a year ago i found out that my great-great grandfather was buried in singapore

a year ago i found out that my great-great grandfather was buried in singapore is a color single-channel film that explores the traces and delicateness of migration-separation, familial history, and an attempt to capture the in-between landscapes of the personal is universal narratives.

The film features conversations between a mother and daughter trying to dissect their family tree after they found out that their great-great grandfather's grave was found on the opposite side of the land. Opening up the pandora box of the long history of the island where they came from, Dabo Singkep, knotted with the after-effects of the economic and post-colonial migration of the tin miners family.

The film have associative and juxtaposition nature to it, exploring the subtle connections of written and spoken text with fragments of moving image and performativity. The film opens with the vivid writings of how the grave was discovered, both in a familiar and unknown sense. As the film unfolds, it transitioned to the evocative conversations of the mother and daughter, and the final chapter, with a performativity element at the grave, a spoken out response letter to a speculative critical letter that had never arrived years ago.

the film acts as an opening to a year-long project for kenenza to attempt and knit together reflections of a migration journey from an ethnographic lens, while also questioning the personal, political, and national identity in this inevitably intersecting world.