leaning Hong Kong films, Chong Gay shifted in the 1980s to Mandarin-language productions from the People’s Republic of China in collaboration with the Shanghai Film Corporation, a transition shaped by the Speak Mandarin Campaign, changing censorship policies, and generational shifts in audience taste. Emerging from networks around the anti-yellow culture movement and earlier left-leaning cultural and entertainment circles, Chong Gay recast progressive cultural ideals through the discourse of “healthy films” within an increasingly regulated media environment. Drawing on archival sources, media reports, and oral interviews, I trace how “healthy films” were redefined through the interaction of ideological commitment and commercial pressure during a period of cultural transition in Singapore. By examining film delegations and festivals in the 1980s, hybrid genres, and youth reception, I argue that Singapore became a key node in late Cold War transregional exchange, where films from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China converged and were reinterpreted. Intermediaries such as Lim promoted PRC cinema as an edifying alternative to commercial culture while sustaining cultural ties with reform-era China. Singapore thus functioned as a distribution hub and testing ground where PRC films were evaluated and adapted for Southeast Asian audiences. Although officially-sanctioned healthy films were associated with discipline and social harmony, their ambivalent reception reveals unease over the commercialisation of PRC cinema and the persistence of residual leftist sensibilities.