How Singapore’s underground music scene survives in a ‘hostile environment’ revealed in new film
- Scene UnSeen is a deep dive into what it means to be an underground musician in Singapore, featuring a range of the Lion City’s alternative music pioneers
- A posthumous film by director Abdul Nizam, of ’80s band The NoNames, it is set to debut at the Singapore International Film Festival on November 28
Mohawks, headbanging and slam dancing are not the first things that come to mind when thinking of strait-laced Singapore, but a new documentary sheds light on a side of the city state’s culture that has been rumbling below the surface for 40 years.
Scene UnSeen (2021) is a posthumous film by director Abdul Nizam, the frontman, lead singer and drummer in ’80s band The NoNames, who died of cancer in 2016 in the midst of production. It is set to debut on November 28 at the 32nd edition of the Singapore International Film Festival.
Local indie rock veterans The Oddfellows and Obstacle Upsurge – one of the first all-female hardcore bands in the city state – who are both featured in the film will take to the stage for the occasion.
“M’GO Films wanted to make this documentary with Abdul Nizam from the start because he straddled both worlds – film and music,” says the film’s producer, Panuksmi Hardjowirogo. “After his death, it didn’t seem right to shelve the project.”
The production company reached out to freelance arts worker Nina Chabra and independent creative Shaiful Risan to film additional interviews and live music segments.
M’GO Films co-founder Michel Cayla and Mark Ravinder Frost, a writer and historian of Singapore, then devised the film with existing footage, further interviews and what Cayla described as “archival material from moulding VHS tapes left untouched for decades at the bottom of cardboard boxes”.
