FILM CRITICS LAB 2026: PANEL TALK

How We Read What We Watch: A Conversation on Film, Analysis & Critical Voice

What does it mean to think critically about films, poetry, art and the many ‘texts’ that shape our everyday lives? How do we learn to write about art with curiosity, rigour and a personal voice?

This in-conversation session brings together a film educator, programmer and critic, with a poet, literary critic and late-convert cinephile for an open, wide-ranging dialogue on criticism as both practice and passion. Moving across cinema, literature, and criticism, the session will explore how we read images and words, how ideas travel between forms, and how writing becomes a tool for discovery and catharsis.

Part of *SCAPE’s Film Critics Lab, the programme is open to the public and invites youths, cinephiles and writers to step inside the thinking processes behind criticism—and to imagine their own ways of engaging, questioning, and responding to the art forms that they love.

Eternality Tan

ET is the Managing Director of The Filmic Eye, Vice-Chair and Programming Director of the Singapore Film Society, and an Adjunct Lecturer of Film Studies at NTU-WKWSCI, DigiPen SIT and Nanyang Polytechnic. He is also a prolific film critic with close to 20 years of experience, having written over 3,000 reviews on his award-winning site: eternalitytan.com. He was previously a Film Analyst as part of Netflix’s Contingent Talent. He holds a Master of Education from NIE, furthering his passion for melding film and education together.

Daryl Lim Wei Jie

Daryl is an award-winning poet, editor, translator, and literary critic from Singapore. His collections of poetry include Mistranslations from a Future Vernacular (2025) and Anything but Human (2021), the latter shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. He conceptualised and co-edited the celebrated anthologies Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet (2020), and The Second Link: An Anthology of Malaysian and Singaporean Writing (2023). In 2023, he received the Young Artist Award, Singapore's highest honour for artists under 35.